Miami's underground touches everything, spreads like blood in water. Even here in Homestead, forty-five minutes south, we get the ripples. And a widow who needs to be "far enough from everything else"? She's not running from grief. She's running from something with teeth.
"We should make her feel welcome," Mrs.Herrera continues. "Maybe you could check on her, Father. Make sure she's settling in okay."
And there it is. Permission. An excuse. A reason to do exactly what I want to do wrapped in pastoral duty.
"I'll do that," I say.
Something's going to break, and it might be me, and for the first time in a long time, I don't know if I care.
4 - Seraphina
The best thing about Father Gabriel is that he’s safe.
I tell myself this on Monday morning while sorting canned goods at the food pantry, building neat pyramids of green beans and corn while the grieving-widow-finds-purpose cover story writes itself. Nobody questions a woman who shows up to organize donations. Nobody looks too closely at someone doing God's work.
And nobody — nobody — is a threat in a clerical collar.
That's the logic. That's why the flutter in my chest when I hear his footsteps is fine. Why the way my pulse picks up when he rounds the corner with a clipboard is harmless. He's a priest. He's off-limits. Off-limits means I can look at him, feel things about him, use him as a reminder that I can still respond to a man without it meaning anything dangerous. Like admiring a painting behind glass. You can want it. You're never getting it. The glass is the point.
"Two thousand cans of cranberry sauce."
His voice comes from behind me, dry as desert sand, and the glass develops a hairline crack.
I turn, keeping my expression neutral. He's examining inventory with the precision of someone who actually cares about logistics — genuinely tracking numbers, cross-referencing his clipboard, frowning at discrepancies. His collar catches the fluorescent light. That white band. My safety glass.
"Maybe people really love cranberries," I offer, setting aside a can that expired in 2019.
"Nobody loves cranberries that much." The corner of his mouth twitches. Almost a smile, quickly killed. "They love tax deductions."
I laugh before I can stop it — genuine, unguarded — and something shifts in his eyes. Warmth that flares hot before he banks it. His gaze drops to my mouth for a fraction of a second. Then the mask slides back, and he moves to the next station, and I'm left holding a dented can of cranberry sauce thinking: he’s a priest. Nothing can happen. Thank God.
Except I feel him tracking me for the rest of the morning. When I stretch to reach a high shelf. When I bend to lift a box. His attention follows like heat from a lamp, and the space between us hums with everything we're not saying.
Safe. Completely safe.
Tuesday finds me in the church basement, damp and close, sorting clothing donations with Mrs.Herrera. Father Gabriel appears around ten with coffee. Sets a mug on my work table. Our fingers don't touch. He's too careful for that — maintains exactly arm's length, every time, like he's calculated the precise distance where temptation turns dangerous.
Julian never maintained distance. Julian closed distance — deliberately, strategically, until there was none left and I couldn't breathe. Julian's proximity was a weapon. Father Gabriel's distance is a courtesy. He's choosing not to crowd me, not to press, not to use his physical presence as leverage. After five years of a man who weaponized closeness, Gabriel's restraint feels like oxygen.
I notice other things. The way he runs the food pantry like an operation — inventory systems, distribution schedules, volunteer coordination. There's a brain under the collar that was built for more than homilies. I watch him negotiate a donation from a local farm and recognize the technique: strategic warmth, calibrated charm, the ability to make someone feel like they'redoing you a favour when you're the one with the leverage. That's not seminary training. That's something else.
But it doesn't set off my alarms. Julian's competence was cold, transactional, always pointed at someone's throat. Gabriel's competence is — warm? Directed at feeding people? He's running logistics for canned goods, not orchestrating power plays. The skill set is familiar. The application is completely different.
Safe, I think again. Smart and capable and disciplined and safe.
I ignore the fact that my breathing changes when he's near. That when I look up suddenly, I catch him watching me with an intensity that has no business on a priest's face. That my body is keeping a running tally of his hands, his jaw, the way the collar sits against his throat, the precise shade of dark in his eyes when he forgets to be careful.
I'm not attracted to him. I'm attracted to the safety of him. There's a difference.
There has to be a difference.
On Wednesday, I'm painting the storage room because it needed doing and I needed a reason to be in this building for eight hours. The walls are institutional beige going to slightly less depressing cream. Paint fumes make my head swim, or maybe that's just the Florida heat turning the small room into a sauna. My shirt clings. I've tied my hair up but curls escape, sticking to my neck.
Father Gabriel keeps appearing in the doorway. Checking progress. Bringing water. Maintaining his careful distance while the air between us gets heavier with each visit.
By late afternoon, I'm cutting in along the ceiling, arm extended, balanced on my toes. I feel him before I hear him — that shift in the atmosphere, the way a room changes weight when he enters it.
"You missed a spot." He’s closer than I expected.
