Seth pounded on the door of his former apartment, each knock an urgent echo of his racing heart. He checked his watch. Forty-two minutes left.
No answer.
“Zach?” He knocked harder, ignoring his throbbing knuckles. “It’s Seth! You there?”
The peephole darkened before the door swung open, revealing Beck’s youngest brother in sweatpants and a plain white T-shirt. His bushy beard and flannel shirts were long gone. He no longer looked like a stranger from another century, but modern and at ease in secular surroundings. Still, Seth saw the same haunted expression in Zach’s eyes that reflected back at him when he looked in a mirror.
Zach scanned him up and down, frowning. “It’s late. Is something wrong?”
“I need to talk to you. Can I come in?”
“Sure.” Zach stepped back. “What happened? Is Beck all right?”
“Fine.” Seth kicked the door shut behind him. “But he and Heavenly gave me an ultimatum, and I have forty minutes left to decide if I’m willing to commit to them—marriage, kids, picket fence—the works. Or if I’m out. For good.”
“Ah.” Zach’s expression softened with understanding as he gestured Seth to the couch before easing into the nearby armchair. “And you’re struggling to practice what you preached at the wedding reception earlier tonight?”
Seth nodded. Fear had burrowed inside him like a parasite, feeding on every potential happiness and hope. He didn’t know how to stop it.
“Fuck, I can’t think straight.” Seth sank onto the sofa and raked his fingers through his hair, noting that the pictures of Zach’s late wife and daughter that had once dominated the mantle were gone. “I came here because…”
How could he put this into words?
“I’m the only one who truly understands what you’re going through?” Zach finished. “Because, despite your big speech earlier, you’re worried history will repeat itself?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Sure. But after our talk tonight, I decided that I can’t keep running in place. On my way home, I called Hannah, a woman I met in my religious order survivors’ group, and I asked her out. We’re having our first date. I’m picking her up at five.”
Seth’s head snapped up. “Tomorrow? That’s fast.”
But maybe that explained why Zach had tucked away Faith’s and Joanna’s pictures.
“So I should drag my feet?” He raised a brow. “I’ve been thinking a lot. Tonight, you gave me even more to consider. I’ve slept with a lot of women since I left the Chosen. Felt good…at first. But once you’ve known love, sex with strangers feels empty. Hollow. I want more.”
“And you’ve decided Hannah can give that to you? You barely know her.”
“You’re right. But she’s the kind of woman I can see myself marrying someday. We’ve talked. She understands where I came from, what I’ve been through. The cult, the grief—all of it. She’s been there, too.”
“So you’re ready to risk everything again? Just like that?” Seth snapped his fingers. “You’re not fucking afraid?”
“I’m terrified. But what’s the alternative? I’m thirty-one. I have a lot of life in front of me. Should I stay frozen in place?” Zach scoffed. “That’s just a slower way to die.”
That truth hit him like a punch to the jaw. Zach was already thinking about building a new life, while Seth still felt paralyzed by fear. The realization was a bitter pill. His chest tightened. It felt uncomfortably like shame. He’d been hiding behind his grief like it was a shield. Zach was facing his future head-on.
Seth checked his watch again. Thirty-seven minutes.
“My therapist told me that we should honor those we’ve loved and lost by living, not by dying with them. Would your late wife have wanted you to bury yourself with her?”
Seth clenched his jaw. “It’s not that fucking simple.”
“It is. You’re just complicating it with fear.”
“But what if something happens? What if you married Hannah and lost her someday, too? Could you survive that?”
“What if I choose fear and then nothing happens? I’ll have thrown away decades of happiness,” Zach countered. “What if you abandon Beck and Heavenly and you end up spending the rest of your life alone? Think that won’t hurt? That you won’t be bitter?”
His words shot Seth right between the eyes with pinpoint accuracy.
