We exchange pleasantries, something about a witness protection program, while my stomach drops as every conversation from the past week rearranges itself. The way he organized the food pantry with tactical precision. That flat voice in the parking lot when those men came for me. The wrist lock that dropped a professional to his knees—not self-defense training but something harder, learned younger, in rooms where violence was currency.
"You don't look like a small-town priest," I'd said, and he'd almost laughed. Now I know why. It wasn't funny. It was the understatement of the century.
He is close enough that I can smell him—not incense now but something cleaner. Soap and starch and warmth. No cologne. Just him.
After the shock of seeing him here subsides, I feel the horrible certainty that he’s been lying to me. Anger bubbles up from beneath the shock, and the muscles in my neck go taut. I spilled my guts to him, hinted at what Julian was, who Julian was, and he just played the perfect priest.
Well, fuck him. Two can play at that game.
"Tell me, Mr.Delgado," I simper, letting my voice go husky and looking into his eyes through lowered lids. "What other skills have you been hiding under that collar?"
I want to make him squirm.
His gaze is steady. “I’m not wearing a collar.”
Those simple words send fire into my belly, because I’ve never heard anything truer. I’ve never seen anyone who looks more like a man and less like an emissary of God.
I refuse to be charmed by him, so I channel my anger again instead.
"When I sat in your confessional talking about missing the danger, about choosing intensity over safety, about the golden cage I lived in…" I let the words hang, watch them land. "You weren't listening as a priest. You were listening as someone who grew up in the same world."
He takes a sharp breath. "I was listening as both."
"No." I step closer, close enough that the conversation becomes private despite the crowd. Close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him through all that expensive wool. "The ground was never neutral. You had context I didn't know you had. That's not pastoral care. That's intelligence gathering."
"I didn't seek your confession. You came to me."
"To a priest. Not to…" I gesture at him, the suit, the room that bends around him, "…this."
"This isn't who I am."
"Really?" I laugh, but there's no humor in it. "Because you look pretty comfortable. Like the suit fits better than the collar ever did."
Something flashes in his eyes—recognition, maybe, or fear. He's afraid of how natural this feels, how easily he slips back into the Delgado skin. I can see him fighting it, the gravitational pull of his own blood, and losing.
"You told me to build something true to what I actually am," I continue, pressing the advantage while I have it. "Have you? Or are you just as lost as the rest of us, running between identities and hoping one of them sticks?"
He doesn't answer immediately. Around us, the gala spins on—laughter and crystal and deals dressed as charity. Someone recognizes him, starts to approach, but he shifts his body slightly and they redirect.
"I left this world," he says finally, voice low. "Permanently. I followed God."
"And yet you’re here. Why?"
His eyes find mine, dark and conflicted. "Because my sister needed me. Because my father is dying. Because…" He stops, swallows whatever confession was building.
“Why are you here, Gabriel?”
“My sister asked me to come.”
“What about God?”
He smiles. “God doesn’t send many gala invitations.”
I place a hand on his forearm, his muscles corded and hot, and he stills under my touch.
“You know what I mean,” I say.
He sighs. “I am just here for this evening, for my sister. The rest of my life is for God.”
