“Anything else?”
“That when you walked into the room that night and I saw you—barefoot, wild-eyed, taser in your hand—I believed for the first time since I was a boy that what I wanted was possible.”
“What did you want,” I whisper.
“A house where you sleep first,” he says. “And monsters are on the outside, not inside.”
“Absolution granted,” I tell him, quiet and fierce, because no priest will say it like I mean it. “Go and sin intelligently.”
His laugh is low and desperate and mine. “You’re so bad,” he says.
“I’m so yours,” I correct.
There’s a beat where the room grows small enough to wear. He shifts, and I see his hand through the lattice, fingers curling like he wishes wood was less devout. I stand and the door on my side creaks, that little crow-caw of old hinges on their best behavior. I slip out, cross the narrow shared wall, and open his.
He’s waiting on the bench inside, shadowed, jaw unshaven as if sleep has not yet convinced him we made it home. I step in and close the door behind me. The booth becomes a world.
“You sure,” he asks, because the last twenty-four hours rewrote a lot and only fools assume the old sentences still hold.
“Yes,” I say, and I’m not sure until I say it how much I needed to say yes in a room like this where once I said nothing.
We don’t rush.
We don’t dare.
The walls are too thin for carelessness and too thick for shame. I sit on his lap like we invented the chair for this. Hishands bracket my hips and then wrap around my back with a control that would make a ticking timepiece jealous.
I taste his mouth—clean, mint and the kind of hunger that isn’t for food. He breathes into me the way men do when they’ve been holding their breath for years. I kiss him the way women do when they decide the scar is as holy as the skin.
“Tell me,” he says against my lower lip, and it’s not an order, it’s a way to keep the room small enough to bear.
“I want to feel you between my thighs when I leave this place,” I say. “I want to walk out smiling and know the pews are going to gossip and not care.”
He obliges me the way a tide obliges the moon. Hands sure, cadence right, the screen at my back warm from our breath. He speaks to me like something a priest could call scandal and I’d call navigation: there, good, breathe, now. If God turns His face, it’s to give us privacy, not judgment. I’m not blaspheming when I say it feels like being rebuilt.
When I come apart, it’s silent the way storms can be silent if you’re under the right roof. He follows because I ask him to, because he wanted it as much as I did, because some doors close on a whisper and still latch tight. We stay tangled until our ribs recall their names.
My forehead rests in the curve of his collarbone; one of his hands rubs my spine like he’s smoothing out pages. For a sliver of time, the booth holds every promise we’ve made—spoken and not.
“Confession heard,” I murmur.
“Confession kept,” he answers.
We fix ourselves with the mutual care of thieves who plan to steal hours later. He straightens my hair like he did on the wedding day after we ruined the schedule; I press his tie into obedience with two fingers. He kisses the outside of my ring—unnecessary, perfect—and I let a laugh escape because it feels good to be a woman who laughs in a box holy men built for tears.
We step out one at a time, sabbath-quiet, and reenter the empty church like nothing happened except everything. In the fourth pew, we sit again. The air is thin and sweet as new paper.
At the front of the sanctuary, the priest rearranges things on his altar with a small frown on his face. Or maybe it’s a smirk. I can’t quite tell.
“Things are changing,” I say, because it seems polite to tell the room.
“They are,” he agrees. “We’re doing the changing, or I don’t want it.”
“Nan will approve,” I say. “Don Marco will pretend not to, then bring cake to help us celebrate.”
He huffs. “Rafferty has plans for an empire.”
“Pru will demand a crown.”
