Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
SLOANE
I don’t go to mass. I can’t bring myself to even if I want to see the clumsy priest who saved me as he lords over his flock. I remember vividly Luca saving me from a nightmare a few times now, and I don’t know what that means or what he’s trying to be to me.
I hate to feel weak. To feel like I can’t handle all the demons raging within my breast. Lord knows I have a few. Wandering Luca’s house, I cleaned dust off things and looked over every inch of his things. Learning him is complicated when he seems like a perfectly wrapped enigma.
Luca returns after I watch some pointless television, shower, and organize his pantry.
He doesn’t look like he spent the morning preaching over his flock. To me, he looks like Luca—my savior.
I bite my cheek as he looks me over, trying to contain this strange pull to him. I know it’s all the darkness I’ve been through, blurring how I should behave.
“You have a good day?” he asks, dropping a few books topped with the Holy Bible on the table.
I nod. “How was mass?”
“Good.”
Could we be any worse at this?
“Sorry I didn’t come.” My voice is meeker than I’ve ever heard it before. I hate it.
Facing the inside of that church again feels like facing everything I’m hiding from, and I couldn’t do it.
“That’s alright. I wasn’t so hot this morning. Some messages don’t come across right, no matter how hard I try.”
Something in my chest deflates at his show of humanity. I’ll take it even if he’s giving me this glimpse on purpose. “I highly doubt that.”
He narrows his gaze at me, leaning against a chair to his right. “What do you mean?”
“You look like a man who has all the answers. You have this… air about you.” I shrug, shifting on my feet.
He laughs, and the look on his face grows worried. “If I had all the answers, I’d be able to tell you why the universe has been so cruel to you. I’d be able to fix…” His words bite off as my anger sours my face.
“I don’t need to be fixed, Father.”
Something about using his title straightens his back. “I didn’t mean?—”
“You did. You see a project. I thought… Fuck, I don’t know what I thought, but I didn’t think you were like everyone else.”
“Sloane, no.” He grabs for me as I rush past him to get to what’s become my safe space, my room.
His hand wraps around my wrist, and I look down at where the connection is, causing my breath to burn in my lungs. All my anger is gone, washed away like he’s the embodiment of holy water.
Neither one of us speaks. Neither one of us is breathing at any pace of normality. Our eyes lock as I look up from where he’s gripping me.
“I didn’t mean to imply you were broken.” His voice is gruff, filled with something I can’t face now, not after everything.
“I’m used to a darker world than you are, Father. I am a lot tougher than I appear.”
“I don’t doubt that one bit.”
“I’m going to go lay down.” I don’t know why I’m saying it until I realize his grip on me has only tightened.
It feels as though it’s no longer for my comfort, either. It’s for him.
Like he’s holding onto me, pleading for me to unburden him of something he can’t speak aloud.
“Why don’t we get out of here?” he says.
“But I thought I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere.”
“I can figure something out. I’ll keep you safe. Go get ready.”
I can’t help but see the excitement lining my bones as I do just as I’m told. Once I’m dressed, I stand before the mirror for the longest time, running my eyes over the space where I can still feel his touch.
Like he marked me.
I bite my bottom lip as a soft knock at the door startles me, and I grab my jacket and toss it on, thankful he thought to get me clothes since I can’t return to my apartment.
“Ready?” he asks.
He’s in jeans and a button-up shirt. His spiced scent is more substantial, and I want to lean in and drown in it as he prays for my wicked soul, but I shake away from the ridiculous thought.
“Ready,” I tell him.
“Good. I coordinated with the Riccis and found somewhere I can take you to get you out of the house for a bit.”
As he leads me outside and into his car, opening the door, I realize I’m in way over my head. I can’t help the racing thoughts about him—no more than I can tell the wind to stop blowing. I also know that, eventually, my dark world is going to bleed back into existence to ruin everything.
Luca leads me into the back of a restaurant, and the hostess greets us in the kitchen as if she’d been told to.
“Welcome to Dolce Vita, Father Russo,” she says, looking him up and down, as I’m sure he gets often with how he looks.
But if he does, he doesn’t let on.
No. His attention is on me. I look up at him, and he smiles warmly, ignoring the hostess before him.
She clears her throat, clearly put off by his dismissal. I’m thankful for it.
“Mr. Ricci called ahead, and I’ve prepared the private dining room for you,” she tells me now, and I nod.
“Thank you.”
She leads us into a private dining room, seats us, and hands us menus before a server comes in, takes our appetizer order, and leaves behind drinks.
“This place is nice. I’ve never been here.” I try to break the growing tension in the room with words, but it doesn’t really help.
Luca’s warm eyes flick up toward me from where he’s been perusing the menu for a good five minutes. “It’s a Ricci Family holding.”
I’m dying to know how the hell the good father got in with the Italian mafia of New York, but I bite my tongue.
Currently, he’s the one keeping me safe from the wrath I escaped. I don’t want to seem ungrateful.
“Well, they were very kind to allow us to come. I was going a bit stir-crazy.” I smile as I take a garlic knot off the table and place it on my appetizer plate, cutting it with a knife and fork to keep from looking like a heathen.
“I could tell you were struggling. I’m sure you’re not used to being cooped up.”
I narrow my eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I don’t know why I’m so snarky with him all the time. I can’t help it. Something about him makes me want to dissect everything the man says to me because I know the words he gives him, he means.
It’s something I’ve never dealt with before.
“I only mean you seem so… free. I doubt you’re used to having to stay caged.”
Caged.
The words strike me as odd, and I can’t help prying. “And you? Are you caged? Or are you free?”
His eyes lock on mine, his hand flexing on his water glass. I almost hear the material creak in his hold from the force. “What kind of question is that?”
Knowing I’m affecting him as much as he is me has something giddy in my chest when I know it shouldn’t. I shouldn’t revel in unnerving a man who needs to be solid in his foundations. To lead. To give solace.
But I can’t resist.
“You said it in such a way that it was implied that you might not be free. I was only asking.”
His eyes scan around the room, falling on the door before he flicks them back to me. “Some days, I don’t feel free.”
It’s a confession I know he doesn’t give lightly, and I don’t want to push him further, either.
Looking inward and prodding ghosts isn’t easy. It’s why I don’t do it.
“I hate to hear that, but I can see how your life could feel that way.”
We both get ravioli and then share tiramisu for dessert; before I know it, hours have passed. The conversation got more manageable, but we skirted anything deeper than we’d already gone.
And when we’re on the way back to the rectory, I feel the weight of the place bearing down on Luca as if it’s a breathing organism in the car with us.
My hand itches to reach for him, but it’s so inappropriate. Shit, this dinner was. But it kept the demons at bay. I haven’t felt one ounce of anxiety or restlessness since pulling away from the church with him.
Hours later, I’m in the kitchen, drinking a glass of water in front of the sink and looking out the window. I can’t sleep. I’ve tossed and turned for hours before deciding to give up.
There’s a small night light plugged into the right of the sink. A tiny little angel. Her cheeks are aglow as I run my eyes over them.
The hand that comes around me and reaches for it startles me, and I nearly drop the glass of water I’m holding as I gasp.
His presence at my back is overwhelming, so I put the glass into the sink and hold my breath.
He tugs the night light from the plug and bathes us in darkness as if what he’s about to do next is something he needs to blind God to.
“Tonight was the best time I’ve ever had with anyone,” he admits against my ear. Shivers worm through my bones. “But that’s selfish. Tell me it’s selfish. You’ve been through so much, Sloane. Fuck, the man we just got you away from—” His words cut off as I lay my hand over his on the counter, only visible in the moonbeams spilling through the small window over the sink.
“It’s not selfish. I had a good time, too, Father Russo.”
“Please don’t say my name like that.”
“Like what?”
He leans closer, his lips touching my ear. “Like I’m the one you’re praying to.”
I can’t say anything. The overwhelming urge to turn in his arms, to take this further, slams into me, moving from my head to where my feet are rooted to the wood floors beneath them.
“I’m going to protect you, Sloane. No one will ever hurt you again,” he says, and they are words that would typically make me mad. They imply I need protection when I’ve always taken care of myself.
I don’t need anyone.
But I wonder if I do from how he feels looming over my back. If I need him.
This is wrong.
So wrong.
“Goodnight.” His oppressive aura moves away from my back, and I take a deep breath.
“Goodnight, Father.”
When I get back into bed, I still can’t sleep. Now, I can’t sleep for an entirely different reason.
Luca chased away the demons nipping at my heels, but new ones are breeding in my growing, unnatural attraction to him.
I need to keep it in check, or it’ll ruin us both.