I press my forehead to the cold stone wall behind the basin.
Shame crashes over me—heavy, stifling, unending.Desire.Anger.Fear.Obsession.
It combines with something toxic. Something familiar. Something I spent years praying would die.
But it didn’t.It just waited.Like a monster pacing its cage.
And tonight… Pia cracked the door open.
My breath shudders out.
“I’m not my father,” I whisper into the stone.
But the tremor in my voice betrays me.
Because for the first time in years…I’m not sure it’s true.
Confrontation with a Woman Who Isn’t Afraid
The sacristy is quiet except for the slow drip of holy water sliding from my jaw. My pulse hasn’t settled—can’t settle—not afterwhat I did, not after the way her body felt pinned beneath mine. I brace a hand on the marble basin, trying to inhale steady air.
It doesn’t work.
Her scent is still on my skin—warm, wild, rain-soaked temptation—and it crawls under my ribs like a bruise I can’t ignore.
Then the air shifts.
A presence.A shadow.A pull I fucking recognize.
I turn.
Pia stands in the doorway like she belongs here. One hand resting on the frame, posture relaxed but alert, eyes locked directly on mine.
Not scared.Not apologetic.Not even shaken after what happened in that hallway.
That rattles me more than anything else.
She steps inside—slow, measured, claiming space she shouldn’t have. “I was… checking on you.”
The line is vague enough to be harmless, sharp enough to be deliberate.
“You don’t get to ask me that,” I bite out.
She doesn’t blink. “And yet you’re answering.”
My jaw tenses. “What game are you playing with me?”
Pia tilts her head, studying me like she’s memorizing my tells, my weaknesses, every fault line I’ve tried to bury. “Maybe I’m not playing.”
A beat.Then, soft as sin:
“Maybe you just want me too much.”
It hits low. Violent. Shameful in how true it feels.
I step forward without thinking—instinct, anger, something darker. She doesn’t move. Doesn’t retreat. She watches me like she sees straight through the collar, through the shame, through the years of denial… straight into the part of me I buried.
“That’s not fucking funny,” I growl.
