Night presses against the windows like it wants inside.
The rectory always goes quiet at this hour—holy quiet, reverent quiet. But tonight the silence feels different. Thicker. Hungrier. Like the walls know what I did… and what I’m seconds from doing again.
My footsteps echo down the corridor. Slow. Heavy. Controlled only because losing control would give me away.
I tell myself I’m checking the building.I tell myself I’m making sure the volunteers left safely.I tell myself I’m not looking for her.
Fuck lies.
I hear her before I see her.
A soft inhale.The whisper of shoes against worn wooden floors.A shift of weight in the dark—so faint most people would miss it.
My body reacts instantly, heat snapping through my chest like a brand.
I stop walking.
My breath knots in my throat, tangled with everything I’ve been trying to bury since the sacristy. Since last night. Since the moment she pressed her body into mine and cracked open something I thought I’d killed years ago.
I should leave.I should pray.I should run in the opposite fucking direction.
Instead, I stand there as if I’m carved from stone, listening to her move through the dark.
The storm started long before this hallway — in the confessional, where she tempted me,in the shadows where she lied to me,in the corridor where I pinned her to the wall and tasted the edge of damnation.
Tonight, the storm wraps its hands around my throat.
I take a step forward.
Silent. Controlled. But my pulse thunders in my ears, heat rolls under my ribs, and my fingers flex like they’re already reaching for her.
This isn’t holy ground anymore.It’s a battlefield.
And she — She isn’t a sinner seeking salvation.She’s temptation carved into human form.The temptation God knew I wouldn’t withstand.The temptation Giovanni would’ve warned me about if he’d ever cared about my soul.
A faint shape shifts up ahead—her silhouette framed in moonlight bleeding through the narrow windows. She stands before a painting, pretending to study it. Pretending she doesn’t know I’m here.
She knows.
Her breath catches—quiet but sharp, sharp enough to hit me like a fist.
For a moment, I just watch her.
The curve of her neck.The tension in her shoulders.The way she stands, she’s bracing for something she refuses to name.
And for the first time tonight, I admit the truth:
I didn’t walk down this hallway to check a damn thing.I came because of the thought of her roaming my church alone — after lying to my face,after slipping into restricted corridors,after making me want her so fucking badly I can’t breathe — made something inside me snap.
I take another step.Predator-smooth.Controlled in appearance only.
Inside, I’m a storm.Inside, I’m Giovanni’s son again — the part of me that doesn’t pray, doesn’t repent, doesn’t hesitate.The part that sees her silhouette—small, tense, waiting — and thinks one thing:
Mine.
She turns.
Her eyes find mine through the dark.
