Chapter 3
CATERINA
Pru shows up at my bedroom door with a garment bag like she’s running contraband.
“You didn’t,” I say.
“Oh, I absolutely did.” She unzips it open with a flourish. Black fabric. White collar. Wimple. A perfect, slightly-mothball-scented habit from Theater’s graveyard. “Sinner chic,” she announces. “It’s only a one night rental, so do not bleed on it.”
I touch the fabric. It’s heavier than it looks, and coarse, tailored for stage lights and moral panic. “I’m going to hell.”
“Babe, you were headed to a convent anyway. This is a lateral transition.” She tilts her head, studying my face. “You can still say no. You know I won’t pressure you into anything.”
I can. I don’t. I need this one night before the rest of my life, one night to be nothing more than a college student out to party and have a good time.
“Help me,” I say, and that is the real rebellion: letting someone else tie the strings for once.
She laughs, gentle, and we build me into a saint. Black dress. The collar that turns my throat into a declaration. The veil that smooths my hair into obedience. My reflection in the small mirror looks like a warning.
“Okay,” she says, stepping back. “I don’t know how because you are completely covered, but it’s managing to give ‘Bless me, Father, for I am about to make statistically poor choices’ vibes.”
“Statistically,” I say, “yes, there will be poor choices made tonight..”
“Rules,” she says, ticking each off on her fingers.
“We are out until midnight. We do not split up unless you say go. You share your location with me, and you keep your phone on vibrate, not silent. If you get weird vibes, we bail. If anything looks even remotely like creepy priest energy, we set it on fire and record the chaos.”
“Those are…robust rules.”
“I like you alive.” She tosses me a pair of sneakers. “Wear these under the gown. I don’t care what the saints think about footwear. We wear comfortable shoes, because no one reaches final girl status by trying to run in heels.”
By six-fifty, campus has traded daylight for neon.
The quad spits out costumes that are completely opposite of our daily lives.
Sparkly devils, a cluster of exhausted med students in scrubs with glitter tossed over them and cuts made in the scrubs that are obviously two sizes too small, a harried TA in cat ears avoiding eye contact with his undergrads.
We cut through the crowd, heads turning toward us and then away, because Boston has a tradition of minding your own business until it absolutely isn’t possible.
My phone vibrates.
Father: Dinner tomorrow instead. I’ll send the car.
Me: I have class late. I’ll come by Saturday.
Lie number two today. My stomach tightens and then releases. Maybe I’m getting good at this.
I know otherwise around the time we hit the sidewalk that leads toward the North End, though. The nerves in my stomach are jumping all around, too unsettled for me to even think about heading right toward the block where all the bars are located.
Silently I curse the good girl gene that won’t let me act normal without plaguing me with a stupid amount of anxiety.
I tug on Pru’s arm, veering left instead. She knows before I say it.
“St. Brigid’s?” she asks.
“Yes.” My voice is steadier than I expect.
She doesn’t try to talk me into a bar first. She gives a small sigh, slips her hand into mine, squeezes, then lets go. “Okay. Church so you can beg preliminary forgiveness. Then a drink. Then we ghost this shit.”
The cathedral presides over the neighborhood, regal and unchanging.
Candlelight spills in rectangles on stone.
A few tourists hover near the side chapels, whispering over votives.
I feel the old wood and cold air roll over us as I open one of the huge double doors, the kind of hush that makes laughter sound like sin and sin sound like prayer.
“I’ll be outside because you know me and church. Text me if you even blink and something’s weird,” Pru says peering inside suspiciously.
Ever since a nun whipped her hands with a ruler when she was a kid, she hates churches, says they piss her off.
She does everything she can to stay out of them now.
“And if you’re more than ten minutes, I’m coming in like the wrath of God.
” She pauses. “Okay, so maybe I won’t come all the way in. I’ll stand in the back and yell.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in God.”
“I believe in wrath, and she’s a petty see-you-next-Tuesday.”
I slip into the nave and let the door hush itself closed behind me.
The church is empty this time of night—no tour groups, no murmured prayers—just the tick of the old radiators and the candle rack breathing its little halos.
Halloween presses against the stained glass from the street, all orange and blue and too-loud laughter, but in here it’s dim and still and smelling faintly of incense and lemon oil.
The habit rustles when I move. The veil is pinned high and tight, and my rosary taps my thigh with each step like it’s counting what I owe. I cross myself out of muscle memory and slide into the confessional on the penitent side.
I’m silent for a few moments, just breathing in memories of prayer and penitence and sorrow. The wood is warm from centuries of hands. I leave the door cracked for air, because sweat is already slicking the backs of my knees.
Why did I feel the urge to come here…the need to beg forgiveness for something I haven’t even done yet? Because I’m about to sin. Drink, dance, probably. Maybe kiss a boy…do a little more if I’m brave enough.
Then clarity hits, in a lightning strike burst of realness that makes me squeeze my eyes closed.
No. It’s more than that. I’m here because I don’t want to dedicate my life to God. And I feel guilty for that.
“Bless me, Father, for I have—” I start, my voice thick but the words steady because the script holds you up when your own truth won’t.
“—come to practice the feeling before the leap?” a man says, low, from the other side of the screen.
I jerk, knocking into the bench. The rosary clacks against the wood.
For a second my heart strangles itself. I wasn’t expecting anyone. No priest. No anyone. The mesh turns the man into fragments: the slope of a shoulder, the shadow of a jaw, the faint movement of breath.
“It’s just me,” he adds, and the timbre curves familiar in my ear. Not a priest. Not even trying to sound like one.
I turn the memory over in my mind—earlier this evening, a few pews back from my own. A man too good-looking for church and my peace of mind.
“You—” I begin, my voice smaller than I want.
“From earlier,” he says, saving me the reach. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have answered you. Reflex.” He pauses. “I can leave.”
My pulse thuds in my ears. The smart thing—the good thing—would be to say yes, go. The problem is that I came here to gain absolution in my own way, and he sounds like he understands the shape of that.
I swallow. “You’re not the priest.”
“No,” he says. “I’m not.”
“Then why are you in there?”
“Ahhh…sanctuary?” he says, as if the word itself is explanation and apology. “I just wandered in, honestly. You might say that on nights like this, I borrow a room with rules so I don’t break any of my own.”
“You have rules?” The scoff slips out before I can check it.
“More than I used to.” He shifts, just enough for me to catch a glint through the screen of those not-quite-green eyes. “I start by asking instead of taking. I keep my hands where they belong. I remember the door is for both of us.”
The knot between my ribs loosens a fraction. There is something careful in him, coiled and controlled, and something tired, too, like restraint has a cost he’s willing to pay. I lean closer, enough that my veil whispers against the lattice.
“Then you should know I’m not…only…here for absolution,” I say. “I’m here to…try the words on before I sign them.”
He’s quiet a heartbeat, two. “Postulate?” he asks softly.
“Yes.”
Another long breath from him, steadying. “And you need to feel the edge before you step over it.”
I don’t answer. I don’t have to. The mesh carries my silence across just fine.
“Talk to me,” he says, and it sounds nothing less than a demand.
“I don’t…” I start, then stop. Honesty or nothing. “I don’t want to feel perfect. I want to feel real. I want one night where I choose something, and I let it happen, and it isn’t because someone told me to.”
There’s a scrape—the soft sound of him shifting a knee on the worn kneeler. “You just chose to say that out loud,” he says. “That counts.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m not.” He lets the quiet settle again, and it’s respectful. “I have a ritual on this night. It’s my birthday. I used to…make bad choices out of spite for the day. Now I make better ones. I ask. I wait. If the answer is no, I let that be the end of it. I leave the room exactly as I found it.”
My skin prickles. “Why this night?”
“Because once, doors closed on me and didn’t open when they should have,” he says, plain. “So now I make sure I’m the kind of man who holds the door open. That’s the shape of it.”
The habit suddenly feels less like a joke and more like a mirror. I pull a breath through my nose and lay my palm against the mesh. It’s cool against my flesh. I imagine the pattern denting my lifeline, my heartline, invoking its own authority.
He doesn’t rush. He raises his hand, stopping short of the screen, his own palm hovering like a promise that can keep being only a promise if that’s what I want. “Okay?” he asks.
The word trembles at the back of my throat and still manages to come out sure. “Okay.”
Heat meets heat through the thin barrier, no skin, just nearness. My heartbeat stutters into something deliberate. He’s close enough that I can smell soap and a trace of smoke that isn’t the church’s. Close enough that I can hear the difference between the breath he takes and the breath he doesn’t.
“What do you want?” he asks, his voice roughened at the edges, not by impatience but by restraint.
I close my eyes so I can hear the truth when it answers. “I want to be the girl who does what she wants and takes what she wants and doesn’t feel guilty about it.”
“Then do it,” he murmurs. “I’ll help you…all you have to do is say yes.”
A heartbeat passes. Then, “Yes.”
A small sound leaves him—gratitude, relief, pride—I can’t tell—and his fingers curl around the wood, careful to keep the barrier. He doesn’t press through. He doesn’t test it. He honors it like a line in a psalm.
“What’s your name, Kitty Cat?” he says after a moment, gentler than the word deserves. “Your real one. Only if you want to give it.”
I press my lips together. “Will you give me yours?” He nods. “Okay. Caterina.”
“It’s Cayce,” he returns, and spells it when I give him a skeptical look. “I swear.”
The names, slight variations of the ones we gave each other earlier, hover in the air between us. We give no last names, nothing that will anchor us outside this carved little box. Just a way to aim our voices.
“Caterina,” he says again, trying it out like a note he intends to hold steady. The way the syllables fit his mouth does something to my knees. “I don’t know…maybe I like Kitty more.”
“Your rules,” I say, because his voice is making me want to purr, and I need the rules laid out where I can see them. I see the flash of a grin through the mesh, as though he knows.
“First,” he says, “you can end anything with one word. Sanctuary. I stop. No questions.”
“Sanctuary,” I repeat, tasting it, owning it. “Okay.”
“Second. We don’t turn tonight into penance tomorrow. No hating yourself for something you chose.”
My throat gets tight. “Agreed.”
“Third,” he adds, a hint of wryness threading the heat, “we keep our feet on the floor until you ask me not to.”
My laugh trips out, breathless. “Specific.”
“I have reason to be,” he says, and though the dimness keeps his face in pieces, I can feel the smile at the corner of it. The smile fades as he adds, quieter, “Last one: we stay in this room.”
“That was always the plan,” I say, and feel the truth of it settle through me like a weight I wanted to carry. The old wood. The candlelight reaching for us. The hush. I am not walking out into the noise dressed like a dare. I am not pretending the street could be kinder than a booth with rules.
“Okay,” he says. “Your move, Kitty.”
The shiver that runs through me is gratitude dressed like desire. I slide my fingers along the lattice until my palm fits against his, the wire a thin, humming distance. “Right there,” I say. “Stay right there until I move.”
“Whatever you need,” he answers, and the word sounds like he’s been practicing it.
The church holds its breath with me. The candle rack fizzes softly.
Somewhere, a heating pipe knocks once and goes quiet again.
The habit sits on my shoulders like a decision I can unpin later.
Right now, I choose this: the mesh marking my skin, his care pressed up against it, permission alive in my mouth.
“After this,” I say, because part of me still wants the edges defined, “we don’t owe each other anything we didn’t promise.”
“After this,” he agrees. “We owe each other exactly what we said.”
I lean closer until the lattice cools my lips, until I can feel the heat of him find my breath and meet it. “Then here are my promises,” I whisper. “I’ll say yes when I mean it. I’ll say sanctuary if I need it. And I’ll demand more when I want it.”
“Here are mine,” he returns, voice low and steady. “I’ll follow your yes. I’ll honor your sanctuary. And I’ll wait for your more.”
Something unclenches deep in my chest. The fear doesn’t vanish. It stands aside for the girl who came here to be real.
“Cayce,” I say, tasting his name the way he tasted mine.
“Caterina.”
“Stay,” I tell him.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says.
The old booth creaks as we both inhale. My fingertips tingle, my mouth goes warm, and the world shrinks to wood, breath, and the clean blade of wanting made safe by rules we wrote together.
“Sanctuary,” I murmur—not a stop, a blessing.
“Sanctuary,” he answers, matching my intention.
And then—very slow, very deliberate—we begin.