“It’s for the best.”
“Says who? You? Father Dickhead?”
“Alessio—”
“Don’t.” I swallowed around the lump that had formed in my throat. “Don’t say anything else.”
“I need you to understand?—”
“But I don’t,” I said, biting back what I really wanted to say.
Now wasn’t the time to tell him that I didn’t understand why he was choosing to leave me. Why he was choosing God instead of me. Why he was going across an ocean to where I would never see him again. It wasn’t the time to tell him I was angry, that I was heartbroken, and that every single word coming out of his mouth was killing me.
So I swallowed it.
All of it.
I swallowed every painful word until it churned in my stomach, making me feel sick.
“I know,” he finally said. “That’s why I need to go.”
But the truth of the matter was…he’d already gone.
My Rafael? He’d left me long before now. I just hadn’t wanted to see it.
As he turned to head back toward the church, I reached for Rafael’s hand one last time, stopping him.
“Will you write?”
“It would probably be better if I didn’t.”
Yeah, probably. Better not to give me any hope. Better to just fucking kill me now.
I dropped my hand and let him go, but as he walked away from me, everything I wanted to say replayed in my mind.
How much I loved him.
How much I needed him.
How I couldn’t imagine a day without him in it.
And as it all came bubbling back up inside of me, I turned and ran after him—I almost got there, too. But as Rafael slipped inside the church doors of St. Andrews, Father De Vecchi stepped outside and my feet came to a dead stop.
“Alessio,” he greeted me as he walked down the stairs and took hold of my arm, leading me away from the church, away from Rafael. “Let’s have a little chat, shall we?”
It took everything I had in me not to tell him to shove hischat. But maybe he could help. Maybe he would be able to get through to Rafael and help him understand that he was making this decision out of grief.
I was willing to ask anyone at this stage.
“Yeah, okay. Maybe you can give me some advice.” We headed into the gardens away from the church and people inside.
“Advice?”
“With this whole Rafael thing. You can’t actually believe running away is the answer.”
“Running away?” Father De Vecchi let go of my arm and clasped his behind his back. “I don’t think that’s what he’s doing.”
“That’s exactly what he’s doing.” I took a step toward him. “He’s running away from his home, the church?—”
