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“Do I look like I’m joking?”
He didn’t look like he even knew what a joke was. But that was beside the point. I wasn’t doing this. I unlocked my fist, and the pencil clattered against the desk. Lucian didn’t even blink when he opened the drawer beside me and retrieved a pair of handcuffs. That was when the air in my lungs changed tide.
“What are you doing?”
He slapped the cuff around my left wrist and locked it onto the metal drawer handle. “You can stay here until you finish. One hundred lines, nice and neat.”
“You’re psychotic,” I shot back.
“Maybe.” He offered me a grim smile. “Or maybe I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
ACE KICKED OFF HIS MOTORCYCLE boots and left them at the door while he surveyed my living room. “So you just need me to chill here?”
“Yes.” I grabbed a jacket from the hall closet and shrugged it on. Even though it was still hot outside, I was feverish. “If you hear any suspicious noises coming from the room, go ahead and check on her. If she needs the bathroom, she can use it, but she goes right back to the desk until her lines are finished.”
He bobbed his head and took up residence on the couch. “Man, you gotta get Netflix or something in this place.”
“I like the quiet.”
“It’s cool,” he grumbled. “I’ll just raid your fridge and take a nap.”
I walked toward the door before I thought of something. “Did you get Birdie out of the city?”
Ace hesitated, and he didn’t look at me when he answered. “Yep.”
I trusted him implicitly, but it felt like he wasn’t telling me the whole truth. Regardless, it was out of my hands at this point. I told Gypsy I wouldn’t keep tabs on her sister, and I meant it.
“Is she safe?” I asked.
“Yes.” Ace met my gaze this time, and there was fire in his. “As safe as she can be.”
I nodded. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“Take your time,” he mumbled, leaning his head back against the sofa and closing his eyes. “It’s kinda nice here.”
“How long has it been since your last confession?”
I rapped my fingers against the wall between us. “It’s me, Cristian.”
There was a pause of silence, and I was almost certain he dreaded this conversation as much as I did. I’d come to atone my sins but never in the usual way. I didn’t address him as Father, and I often found myself talking to him as a friend rather than my priest. But over the years, Cristian had become both.
“I saw you at mass on Sunday,” he offered.
“I know.”
“I saw you with her.” His tone was accusatory. Protective. Even slightly scornful. He had a right to those feelings when he’d warned me against this from the beginning, but I had set my path long ago, and it was never to his standards of righteousness.
“I’m only trying to help her.”
“I don’t think you can offer her the kind of help she needs,” he replied.
“If not me, then who can?” I challenged. “As long as she’s been coming here to confess her sins, what good has that done her?”
Another pause. “I give her an ear to listen without judgment.”
“Followed by a healthy dose of atonement,” I mused. “We are not so different, Father.”
He sighed. “I would ask you how you found her, but I don’t think I want to know.”
“Anybody is easy enough to find,” I told him. “If you have the right tools.”
Cristian knew that I saw her here first. I set my sights on her in this place of worship, and that was a problem for him. Despite what he might believe, the decision hadn’t been an easy one. I’d spent months combing through the details of her life, tormenting myself over what I should do. Gypsy was my greatest controversy, and she had no idea.
“How is she doing?” Cristian asked.
“She’s a handful,” I admitted. “More than I probably should have taken on, but I’m in it now. There’s no going back.”
His shadow moved on the other side as he shifted. “What if your plan doesn’t work? What if it only causes her more pain in the end?”
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” I deflected. “I’m only here to teach her. Nothing more.”
“It isn’t nothing I saw in your eyes when you talked about her.”
“I’m incapable of loving anyone,” I told him. “You know that.”
“That’s what you’ve said,” he agreed. “But that doesn’t mean it’s true. God has a way of proving our truths false sometimes.”
“Like your own.”
It was a low blow, and I immediately regretted the jab. Cristian had been struggling for some time with the vows he’d taken, and I knew he questioned his own path, even if he couldn’t admit it himself. That was the truth I saw in his eyes. The torment I recognized too well. In the end, he chose not to acknowledge my words at all.
