Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
SLOANE
W aking up in my new home for the foreseeable future is strange. For once, I have nowhere to go. I don’t have to go to work. However, I am worried about getting a job and keeping my apartment after this. When Father Russo asked me if I had anywhere safe to lie low, I didn’t tell him about my apartment. It was almost like I knew how much safer I felt with him versus how I’d feel in my place. Alone.
After brushing my teeth with a new toothbrush Father Russo left on the bathroom counter, I look myself over.
Deep shadows linger beneath my eyes. My body appears skeletal as if the very essence of vitality has been stripped away. Tiny bruises blossom on my skin like fading ink blots. When I can no longer stand to look in the mirror, I turn away.
Even being in this room feels overwhelming because I’m alone.
This feeling, like I don’t want to be alone, is unsettling. I know it’s because of all I’ve gone through recently, but I also can’t lean on a man I only just met.
Sure, he’s a man of God, but a small part of me wonders how tainted it’ll leave him to be harboring me.
Still, I don’t want to be alone.
The thought of leaving here has my breathing speeding and my heart racing.
“Calm down,” I tell myself, willing my eyes shut.
I spring them open as some of the pain behind them tries to settle in. The dark is where the demons live.
I shake myself off and shove everything away; it’s the only way to survive when you’ve been through so much.
Breathing through the panic that tried to take hold, I slip into some sweats Father Russo left me and tug my fingers through my hair to look more presentable before leaving my room.
I’ve never been one to lean on anyone, even for a few days, so having someone who feels like pure comfort and somewhere safe to land is new to me, but there’s a thrum in my belly I’m trying to ignore.
I’ve always been a very hypersexual person, and I blame everything I’ve been through in my life. I’m sure that for others, their experiences make them the opposite, and they’d much rather never be touched again.
To me, being touched and coveted keeps the darkness from creeping over the edges of my soul and encompassing it entirely.
I have to keep that part of me in check, though.
He’s a priest.
He’s off-limits.
When I walk into the kitchen, my eyes run the length of his body, clad in gray sweats. His torso is not covered with a shirt.
He’s brewing coffee, and I smell something with cinnamon in the toaster oven.
I clear my throat, and he jumps slightly. “Good morning. Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
My hands wring, my nails itching to dig into the side of my nail bed and pick at the skin there, something I’ve always done.
I’m sure it’s an anxious tick.
“Good morning. Did you sleep well?” He looks me over as if cataloging the same thing I had just perused in the mirror.
The damage wasn’t evident last night, but it’s clear in the light of morning.
“I slept well, thank you.” It was a lie, but I swallowed thickly over how it made my throat burn to lie to a priest.
I cried my way through each flash when I tried to close my eyes before I could shove it away and tell myself I’d deal with it another day.
There’s so much shoved to the edges of my psyche that sometimes I wonder what will happen if and when I deal with it.
“Good, I’m glad.” His tone is flat, as if he knows I was lying, but he’s choosing to let me have my lies and use them as my shield.
The toaster oven dings, and he jumps again.
“That’ll be the muffins,” he says, turning and opening the oven, only to grab the small metal pan they’re on bare-handed and burn himself.
“Oh, shoot!” he hisses.
I giggle, and tension dissipates out of my heart.
“Are you alright? Run your fingers under cold water,” I tell him.
He flings the sink water on, and cool water rushes over his skin. The immediate relief has his shoulders dropping. “I’m not usually this clumsy,” he says, looking at me over the top of his muscular biceps.
I only grin as the coffee machine beeps. “Don’t touch that. It’s hot,” I joke.
He smiles, and I swear the clouds in my soul part, and sunshine breaks through for the first time in years.
You can’t do that.
He’s off-limits!
I clear my throat as if he’s heard my inner monologue and turn away.
There are already two mugs set out for the coffee, so I make each of us a cup and splash mine with cream and far too much sugar than is healthy before snagging a muffin and sitting down at the bar.
Once he removes his hand from the water, he wraps it in a towel to dry it.
“Thank you for this,” I tell him, waggling my muffin before biting.
Apple cinnamon. The way to a girl’s heart.
“You’re welcome. I wish I could make more, but I’m not that great in the kitchen. I had some leftover muffins from the bake sale a few days ago, so I thought they’d be perfect with some coffee. Though I didn’t know if you drank coffee.”
I grin at his spiraling.
He’s coming unglued at having me here, and it’s warranted.
I only hope I don’t ruin him like I do everything else.
He seems good. He seems happy.
However, there’s a sad glint in his eyes that I’ve spotted twice now when he thinks no one can read him. Like he’s looking over the cliff at a daunting leap he can’t fathom taking, but he wants to.
“It’s perfect. It’s my favorite flavor.” I mumble over a mouthful of muffin.
He smiles again, and I don’t know how many more of them I can handle.
“Oh, Ardesia brought you bags of clothing. I had him get you some dresses,” he clears his throat awkwardly, “for if you wanted to attend Mass. You don’t have to. I only thought if you wanted to get out of the rectory, that’s about the only place you’ll be able to go. Being that you should blend into the crowd.”
Again, his nervousness makes my stomach flutter, and I tell myself to shut it down.
I can’t want him.
I can’t be this great man’s downfall.
Even if I really want to be.
I know I’m just deflecting from everything that just happened to me that I’m not ready to deal with, and I need to find another distraction from it because he can’t be it.
Just because he saved me doesn’t mean he’s volunteering as a tribute to be my diversion.
“Alright. Thank him for me. I’m sure you were the one who told him to get me clothes, so thank you, too.” I sip my coffee, letting its warmth feed the warmth already building in my body as Luca bends to pick up the bags near the back door, and his sinuous muscles ripple and then pull taut.
He drops them next to me on the bar, and one of them topples over.
“Shoot, sorry,” he says, fighting with the bag to get the clothes back in.
Before I think twice about it, I lay my hand on his arm to calm his nerves, but I don’t think my touch has the desired effect.
His eyes flick down to where I’m touching him, and then mine follow his line of sight.
We both stare at my hand on his arm for an eternity.
“Anything you don’t want, we can return,” he whispers, and the gravelly angst in his tone rakes through my stomach like a sharp wind.
“Thank you.” It’s all I get out. All I can manage.
He tugs his arm away and turns his back to me.
Picking up the few items that fell from the bags onto the counter, I put them back inside and then took them to my room before returning.
When I get back to the kitchen, Father Russo is gone.
His bedroom door is shut, and I’m left with my muffin and cooling coffee to keep me company.
Which, after the moment we just had, I’m okay with.
I need to be smarter. I need to draw a line in the sand between the good Father and me.
He’s a pillar of the community, a man others lean on for the same thing I’m seeking: comfort.
I can’t confuse his kindness for wantonness, even if it felt like he, too, felt the sparks when I touched his arm.
Sometimes, there are things in life that are unattainable. Things you can’t have. Father Russo is one of those things.
“I got these menus from a few places in town that we can order from. I figure we can order in and maybe watch a movie tonight,” Luca says, walking into my room.
My door was open.
I don’t want it closed.
I’ll feel like a prisoner again.
I wonder if I’ll ever want to be behind a closed door again.
I put my hand out, placing the book I’d been reading off one of his shelves in the living room down on my lap.
He hands the stack over, lingering by the edge of the bed as I peruse them.
“Pizza sounds good. Maybe this place?” I hand him back the menu for New York Pizzeria, and he nods.
We go back and forth on what we want before landing on a cheese pie and some wings.
Once he’s gone from the room after ordering, his immense presence leaves behind a cloud of something I can’t ignore.
I can no longer read the words on the page because I’m flushed and distracted. I close it and groan as I toss it onto the bedside table.
“Food will be here in forty-five minutes,” he announces, and I decide since I can’t read, I’ll shower and get into some clothes Ardesia left for me.
The shower’s heat sinks through my battered skin, and I ignore the outward bruising and the little prickles of pain as I wash my body under the scalding spray.
The wounds internally are worse, and I feel them like I do my heartbeat, even if I try to ignore them.
Once dressed in a silk pajama set with shorts and a strappy top, I let my damp hair dangle over my shoulder as I returned to the living space.
Father Russo is on the couch, head in his hands, his leg bouncing furiously.
I open my mouth to ask him if he’s alright, but the doorbell rings, and he springs into action, paying the delivery man for the pizza and then plating our food without saying a word. I’m left confused about what I walked in on, wondering what on earth could be wrong with him.
He comes back into the room, cheeks flushed, and hands me a plate with wings, a slice of pizza, and a garlic knot. He’s got two sodas in the crook of his arm, and he nods towards the couch.
“Want to eat in here tonight? We can watch TV if you’d like.”
“Sure.” I lead us into the room, and as he hands me the remote and I flick through channels, I grapple with the change in Father Russo from when I saw him earlier to now.
He’s on edge, and guilt is eating at me. It’s because I’m invading his space.
I no more want to leave and be alone than I want to drive a nail through my eye, but it seems my time might near an end soon if my presence bothers the priest as much as I just witnessed.