"I was nine years old. Grabbed a copper pot." Her finger traces the scar's edge. "Rosa slathered it with aloe from the plant in her window. 'Now you know what the stove can do,' she told me. 'Respect it.'"
She pauses, eyes on the bubbling pot. "She used to say some people run hot," her finger circles the scar absently. "That they need to be careful not to burn everything they touch."
My throat closes. Isabella's face flashes behind my eyes.
"Julian hated my cooking," she continues, voice hardening. "First it was 'Let's try that new place downtown.' Then suddenly we had reservations every night." Her wooden spoon scrapes the bottom of the pot with unnecessary force. "My kitchen skills gathered dust while we ate at Michelin stars. When I mentioned visiting Rosa, his forehead would crease. 'You always come back so… quiet,' he'd say. 'I worry about your mood.'"
"When Rosa got sick, I was eating catered food in Julian's penthouse." Her voice goes flat, reporting facts. "I got there hours too late. She'd been cooking black beans. They were stillon the stove. The apartment smelled like my childhood and I sat on that kitchen floor holding this spoon and finally understood what he'd taken from me."
She says this simply, no performance, just truth. The sofrito's burning while I stand here like an idiot, trying not to think about her mouth. I stir it, and suddenly the act carries weight: participating in what Julian tried to erase. Every clumsy cut, every hesitant taste, learning pleasure from a woman who was systematically denied it.
"Tell me about the beans," I say.
She does. Rosa's recipe emerging while we cook, the kitchen filling with steam and spice and something that smells like a home neither of us has had in years. She reaches across me for salt, her breast pressing against my arm, and my cock goes fully hard. I grip the counter edge, knuckles white, fighting the urge to spin her around and taste the spot where her neck meets her shoulder.
Tuesday morning, we go for a walk through town. A mundane moment that feels like a date because she's beside me in daylight, not at church, not serving food to the hungry. Just walking down Main Street while Homestead draws its conclusions.
We're almost back at my car when I see him. Truck driver, leaning against his vehicle, the type who occupies space like he owns it. His eyes track Sera from ankles to face with the slowness men like him think is flattery.
"Waste of a body like that on a priest," he says, loud enough to carry. The crude comment hangs in the air like a challenge. "Could be doing something better with your afternoon, sweetheart. I could show you."
The reaction is instant, volcanic, physical. My body prepares for violence before my mind engages: adrenaline flooding, hands curling into fists, every muscle tensing. The sequence plays outin vivid detail. Three steps forward, grab his throat, slam his skull against the truck bed until teeth scatter like dice, until his crude mouth can't form words, until he understands that Sera is mine and his comment just signed his death certificate.
I don't move.
The collar holds me. Not faith, fabric. The white band that everyone in this town recognizes, that means something to the community I've served faithfully. If I break his jaw, if I paint his truck with his blood, I lose more than the priesthood. I lose the only identity I've had since Elena.
I swallow the violence like broken glass. My hands stay at my sides, face neutral, and the effort, the full-body discipline of not destroying this man, makes my neck tense with frustrated aggression.
My hand finds the small of Sera's back. A light touch, guiding her past the truck, past the driver still smirking at his own crude comment, down the street. The gesture happens without thought, pure instinct, and I don't remove it. Her warmth bleeds through the fabric into my palm. What it means, this unconscious public claim, thisminewithout words, hits me only after we're walking. My hand on her body in daylight, and she doesn't pull away. She leans into it, and my cock twitches at the submission in that small movement.
The man shouts another comment. My blood roars too loud to hear it, but I imagine finding him later, after dark, teaching him what happens when you make crude comments about Seraphina.
Back at the rectory, the kitchen smells like reheated sofrito. Everything is normal except my hands are still shaking and my jaw aches from clenching and my cock is still half-hard from the possession of touching her in public.
She sits at the table with coffee, studying me.
"You wanted to hit him."
I deflect. "He was out of line."
"You were about three seconds from putting him on the ground." Not asking, telling me what she observed. "Your whole posture changed. You went somewhere that isn't Father Gabriel, and coming back took everything you had."
I sit. She's too good at reading lies, and lying to her has become impossible.
"Yes," I say. "I wanted to hit him."
"More than hit."
"Yes." I wanted to destroy him. Wanted to make him bleed for looking at you, for his crude comment, for existing in the same space as you. "Much more."
"But you didn't."
"No."
She's quiet. "That was harder for you than the parking lot."
She's right. The parking lot was tactical, justified. This was personal: wanting to destroy a man for disrespecting her, not protecting her from a threat. The difference between a soldier and something else entirely. Something that gets hard at the thought of violence in her name.
