Page 27 of His Holy Chaos

"Here's what's going to happen," Ford says, and his voice sounds just like when he told me I wouldn't sit for a week. It lands somewhere primal inside of me, and I shiver. "You're going to spend one hour in the church vestry. On your knees. In silence. And you're going to write a letter. A real one, Jude, not your usual performance, about what you feel and why, and you're going to ask for forgiveness. Not from me. From yourself."

I expect something physical. A belt, maybe. His hand. But deep down, I know it wouldn't be. This is worse. It is really a punishment. He knows I enjoy pain, no matter how hard he makes it. But sitting with my thoughts for an hour?

"Okay," I whisper.

We drive to the church in his car. The seats are heated. My hands rest on my thighs, palms down, and I focus on the sensation of the fabric beneath my fingers because if I focus on anything else, on the man beside me, I'll die. He doesn't speak. Neither do I. The city scrolls past the windows like a film.

The church is dark when we arrive, the parking lot empty. Ford produces a key, of course he has a key, of course the church yields to him the way everything yields to him, and lets us in through a side entrance.

The vestry is a small room off the nave. It smells of wood and beeswax, the tang of incense, and candles burn in iron sconces along the walls. The light catches on the faces of painted saints in their wooden frames, their eyes downcast and merciful, their hands raised in gestures. A crucifix hangs above a narrow table, the Christ figure twisted in familiar agony, and I stare at it for a moment longer than I mean to.

Ford places a kneeling cushion on the stone floor. It's thin but merciful. He sets a pen and several sheets of cream-colored paper on the low table beside it. He arranges these objects the way a priest arranges the elements of communion.

"One hour," he says.

I hesitate. The saints watch me from their frames with their flat, compassionate eyes. I feel weirdly disconnected from my body, which is tingling. Then I lower myself to my knees on the cushion, and I realize how much one hour in this position is going to ache. A dull, constant pain, different from the pain of impact.

The pen is fancy, expensive, and heavier than I expect. I uncap it and hold it above the paper and nothing comes.

Ford sits on a wooden bench near the door, just within my peripheral vision.

I write: I don't know how to do this.

Then I cross it out and start again, terrified that he's going to read it and judge it all.

I'm afraid of…

But I don't write anything else. I don't know how. I feel so small, so vulnerable… so submissive. Tears are hot in my eyes again.

"Focus," Ford says, strict and firm, from behind me. My spine straightens. My pen touches paper.

I write about Emmett. Of course. It's always him. I write about how pathetic I felt that I loved him so much, that I gave everything that I had. Every little drop of myself. I thought of him every moment of my day, of serving and pleasing him, being close to him, of the things he did to me. But he was always half there. Answering my devotion with lust only. He never loved me. He enjoyed me, at most, while I poured my heart and soul into a cup that he later shattered.

I write about how I can't forgive myself for giving so much to someone I knew would go away eventually. And how it's not even his fault really. He always told me he'd go away. That he didn't know how long that dynamic would last, urging me to stay in the present moment and not worry about the future. But the future came, and he wasn't there. And what I was wasn't there anymore either.

I write about how kink was a valve of self-destruction for me. I hurt myself in an acceptable way. And that's why I swore off it. But I couldn't, and I can't. Self-destruction is part of me, maybe all of us, and kink helped me to explore it safely, unlike alcohol did.

And I write about how scared I am of getting hurt again. My heart is stone, and I try my best to leave it like that. Stones are hard to break. And it hurts so much to have to be like that. I was never afraid to love. In my entire life, I poured myself out for people. I gave all the love I had to everything. I still do but now when I catch myself doing this, I retreat. I don't think I will survive getting as hurt again.

I'm crying. My knees begin to throb around the twenty-minute mark. The cushion has compressed to almost nothing beneath me, and the cold of the stone seeps upward. I shift, trying to redistribute my weight, and the movement sends a bright spike of pain through my right knee that makes me hiss through my teeth. My hand cramps. I shake it out and keep going.

I keep writing. I write about Ford and how I am the one who doesn't want to give him a chance. I don't want to ever let anyone in ever again. I want to bury myself in my pit of pathetic despair and stay there for eternity, maybe not even breathing. That I regret going to the club and I regret listening to his banter, and I regret going after him at the church, and I regret falling for him. Because that was destroying all my armor that I placed brick by brick in the course of a year. It was making me vulnerable all over again. And my heart is too fragile for that. I wouldn't survive. And I hated how he reminded me of who I used to be. I used to love easily, openly, everything, everyone, without a second thought, a second of hesitation. Emmett had killed me. I wasn't who I was before. I was this new horrible disgusting untrusting version of myself, and I hated it. I hated it with a burning passion, that's why I wanted to destroy it. And Ford made me remember old Jude. The naïve childlike version of me. Still, the best version of me. If it still existed in me, it was so scared, curled inside of the darkest parts of me, like an undying fetus.

I'm crying so much I don't even care that Ford sees it. I stop writing and just start rubbing my eyes, trying to make the tears stop. Then I see him close to me. He gives me a cup of water and puts his hand on my shoulder. I take the water but I don't drink it. I look at him, so big from my knees.

"I think I'm done…" I try to say but he interrupts me.

"Silence," he says, still strict, but calm. "You may speak only to use your safe words. Yellow and red. Otherwise, if you're done, you will wait quietly until time is up."

I want to be a brat, speak, or at least beg to know how much time I have left. But instead I only nod and cry some more.

"Drink your water," he says, still close to me. I do because I feel so fragile and empty that I don't have it in me to complain. The water is cold and my throat welcomes it gladly.

Slowly, the tears subside and stop. My breathing starts to come back to normal, even if my face is wet and full of snot. I stay in position for what seems like forever more but I feel better now. Calm and well.

Then, I pick up the pen for one last time.

I don't know how to ask for forgiveness because I don't believe I deserve it. After being so naïve and trusting, dumb and stupid, I should be eternally punished. The punishment is a life without love. But when I think about this, I don't think I can go on. I can't live like this. I have to love. I desperately want the thing I've been running from. I need it. I need it so I can rescue the good Jude that's buried beneath the sorrow.