I should step back.I don’t.
I stay still like a fucking idiot—a priest with the self-control of a starving animal—letting her stand close enough to read every fracture running through me.
Her voice drops, soft and lethal. “You think I’m here to hurt you,” she whispers. “You’re wrong. If I had wanted to, I already could have.”
The words hit with quiet precision—sharp, honest, impossible to dismiss.My breath catches somewhere between threat and truth.
Because she’s right. If she meant me harm, she’s had a dozen openings.
She could’ve screamed after what I did in the hallway.She could’ve gone to the archbishop.She could’ve run.
Instead, she walked straight into the room where I was drowning in shame.
That alone should terrify me.It does.
Her eyes soften—not in manipulation, not in that careful, calculated way she uses on everyone else—but in something real. Something unarmored. Something that cuts deeper than any of her lies.
And that shakes me more than anything she’s said tonight.
I move before I even realize I’ve made a choice. My hand shoots out and closes around her wrist—not rough, not like the hallway—just… desperate. A drowning man grabbing the only thing keeping him above water.
Her breath stutters—just enough to tell me she didn’t expect it.
Good.For once, I want her off-balance.
“What do you know about my father?” I demand.
The words scrape out raw. Not a priest’s question. Not calm.A son’s demand.A threat sharpened by fear.
Her lips part.A tiny, startled inhale slips out—the first crack in her mask.
And fuck, I see everything in that split second:
The truth she’s been sitting on.The hesitation she hoped I wouldn’t notice.The war behind her eyes she can’t hide in time.
She snaps the mask back on too fast, but I already saw the damage.
The truth scares her.Not me.Him.
“Enough,” she says quietly. “Enough to know you’re not ready to hear it.”
The sacristy seems to shrink around us—stone, shadows, incense, and rain-soaked skin pulling tighter with every breath. The tension spikes—electric, volatile, braided with something I refuse to name.
Desire curls through it, dark and immediate.Danger coils around it, sharp as glass.
I stare at her.She stares back.
Both of us unsteady for different fucking reasons.Lying to ourselves is something we both do.Both of us are too close to something that feels like fate sharpened into a blade.
She should step back.She doesn’t.
I should release her wrist.I don’t.
And in this breath… this heartbeat… this inch of space between sin and confession—
I realize she hasn’t pushed too far.
She’s only just begun.
