Chapter 10 - Seraphina
Gabriel is murdering eggs at the stove when I find him, frowning at the pan like it’s personally betrayed him.
The sight stops me in the doorway. Father Gabriel, the man of the plank bed and empty counters, is attempting to cook actual food.
With an actual pan. The eggs are losing badly, browning at the edges while he watches with the same intensity he brings to parish inventory, as if they've failed to meet operational standards.
There's toast. Burned. Coffee made with my beans, my grinder, which he's clearly wrestled with because there are grounds scattered across the counter like evidence of battle.
The domesticity of it hits harder than it should.
I slept in his bed last night. Told him about the men following me.
He told me about the woman he accidentally killed, and we talked at his kitchen table past midnight, trading our worst secrets like currency.
Now he's making me breakfast. Badly. But still making it.
Every car that passes outside, my body tenses. We're playing house while killers circle, and the normalcy of him cooking eggs feels both absurd and necessary. Like if we can just maintain this fiction of ordinary morning routine, the danger will stay outside where it belongs.
He looks up. Sees me hovering in the doorway. Hair finger-combed, yesterday's clothes that still smell faintly of turpentine from painting the storage room, no makeup, no armor. The most undefended I've been in front of anyone since Julian.
Something crosses his face. Not the guilt I expected, not post-confessional horror. Something softer and infinitely more dangerous. The look of a man seeing a woman in his kitchen in the morning and wanting it so much the wanting shows.
He kills it fast. But I catch it.
"Coffee's ready," he says. Normal. Controlled. As if I didn't sleep in his bed and he didn't confess to killing someone and we aren't standing in his kitchen like two people who could belong here.
The crucifix watches from the doorway as I cross to the table. Christ in perpetual agony, bronze body gleaming in the morning light. Even the sheets on his bed smell like aggressive cleanliness, bar soap and discipline.
Except underneath the soap last night, I caught something else. Him. Not cologne, he doesn't wear any. Just skin. Clean, warm, male. The scent that clung to him when he gripped that confessional doorframe, when his control cracked just enough to let me see what's underneath.
"Sleep well?" I ask. “You look almost human this morning."
"Almost?"
"Well, you're still in yesterday's clothes and slept on a couch that clearly hates you, so we're grading on a curve."
I take the wobbly chair. He puts coffee in front of me. Made with my beans, strong, no milk because he doesn't have any. Then the eggs, which are thoroughly defeated, served on a plate with burned toast.
"You don't have butter," I observe.
"No."
"Or salt."
"There's salt."
"Gabriel, that salt expired in 2021."
The corner of his mouth twitches. The almost-smile I first saw over cranberry sauce at the food pantry. I want to make him actually smile. Full, real, unguarded. I want it more than I want edible eggs.
I eat the terrible eggs. He eats standing.
"Sit down," I say.
He looks at me. I look at him. Something passes between us, not a battle exactly, but a negotiation. He sits. Across from me. At the table. Like a person eating breakfast with another person.
The simplicity of it is almost unbearable. Not because it's uncomfortable, because it's easy.
Julian's mornings were choreographed. The right coffee, the right breakfast, the performance of a perfect marriage that was hollow at its center. This kitchen has nothing in it and somehow feels fuller than anywhere I've been in years.
A knock at the door. Not even eight in the morning.
Gabriel rises to answer, and my hand goes instinctively to where the ring hangs under my shirt.
Too early for social calls. My body knows the rhythm of threat, the wrong time, the professional knock.
But Gabriel is calm as he crosses to the door, and I trust his threat assessment more than my own panic.
I hear voices. Male, professional, the tone of a service interaction. Then movement. Heavy movement. Something being carried.
I go to the hallway. Two delivery men are maneuvering a mattress through the front door. Not just any mattress. It’s a fucking H?stens. Julian would be salivating right now.
Behind the mattress: a bed frame. Simple, dark wood, quality without ostentation. The kind chosen by someone with money who doesn't need you to know about it.
Gabriel directs them to the bedroom with calm authority. No fuss, no explanation. Signs something. They leave.
"You had a bed delivered. Overnight."
"The old one was inadequate." Said like it's obvious. Like replacing furniture between midnight and dawn is something priests do.
"Gabriel. That's an expensive mattress."
He doesn't deny it. Doesn't explain. Just looks at me with an expression that says: you mentioned the bed was bad, so I fixed it.
Something shifts in my reading of him. I've known he's a Delgado, known his family has money.
But watching him deploy it, casually, efficiently, without hesitation, is different.
One phone call between our conversation and dawn.
An overnight delivery that would've cost extra.
No deliberation, no performance. The reflex of someone for whom money is a tool, not a consideration.
The ease with which he accesses things ordinary people can't. This isn't just wealth, it's connections, infrastructure, the kind of power that operates outside normal channels.
Julian spent money to control. Every gift came with invisible strings.
Gabriel bought a bed because I said his was bad. The simplicity of it, the absence of agenda, is what gets me. He didn't buy it to impress me or create an obligation. He bought it because I was sleeping in it and it wasn't good enough.
I don't know what to do with a man who fixes things without wanting credit.
Later that morning, he hands me a small box across the kitchen table. Inside: a watch. Elegant on the surface, brushed gold, slim face. Underneath: military-grade GPS, panic button activated by pressing the crown three times, impact detection that alerts a preset contact if I fall or am hit.
I know what this costs. Not just the price, the access.
These aren't available in stores. Julian's security sourced them through private channels.
The fact that Gabriel had one delivered to a rectory in Homestead overnight means he called someone with connections that have nothing to do with the Catholic Church.
Someone who answers when a Delgado calls, even a Delgado who's supposedly left that world behind.
"This is…"
"Non-negotiable." His voice is quiet but inflexible. The same tone from the parking lot. Not aggressive. Not controlling. Just certain. The voice of a man who's decided something about my safety and isn't offering discussion.
The word should trigger every alarm Julian installed in my nervous system.
I should bristle at a man making decisions without asking.
But I look at his face and see what's underneath the certainty: fear.
He's afraid for me. The watch isn't a chain.
It's a tether. And the difference between those two things is everything.
I put it on. It fits perfectly.
"Thank you," I say. “This will make me feel more comfortable back at the cottage.”
Gabriel looks at me. The look lasts too long, and when he speaks, his voice has that quality. Not the priest. The other man.
"You're not going back to the cottage."
I blink. "Excuse me?"
"Your locks are inadequate. Your sight lines are exposed. No security system. No secondary exit from the bedroom. And those men know the address. You're staying here."
Not a request. Not a suggestion. A conclusion.
The audacity should infuriate me. A man telling me where I'll live. Julian did this, decided our apartment, our neighborhood, which rooms were mine. The architecture of control built one decision at a time.
I test him. "And if I say no?"
He goes suddenly still. "Then I'll spend every night in my car outside your cottage."
I almost laugh. The image: a priest sleeping in a sedan outside a flower farm cottage, standing guard against international criminals. Absurd and completely sincere.
"The cottage has one bedroom. The rectory has one bedroom."
"I'll take the couch."
"You're six-two. That couch is five-eight."
"I'll manage."
"You'll destroy your back."
"My back is not the priority."
The way he says it. You are the priority, though he doesn't say it aloud. The certainty of someone who's already done the calculation and made the choice.
I should fight harder. Should insist on independence, autonomy, my ability to handle myself. I've survived six months alone.
But the bed is new. The coffee is good. And the man in front of me is calmly informing me I'm living here because my safety isn't negotiable.
Julian said: you'll stay because I've made leaving impossible.
Gabriel says: you'll stay or I'll sleep in a car.
The difference is everything. One is a cage. One is a choice.
"Fine. But I'm buying groceries. Your kitchen is a crime scene."
The relief on his face, quickly hidden but I catch it, tells me everything about how afraid he was I'd refuse.
We go to the cottage together to gather my things.
He drives. Does another security sweep when we arrive, checking windows, testing locks.
His hands move with the same deliberate precision I saw in the parking lot, the same controlled efficiency that dropped a professional to his knees.
The competence makes me press my thighs together.
My body's betrayal is complete. I'm wet from watching a priest check window locks. The same biology that responded to Julian's control now responds to Gabriel's protection. I'm exactly who I was afraid I was.
I pack. More clothes, laptop, toiletries. The wooden spoon from the counter, Abuela Rosa's, the one thing I took from her kitchen. I wrap it in a dishcloth, tuck it in the bag. He notices. Doesn't ask.
Back at the rectory, I unpack in the bedroom with its new bed.
My things in his space. Toiletries in his bathroom, as sparse as the rest of the house, with a single towel and bar soap.
I notice the wall where a mirror should be.
A man who removed his own reflection. My shampoo next to his soap.
My toothbrush next to his. The domesticity louder than anything physical between us.
I take over his kitchen. Not aggressively, organically.
The grocery store with him pushing the cart while I select onions, the image of Father Gabriel in his collar shopping for produce something I file under "unexpectedly attractive.
" I buy basics: olive oil, garlic, peppers, rice, real salt.
Spices. A bowl of mangoes and limes that I set on the counter.
The first color the kitchen has ever seen.
I stretch up on tiptoes, sliding the box of pasta onto the top shelf.
Gabriel reaches from behind me at the same moment, our intentions colliding.
His chest brushes my back. The cotton of my shirt rides up, exposing a strip of skin above my jeans.
His breath catches—a small sound, but in the narrow kitchen it fills the space between us.
For three heartbeats, neither of us moves.
The crucifix on the wall seems to tilt its head, watching.
Then his warmth withdraws as he steps back, but the heat lingers on my skin like a fingerprint.
The rice simmers on the stove, releasing steam that carries the scent of garlic and cumin through the rectory.
In the reflection of the microwave door, I see Gabriel at the table, his eyes following the movement of my hands, then traveling to the exposed curve where my neck meets my shoulder. He doesn't blink. Doesn't look away.
Julian watched me cook once, stood in the doorway monitoring my movements like he was studying security footage. Gabriel watches like he's memorizing a prayer. I don't know which is more dangerous. The man who wanted to own me or the man who wants to devour me.
I hold out the spoon. "Try this."
He stands. Crosses to me. Tastes from the spoon, and the proximity, six inches, my hand, his mouth, is so charged I feel my pulse in my fingertips.
"Good," he says, voice rough.
"Just good?"
"I've been eating plain eggs for a long time. I don't have a frame of reference."
I laugh. He almost smiles, closer than before, right on the edge. "Sit. I'm feeding you a real meal."
He sits. I serve. He eats across from me, like a person eating dinner with another person. Simple food, rice and beans. He eats like it's the best thing he's ever tasted.
Evening settles. Dishes in the sink. The mango bowl on the counter bright against bare surfaces. My shoes by his door. Small invasions quietly changing the architecture of his self-denial.
I catch him looking at the mango bowl with an expression I can't read. Wonder mixed with grief. A man seeing color after a long time in the dark and not trusting it to stay.
Bedtime. The logistics we're both pretending are simple.
He takes the couch. I take the bedroom. Same as last night. He insists. I let him win because I'm learning which battles matter.
I open the bedroom door to say goodnight. He's on the couch, blanket, too-long legs hanging off the end. He looks up.
The hallway is dim. I'm wearing my oversized sleep shirt. His eyes track from my face to the shirt hem to my bare legs and back up. The journey takes one second and costs him visibly. The crucifix on the wall seems to lean forward, witnessing this moment of want.
"Goodnight, Gabriel."
"Goodnight, Sera."
My name in his mouth. Low. Controlled. A man gripping something with fingernails.
I close the door. Lean against it. Heart hammering.
On the other side: silence. The creak of the couch as he shifts. Then nothing.
I get into the new bed. Absurdly comfortable, the contrast with last night's plank almost funny.
He's on the other side of that door. Mere yards away.
The door is not locked. I could open it. He could open it. Mere yards of hallway between us, shrinking with every shared breath in this small space.
And every hour, it feels smaller.