Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Lucien
The streetlight outside sliced my bedroom into pale bars, and the phone burned a rectangle into my palm like it was taking my temperature and finding me feverish.
A dull headache pulsed behind my eyes—the kind you earned from tequila shots and beer.
Sarah had hugged me outside Fallout, and told me to stop being a romantic with a martyr complex.
Then I’d come home and done what any fool with a broken heart and Wi-Fi would do—fallen down a YouTube rabbit hole of Reverend Calvin Tanner’s greatest hits.
In every clip, Calvin’s voice had that lacquered shine you only get from a lifetime of telling other people how awful they are. He thundered fire and brimstone, then smiled like a shifty salesman. And always—always—off to the side, a little downstage, sat Jimmy with a guitar in his lap.
Jimmy was the picture that told the truth about the room. Perfect posture. Shirt ironed within an inch of its life. Hands poised. Eyes fixed somewhere that wasn’t here. A dutiful son. A prop you could order in bulk if you had the catalog for that kind of cruelty.
Jimmy didn’t crack a smile in more than three hours of footage.
I scrubbed my thumb across the progress bar like I could rewind enough frames to catch him by surprise, to find even one blink where his mouth remembered how to curve.
All I got for my effort was the same tight line of a man pretending to be a still life.
The ache in my chest turned over and showed me another edge.
“Oh, Jimmy,” I mumbled to the empty room. “What did he do to you?”
The phone tried to slip out of my grip when the next video auto-loaded—a revival tent, humid and shining, the congregation swaying like wheat under wind.
Calvin paced with a wireless mic, breathless on the word sin, reverent on blood, triumphant on victory.
The camera cut to Jimmy during a chorus, and I paused it.
Zoomed in until the pixels bled, until his eyelashes were little blocks and the bruise-colored circles under his eyes came into focus.
I wanted to rescue him.
The thought was so sudden and childish it almost made me laugh. Put on boots, drive through the night, and show up at whatever door he was trapped behind. I wanted to scoop him up like a storybook hero, kick down the castle, and fly him to safety.
I pressed the phone to my sternum and closed my eyes. “You’re not a superhero.”
I forced myself to put the phone down, and I got to my feet.
The headache did a little drumroll behind my temples as I padded down the stairs.
I grabbed the bottle of aspirin off the window frame over the sink and shook out a couple of tablets.
Then I swallowed them down, scooping water in my palm from the faucet.
If Jimmy was spying on the Satanic Temple, I couldn’t ignore it, no matter what my feelings for him were.
The quiet, weird, stubborn little community we’d cobbled together out of misfits, seekers, and atheists was important.
We’d built something here, and it had a heartbeat. And I was supposed to keep it safe.
It was my job to be suspicious. To protect the timid kids who came in with sleeves pulled down over their wrists and the older men who still made nervous jokes about hell with their eyes shining like they were already living in it.
We weren’t animals in a zoo, just people who wanted to live our truth, and I’d protect us no matter the cost.
Perhaps his father had sent him undercover, and he’d walked into my life with a hidden agenda. If Jimmy was spying—the right thing to do was push him away gently and lock the door.
The truth sat there with me, ugly and unavoidable: I wanted the scales to fall from Jimmy’s eyes like in that Bible story—light, clarity, relief—and for him to see what I saw: that men like his father weren’t shepherds. They were prison guards.
Guilt isn’t faith, and fear isn’t holy.
“This is so unfair,” I muttered, leaning forward until my forehead kissed the cabinet door.
Back in the bedroom, my phone still glowed on the nightstand, half the screen frozen on Jimmy with a guitar.
What could I do? I couldn’t chase him. But I could make the Temple safer than his father’s house.
Perhaps I could write an email with no pressure in it, telling Jimmy that every door I possessed was open to him.
The headache had eased into a gray throb.
I lay back and pulled the blanket up, then pushed it down, then gave up and turned onto my side to face the nightstand.
The paused video still showed Jimmy not-smiling.
I tapped the screen, let it play for ten seconds more, and paused again when Calvin’s hand came down hard on the pulpit in slow motion.
“I can’t save you,” I whispered. “But I can wait. I can make a place that doesn’t hurt. I’ll be here when you decide you’re not a sin.”
The words hung in the dark, softer than prayer, heavier than sleep.
* * *
After hiding under the covers for the last few days, I forced myself to go to the weekly service at the temple. I was lighting the last candle on the altar when Sarah appeared beside me, holding two cups of coffee.
“You look like you got mugged by your own feelings,” she said, handing one over.
I huffed out a laugh that tasted more like a sigh. “What gave it away?”
“You’ve been a ghost for the past week. You missed Wednesday’s outreach meeting, you ignored my texts, and Mama Jo told me you looked like something the cat coughed up.”
“She’s not wrong.” I took a sip, grimaced at the bitterness. “I’ve been sleeping too much. Or not enough. Hard to tell.”
Sarah hopped up to sit on the edge of the stage. “This is about Jimmy, isn’t it? The one who ran out of your house like it was on fire.”
“I’ve been watching videos of his father’s ministry,” I sighed. “Non-stop. It’s so depressing.”
“Poor kid,” she murmured. “Growing up in that kind of cage does things to you.”
“Yeah.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “He’s probably there now. Repenting. Praying for forgiveness for what we almost did.”
Sarah’s voice softened. “Or maybe he’s figuring things out for himself, and he’ll surprise you.”
Before I could answer, people began filing in. The old bar filled fast—every chair, every corner. The candlelight spread like a tide over the faces of our little congregation, this patchwork family of misfits and survivors who’d come to trade shame for sanctuary.
Sarah slid off the stage, squeezing my arm as she passed. “You don’t have to be perfect tonight,” she said. “Just be honest.”
I nodded, then I stepped up to the microphone. The crowd quieted instantly, their faces soft and expectant in the glow. I should’ve felt comforted by them—their trust, their warmth—but I just felt… tired.
“Welcome, everyone,” I said, my voice steady even if I didn’t feel it. “Tonight I want to talk about freedom that doesn’t come easy. The kind you have to pry out of the jaws of guilt and fear with your bare hands.”
The room went still. Candlelight flickered against faces that looked too much like my own—tired, hopeful, searching. I kept going.
“Some people learned that obedience equals love. That if we just bowed our heads low enough, or swallowed the right words, or hated the right parts of ourselves, we’d be safe.
” I paused, feeling the truth scrape my throat.
“But safety isn’t the same thing as peace.
Peace is when you stop apologizing for the sound of your own heartbeat. ”
A soft murmur rippled through the crowd. I smiled, but it didn’t reach my heart. “So if you’re here tonight wondering whether it’s okay to want what you want—to be who you are—remember this: the chains they put on you were never holy. They were just heavy.”
Jimmy.
I wondered where he was, if he was safe, if his father had found out anything. I wondered if he’d eaten, if he was still trying to pray away something that wasn’t a sin. An image of his face after I kissed him—the flicker of courage before fear took over — filled my mind.
And then I saw him.
At first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. A shape in the shadows, near the back wall, just beyond the last row of people. But then he lifted his head.
Jimmy.
My heart stuttered. He stood there in the half-dark, hands shoved deep in his pockets, wearing that same soft blue shirt. The sight of him hit me like a rush of air after being underwater too long.
“We all stumble,” I said, eyes fixed on the back of the room. “Sometimes we run from the very thing that could save us. And that’s okay. Running doesn’t make you lost—it just means you’re not ready to be found yet.”
A few heads nodded, but I wasn’t speaking to them anymore. “What matters,” I went on, pulse hammering, “is that when you come back—when you walk through the door again—you know there’s someone here who still sees you as whole.”
I didn’t dare look away then. He was still there, half-shadowed, hands buried in his pockets, watching me like every word I said was both a wound and a balm.
When the service finally ended, people stood and began to mingle, hugging, laughing, lighting more candles. Normally I’d stay to talk, shake hands, answer questions. Tonight, I didn’t have the patience for any of it.
“Lucien!” someone called. “Great message tonight!”
I nodded, barely hearing them. Jimmy was still there, and I wanted to talk to him before he had the chance to grow frightened and run away.
I cut through the crowd, muttering apologies, ignoring the people who reached out to me.
Jimmy saw me coming and straightened a little.
My first instinct was to grab him, to pull him in and hold him until all that pain drained out of both of us.
But I stopped myself. Whatever this was—whatever we could be—it had to start on his terms.
“Hey,” I breathed. “You okay?”
He bit his lower lip, in that same nervous tell I’d memorized without meaning to. For a moment he didn’t answer, just looked at me like he was trying to make sure I was real.
Then he nodded. “Yeah,” he attempted a smile. “Now I am.”
Relief hit me so hard it almost hurt. I swallowed against it. “You sure?”
His smile grew—small, fragile, but real. “Can we talk?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. The candlelight flickered between us, and I thought—this is what revelation feels like: terrifying and holy.
“Lucien,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “If I tell you the truth about who I am… will you still want me here?”