His eyebrows rose, sympathy soaking his irises. “You’ve got such a huge heart, sweet dove.” The pad of his thumb followed the tip of my chin, lifting it softly to catch his gaze. “I would wake every morning in your bed if I could. Whisper a thousand ‘I love yous’ over a hundred lifetimes, and still, loving you would never get old.”
His words acted like barbed wire, clawing their way into the fragmented cracks of my heart. How could he be so very perfect and so very imperfect at the same time? My savior and my tormentor.
“But, Tressa…” His eyes turned up to the fine cracks of the old plaster ceiling. “I’ve spent most of my life on my knees asking God for his guidance to make sense of the senseless. Faith is what’s sustained me, Tressa.” Watery irises found mine again. “Turning away from that now, that would be counterintuitive to every fiber of my being.”
His hands dropped from me, the loss of contact subtle yet still devastating.
“I’ve been called to do the most good on earth. And this place, right here, is where I can do the most good.”
Reserved anger twisted my emotions. “Being without you makes me ill.”
He paused, pondering me with pained eyes. “I’m sorry about that.”
Beats of silence deafened my ears.
Tension thickened the air between us.
I swallowed, no reply left to be given.
Bastien frowned softly, so much seemingly left unsaid. Only, the right words made themselves scarce.
A series of booms rattled the floor under our feet then, subtle like an earthquake, before everything fell silent again.
Water rained over our heads, and Bastien’s eyelids, heavy with water droplets, turned from mine for the last time.
I swallowed, anxiety running white-hot through my veins before he nodded once. His full lips turned up slowly before he slipped behind the shower door, running a towel across his biceps and over his head quickly before tossing the spent towel on the floor at his feet.
The stretch of his broad body walking away from me, his last kiss goodbye.
