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“I can’t stop.” I moved to sit across from him, against my better judgement. “The thought of not coming made me miserable.”
“You’re called to be in this place?”
“Maybe.” Called to him. “Do you want me to stop coming?”
“No.” Firm and decisive, leaving no room for questions.
“Why do you believe I’d want to torture you?” I wanted the truth. Maybe he wouldn’t give it to me but I’d try.
“I left you. I abandoned you and left you to deal with the loss alone. I don’t have a good excuse. I thought if I got away, then I’d stop thinking of you. Stop wanting you. How wrong I was.” His teeth dug into his lower lip, and I fed on the desperation in it. How much restraint he must be holding.
“You did.” We both fell silent, but I wouldn’t let him off so easily. “How do I torture you?”
“Surely you know?” It was a question. He didn’t know for certain.
“Do you still think of me like I think of you?” I asked the question I’d kicked myself for not over and over.
“Yes.” So simple and yet so complicated.
“Why did you have to get away from it?”
“Could it be anything else? I don’t regret that night. Or what passed between us, only that it couldn’t be, not in that life, not with our fathers who they were. I had to abandon it all to be free or we’d never have escaped it. We’d have turned into our fathers.” Anthony’s words were definitive. He believed it and I did too.
We’d been headed there.
“What do you regret?” I pressed on the edge of my seat, ready to fall at his knees at the first inkling he would accept the advance.
“That I was never given the chance to atone for what I’d done to you. The torture I’d inflicted.”
“Is that why you think I’m here to torture you?” I asked.
“I’d deserve it.” He believed that.
“My aim is much the opposite.”
“I’m not sure which is worse.” His hands lay half clutched in his lap like he was split between action and inaction.
A man on the brink.
I his failure.
“If you like men, why would you join the church?” I changed the subject, my hands draped over his knees.
“I owed a penance. I didn’t know any other way to pay back my sins. To find peace.” His head dropped forward.
“Do you not believe you are deserving of forgiveness?” I asked again.“You gave away your entire life to atone for sixteen years?”
He closed his eyes, a single tear streaming down. “I’m a monster, and the cincture is the only bind I’ve found to contain it. If not for God, I would have become my father.”
“You’d never be your father.”
“I have desires. Urges. I would be him if I ever let the monster out. I can never allow that to happen. I’d have gone back and rained hell on his enemies all in the name of what? Regaining a life I never wanted? I can’t.”His voice trembled with the admittance.
“Surely those urges could be sated in other ways,” I whispered, encouraging.
“You know they can, but I gave those up too.”
“What did you give up,” I pushed, and I’d keep pushing until I saw a glimpse of him.
