Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Ronan
Going to the small hospital was always a crap shoot. It was hard to gauge whether it would be a night that we’d have to wait twenty-four hours to be seen. Or if it was going to be a shift in which it was so dead that you had to wonder if healthcare workers were in the building. Monticello had a population of a whopping one-thousand and ninety-nine people.
I knew every single one of them from growing up here.
Most people stayed, trapped in the same vortex of their upbringing. I had moved to Vegas when I left this shit hole. My life had actually started on the stage of “Men of Sapphires.”
I learned how to be a man and, even better, how to manipulate men and women. I could fuck a woman just as easily as a guy, but nothing felt right.
They weren’t Elias.
When I started escort services, it was a slow, downward spiral of a lot of money and very little care for anything else. Bodies were all different shapes and sizes, and orgasms were a dime a dozen.
I respected the men and women who paid for my services and made sure they got every penny they spent on me, but when my clients started to want something other than sex, I had to run.
I knew sex.
I could bring someone to orgasm with my voice alone. I had done it too many times, but going on a date? Hell no.
Doctor Mitter’s nurse was as flirty as I remembered, finding ways to brush against me as she helped my mom into a spare room in the back.
“Oh, aren’t you the prodigal son as always, Mister Saint Clare.”
I forced a smile and wondered if this dumb bitch actually knew how far from the truth that was. I kept the idiot on the bed alive, but that was truly all I could offer her. I’d lost so much of my life more times than I could begin to count.
Jack wasn’t my biological father, and he reminded me every time he treated me as if I were insignificant. I was shackled with his last name when I was a baby. I never truly knew how to carry it.
My mom chose that leech over me.
Nothing changed year after year, and my return to this shit hole was purely to get her clean. Again.
She had stopped the hard stuff like ‘H,’ but she still had enough crap around the house to build a personal pharmacy. I might be an asshole, but I wasn’t going to let her drown in her own piss like everyone else, even if I should.
Maybe Elias would be proud that not all of me was a broken, damaged soul. What accounted for enough to be redeemed at the time of reckoning? Did God give sliding scales?
“What happened this time, Miranda? Fall down those pesky steps again?”
The trailer didn’t have fucking steps.
I spoke for my mother, letting the lies flow off my tongue, all silky and smooth like every time prior.
“You don’t say. Well, Let’s get Doctor Mitter to take a look at you and get this set up for ya.”
I could hear the nurse behind the curtain chortling to the other patient. We weren’t given a private room, so some dumb fuck was on the other side of the curtain dealing with their ailments.
“Okay, sweet pea, you hold tight. Keep that ice on the cut, okay? I will be right back with my suture kit, but at least we got most of the debris out of it.”
The curtain opened, and the nurse exited the area. My world faded into slow motion, not because of her but because of the silent patient on the other side.
It was Elias.
He wasn’t in those ridiculous robes anymore. He had on a tight, black T-shirt and jeans that confirmed my suspicions of how sculpted his body had become over the years.
Damn.
The heat in the room rose, and I turned my back from the curtain.
My stupid ass birth giver chirped and scrambled off the bed, wobbling while holding her wrist. Her wobbling ass managed to get to the curtain and yanked it open so hard that I could hear the clips at the top as they snapped, and the sheet fell to the ground. She may be frail, but she was fast.
“Oh, my lord! It’s Father Cross. Look, Ronan, it’s Father Cross! You twos used to be real close. Best friends for so long ‘til–well–ya weren’t. Do ya ‘member him, Ronan? Hi Father Cross! Weird seein’ ya without ya bath towel thingy.”
I internally cringed at her words, not daring to look back. My one barrier from Elias was gone, and the full extent of his powerful gaze bore into me.
“Hello, Missis Saint Clare. I would say it is a pleasure to see you. However, not so much in this setting.”
His voice was soft and composed, nothing like our shared whispers or heated regret in the church. I sighed, swallowing the lump in my throat before turning around to face him.
Holy fuck, this man was beautiful. In normal clothes like this, he was unfairly godlike. The robes did little to dim his beauty, but this…
It made me instantly hard.
I adjusted myself, grabbing a stray pillow from my mother’s bed to shove over my dick before anyone noticed.
“Whatever happened with ya, Father Cross? Why’d you stop commin’ ‘round our place?”
Elias forced a smile, pain and anger clear in his striking blue eyes. “I did not want to impose on my sister’s time with her…boyfriend.”
I could laugh at the thought of dating Maria if the situation were anything else, but seeing the pain in his eyes made me ache.
My idiot mother furrowed her brow. Even her brain, which probably had two brain cells left, knew I hadn’t dated Maria Cross.
But Elias didn’t need to know that.
“Oh, I didn’t know they ever?—”
“Broke up.” I finished for her. “Yeah. We ended things. I forgot to tell you. Sorry, Miranda.”
To her credit, she looked confused as hell, clearly trying to piece my lie together in her fucked up head. All that alcohol and powder made her malleable.
She shook her head and shrugged.
“Oh. Sorry, y’all ended things, baby boy. I liked Maria. Does that mean you ain’t interested in bein’ with…ya know?” Her voice lowered as she shuffled closer to me, trying to whisper in my ear and yanking me down to her height level. “Men.”
I sighed. “No, Miranda. It doesn’t. And again, I’m not discussing who I fuck with you.”
She smacked me upside the head and gasped.
“You fool! That’s the Father. You can’t be sayin’ things like ‘fuck’ ‘round him.”
I facepalmed my forehead.
Oh, the irony…
Elias chuckled, soft and low in his throat.
“I am not here as your Priest, Missis Saint Clare. Though I will never encourage committing a sin, I cannot be quoting James 3:10. So tonight, I will turn my cheek.”
Hearing that Elias would ignore her sin so easily but damn me for mine irritated the hell out of me.
“And what business are you here for exactly, Father?” My tone was mocking, and that earned me another whack from my mother.
“That’s his business, you nosy asshole.”
Elias cracked a smile at her insult, and I glared in turn.
“I am here for medical treatment. I…I had an accident at my Parish.”
My ears perked up, and I noticed his cradled hand wrapped in a thin bandage.
How did he hurt his hand?
Elias wasn’t overly violent. Hell, I knew he wasn’t…but that kind of injury was usually caused by punching something. Hard.
Had he gotten into a fight? And with who?
“That there’s a boxer’s injury! Who you punchin’, Father?”
For once, I wasn’t annoyed with my mother’s persistent lack of tact, and instead, I looked over to Elias for an answer.
He hesitated, his freckled cheeks spreading bright red with a thick blush. “I uh…”
The door to the room opened, and I heard the breath Elias was holding finally free itself. Doctor Mitter was a good scapegoat for him, but I wouldn’t let this go so easily.
“Well, well, well…the last time I saw you boys gettin’ into trouble together had to be years ago! You still getting into scuffles?”
Elias blushed deeper, turning away from us and walking back to his bed on the other side of the room. My mother laughed with the doctor, and I stayed silent, unable to keep my gaze off Elias.
What caused him so much rage that he punched them? I willed the answer to come to me. Doctor Mitter made small talk with my mother, and I sauntered over to Elias.
“Does hitting shit come with the new bulging muscles, Mon Pur?”
He ignored me, focusing on his injured hand and picking at the cloth stuck to the wound. It was bloody, and the bed had small pieces of some form of glass littered around it.
“The wall won, then?” I continued, confirming my suspicion when the tray of more of that glass-like material was shown on the blue sheet with the tweezers.
“There is no winning in a war,” he whispered. “Only casualties on both sides. Me and my…competition both bear our scars.”
His tone was final, not allowing for further questioning, and I sighed.
There was no winning in war…that was true.
And for us, there was no winning in love either.