4
RAFAEL
I’D WRAPPED UP my duties for the night and gone back to the rectory, but when an hour passed and I couldn’t sleep, I found myself heading back to my office.
The church was empty and so quiet I could hear the clock ticking out the seconds, a monotonous sound that grated on my patience. Or maybe it was just that I was annoyed with myself already, with the thoughts running through my mind that I couldn’t seem to stop.
Memories always flooded back in after seeing Alessio, something I’d learned to expect and deal with, but the last few weeks it’d been nearly impossible to get a moment’s rest from him, and I knew why.
Because he needed me. Or, rather, needed my help. Whatever he was going through, he wasn’t opening up to me or anyone—that much was obvious from the way he’d withdrawn.
The Alessio I’d known was fearless. Never let anyone or anything get to him. Provoked to the limit and somehow still managed to make everyone around him love him anyway.
But that was the problem, wasn’t it? I wasn’t supposed to love him, not as anything more than one of the parishioners under my care. That was the promise I’d made to God and tomyself, and that was what had me moving, heading back into the sanctuary to pray.
Pray away all these thoughts and feelings I had no right to have.
I dropped to one knee on the stairs, and mere seconds went by before I heard it, the sound of someone opening the secret entrance, the one that connected to a tunnel that ran beneath St. Andrews. There were only seven men who knew about it, other than myself, and only seven men who would use it.
But they’d just come last night. Who could it?—
My thoughts abruptly left me as I turned my head to see a glimpse of long, dark hair that haunted me.
No. Not tonight.I wasn’t strong enough.
I slowly rose as Alessio stumbled inside, jacket hanging off one shoulder as he started forward. He hip-checked the edge of one of the pews and cursed, but then broke into a fit of laughter, gripping the polished wood so he didn’t fall over.
Alessio was drunk. Wildly drunk and barely able to walk in a straight line, which had me wondering first how he’d made it all this way, and second…why?
Like he’d heard my inner thoughts, his dark eyes met mine, and the intensity there nearly knocked me off my feet.
“Oh good,” he said, his words slurred and somewhat amused. “You’re here.”
My stomach dropped. He was looking for me?
I took in a deep breath and tried to remember who I was. “Alessio, you shouldn’t?—”
“Be here? Yeah, I know,” he said, waving me off and coming closer. “Trust me, I knowallabout what I shouldn’t do. Don’t have to tell me.Father.”
I closed my eyes at the word he never spoke. For some reason it felt wrong to hear what so many others called me fall from his lips.
He took a few unsteady steps down the aisle, and I tried not to notice the heavy boots he wore, or the way his t-shirt stretched across his thick muscles. It would be wrong to notice those things. A man of God didn’t look with lustful eyes.
“Looks like I’m too late,” he said.
“Yes.”
He gave me a crooked smile that sent my stomach tumbling. “Story of my life.”
I forced myself not to go to him. To stay still. To keep my voice even. “What do you need, Alessio?”
The smell of alcohol wafting off him reached me then—tequila, if I remembered right.
His gaze flicked to my collar. Then up to my mouth. A slow smirk crossed his lips and he crooked a finger at me to come closer.
Somehow I stood my ground as he lifted his hand to his mouth like he was going to tell me a secret and said, “I want to…confess.”
The words hit like a blow.
