“You stop defending yourself,” I say.“You agree with God about your sin.You turn from it—repent.And you trust Jesus’s resurrection is God’s declaration that the payment was accepted.Sin and death didn’t win.”I look down at the cross.“Then you trust Him.And you go wherever He leads and you give up what he asks, no matter how hard it is.”
Jagger stares at the cross in the box as if it’s accusing him.“You’re saying, if I do this… I can’t take it back.I serve God and Him alone.”
The truth of that makes my pulse stutter.“Yes,” I say.“You can’t serve two masters.”
He nods once, like he’s accepting a blow.
A long silence stretches.The shower roars.The bathroom fills with steam.The suite outside might as well be another planet.
When he looks at me, there’s real fear in his eyes.
“Tell me what to say,” he whispers.“Because I don’t want to mess this up.”
My chest tightens.This is what it costs him—not the belief, the surrender.
“Just tell Him you know He’s real, that He’s God, and admit you’ve sinned against Him,” I say.
His eyes drop.His shoulders sag, like holding himself upright has finally become too heavy.
My throat tightens.He can't do this with me watching.Some prayers are too raw, too honest—they need to happen in the dark, alone.
I touch his arm and turn to leave, but he catches my wrist."Thanks, Tiger," he says."What I need to say...it's between me and Him."
Jagger
Head still pounding from the night before, I claw myself out of the tangle of sheets and leave Adena sleeping in the wreckage.
The Bible sits on the desk where she left it.I'm itching to open it again, to reread the words that cracked something open in me, but I don't.Can't risk it.Can't afford to look like I'm anything other than what I've always been.
So I shower instead.Hot water burns my skin, and I scrub like I can wash away the strip clubs, the whiskey, the women, the performance of it all.
The crushing weight that’s been growing over the last decade is gone—the accumulated pressure of every lie, every deal, every person I've hurt.It was so familiar I stopped noticing it.And now it's just...gone, replaced by something else, something that feels like standing in sunlight after a lifetime spent in the dark.
I step out of the shower, dry off, and wrap the towel around my waist, smearing my hand across the steamed mirror.
Still the same face staring back.Same ink mapping the years of my sin.Same scars that prove I've survived things that should have killed me.But the eyes are different.The set of my jaw is different.
The man inside the shell changed last night.
And I have no idea what to do with that.I need to talk to someone, read more, study more, find out what this means, if I can even do the job…
My eyes fix on the stab wound.I place my hands on the marble top and squint.I could have died that night, and many more since.
And for what?To become a man my parents no longer recognize on my rare trips home?
I’m still grappling with what my life will look like and what God expects of me now when I’m looking over the room service menu, waiting for Adena to get up so we can go out and talk.
If we’re really going through with this tonight, a trip to the vault might be in order.
A memory snaps of yesterday’s trip.
Silas.
I forgot to call him last night.
Not good.
I toss the menu, check the time, and creep back inside the bedroom, looking for the clothes I left on the chair by the window.
