“This is not the way it works. You only confess your sinsafteryou’ve committed them—premeditated wrongs are a gray area, Kelly!”
I grinned. “Can’t blame a man for trying.” Then I figured I’d talk to Father Flanagan about them again when I got there. Gray areas were not my specialty; dark ones were.
* * *
“Cashel Fallon Kelly.To what do I owe the pleasure?” Father Flanagan held his hand up. “Why do I even ask? It’s been a while since our last visit. I forgot.” He tapped his temple twice. “Follow me.”
“It hasn’t been that long,” I said, following him through the church. It brought back memories of when I was a boy: my father taking us to church to confess our sins. The newsboy hat he made me wear to be respectful. The bitter and potent smell of incense thick in the air. The light coming in through the stained-glass windows, falling on my face. Father Flanagan welcoming me into the room where he’d absolve me of sin. “You came to see me once a week in prison. Four times a month for ten years.”
“December,” he said.
“That’s right. You came five times a month in December.”
“A fella should have a friendly face to see around the holidays.” He stopped at what I called the “confession booth,” but I never called it that in front of Father Flanagan. It was the confessional in front of him. He had old-school ways, like my old man, and he’d take a ruler to my fingers in a heartbeat. “Go ahead.”
I entered on my side, and a second later, his voice came through from the other side. “Do you finally have sins that werealreadycommitted to rid yourself of today, Cashel Kelly?”
“I’m sure I do, Father,” I said, attempting to get comfortable. “But the ones I came to talk about today haven’t been committed yet.”
“Your moral compass still hasn’t come in yet.” He sighed, and I imagined him closing his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose as he did. “What is it that you need my ear on?”
I grinned. Moral compass. Father Flanagan liked to say that I was a late bloomer when it came to getting one of those. I told him to save his hope for someone who could benefit from it. I wasn’t born with one, and I doubted this late in life that mine would come through.
“I’m going to steal a heart. Or a bride. Either one works.” I’d said a lot of insane things over the years to this man, but this was a first.
He cleared his throat a few seconds later. “Explain in more detail.”
I reminded him of years ago. My father. Stone’s father. Me. Stone’s son. Then I went forward from that point. How it was going to go down.
“The pain ends once the soul does,” I explained in a little more depth. “‘There are three things that amaze me—no, four things I do not understand: how an eagle glides through the sky, how a snake slithers on a rock, how a ship navigates the ocean, how a man loves a woman.’” I quoted the Bible, because we were taught to know it. That was how my father operated, as a man who feared God but no man on this earth. “I don’t understand how a man loves a woman, but I do understand this: when the soul gets attached, it’ll hurt until the day it dies when it’s separated from the one it loves.”
“Are you positive, Cashel Kelly, that Scott Stone’s heart is attached to this woman’s?”
“Without a doubt,” I said. We became quiet for a moment. Something about his voice piqued my interest. I expected him to become serious, to become my moral compass, but out of all my years, I’d never heard a grin in his voice. “You think I’m doing the right thing.”
“No,” he said, after another long moment. Hewassmiling. I could hear it in his tone. “You are absolutely doing the wrong thing. You’restealin’a bride.Stealin’, no matter how we turn it, is a sin. You know this, and if you don’t, then maybe I should take a deeper look at my life. You and Killian were sent here to test me, of this I am sure. However, there are times in life when we get what we deserve.”
“Are you telling me that karma is going to come after me?”
“Somethin’ like that.”
“That’s cryptic.”
“Not really.” He sighed. “I would have an ear full for ya if ya told me you were plannin’ on stealin’ money or weapons. But a heart, Cashel? We’ll see. We’ll just see about that.”
“Still cryptic.”
He sighed, but this time it was impatient. “Tell me how you plan on stealin’ this girl’s heart.”
“Maybe you don’t know much about matters of the heart, when it comes to the opposite sex, but the day I met her, I knew it right away. She was mine. She hated me too much, and that only means one thing. Deep down, she likes me. She’s infatuated with me. The bad boy she thinks she can change.” I almost laughed at that. A bad boy was someone who did stupid shit. I was a dangerous man who made smart moves.
“Through all my hardness, she wants to find a crack in my bones, so she can go straight through my veins and stealmyheart. She has no idea, though. I have no heart. And my soul? We both know it’s dark enough for light to get lost in. Good souls go on to live another life. But when my soul goes—that’s it. One life to live is literal for me.”
“What if Stone doesn’t truly love her, Cashel?”
“He does.”
“You’d bet your life on it.”
