“Well, you’ve taken more counseling classes than I have.”
“I’m dozens of classes away from anything like that. But what’s my feeling? I think she’s better than she was. I think stability was the best thing we could have offered her.”
“You offered her that.”
I nodded, thinking about the morning after she’d arrived and I’d asked her, all but insisted, really, that she stay with me in the small, two-bedroom cottage next to the rectory. “I gave her a key last night. She’s so quiet, it’s almost unnerving.”
“She mentioned siblings at one point.” I remembered the very conversation, a tense look crossing her face when the word family came up at all.
“I don’t think she’s in touch with anyone, or even wants to be.”
“I shudder to think of the burden some of God’s children are asked to carry.”
I frowned, a twinge of righteous indignation pulsing through me. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?” Bastien paused, large body hovering over me, one foot resting on the step of the chancel. I did the first thing I thought to do and collapsed under the oppressive heat of his presence, my ass finding the cool wooden chair he’d been sitting in just minutes ago.
I vaguely thought this was probably a holy chair, one that my very unholy ass probably shouldn’t be desecrating, but locked in his gaze as I was, things like ambulatory movement paled in comparison.
“How do you stay so…faithfulin the face of so much sin?”
He nearly barked out a laugh, one hand rubbing over the already dark shadow of his jaw and then hovering at the white collar at his neck. “Faithful, huh? Most days, I feel anything but.”
“Oh?” I grinned. “Tell me more about that.”
His eyes flicked from my face, down the line of my neck, and then up again, as if catching themselves on the path to sin. “Faith is a practice, Tressa.” His throat moved as he swallowed, as if tamping down something uncomfortable. “Even for me.”
“Well, what do you do when you feel like…” I didn’t have the words. I didn’t even know what exactly I meant to say, but I knew I wanted his answer.
Silence hung heavy between us, my eyes darting around like a pendulum, unsure and unsettled.
Finally, voice lowered an octave, he spoke. “Some days, practicing faith is a matter of avoiding temptation. Some days, it’s all I can do.”
I couldn’t process his words for the chaos swimming in my ears. My heart rattled my rib cage, fighting its way out of my throat, tingles cascading over my nerves, skin on fire. “That sounds…”
Bastien’s warm eyes darkened. “Hard?”
“So hard.”
Bastien moved closer, one fingertip grazing the shell of my ear and trailing down the soft hollow of my throat.
Oh sweet Jesus.
Was I making this moment up? Had I fantasized it into existence?
Or was this a hallucination?
Either option seemed equally plausible.
My eyes darted below the line of where his belt would be behind the sacred vestments he wore during Mass.
I swallowed the ball of pain settling at the base of my throat, crushing my thighs together like a vise as I willed every sinful thought boiling over in my rebellious brain to cease and desist.
Cease and desist, for the love of all that’s holy.
I blurted the first rational thought to cross my cerebral cortex. “If I had any sense of avoiding temptation, I would leave St. Michael’s and never look back.”
The words filled the air with tension.
