Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LUCA
T he waves roar ahead. John parked us directly on the beach, the back of the SUV open. Some blankets and pillows tell me he might’ve gotten the wrong idea about Sloane and me, but I ignore that awkward fact as I hop up beside her.
She’s gazing wistfully at each wave that dances over the sand, seeming to reach closer each time. It’s like she’s here with me, physically, but she’s far away mentally.
The glistening emotion in her eyes wasn’t what I was going for when I planned this trip. I wanted her to have fun. To get away from the heavy aspects of everything bearing down on her.
“Are you alright?” I ask. I nearly reach for her, but I don’t want to overstep.
A single tear runs down her cheek, and she sniffs it, wiping it away. “I swear to God, I never cry this much.” She giggles as if to run away from whatever’s haunting her with the dismissal.
“Well—” I start, and she realizes what she said and cuts me off.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean I swear to God in a bad way. It’s just an expression. Jesus. Fuck, sorry.” Her spiraling is actually pretty cute, and my smile lifts as she continues.
“It’s fine, Sloane. No harm done. I don’t think God is going to drop out of the sky and smite you for spouting a random fact in his name.”
She sighs. “You never know. This is my life that we’re talking about here.” Her gaze turns back toward the Atlantic.
“I thought bringing you here would be a good thing that you’d enjoy it. I didn’t mean to make you sad.”
“I’m not sad.” Her body relaxes as she lets go. Another sigh. “Maybe I am. I don’t know. I think this place, the sound, the smell, the way it calms you, almost makes you… reflective. That’s how I feel. Reflective.”
“That makes sense. There’s peace in nature.” Even with the Boardwalk looming behind us, there’s a calmness the beach offers that has even my insides uncoiling. “What are you reflecting on?”
“All of it,” she whispers, tugging her coat tighter as she crosses her ankles. “So many cogs turning led me to that basement, you know? So many choices, most of them not mine. I hate that I sometimes look back and feel like I was a bystander in my own life. Like I couldn’t control what was happening to me. That’s bothers me the most. Not what Barone did to me physically, but that I’d lost my control again. Like when I was a kid.”
I nod along with her words, trying like hell not to reach for her hand to make this moment even harder for her.
There’s an undeniable attraction between us we are working hard to ignore, and I can’t keep bringing it to the forefront.
It only makes it harder for both of us.
“This one time,” she says, and I perk up. She doesn’t seem the type to open up, let alone talk about her past. She’s what my mama would call a tough cookie —she’s had to be to survive. “Dad came home in a rage. He was drunk and probably high, and he misplaced his car keys—not that he should’ve been driving. He wanted to go to the store and had been searching high and low for them. I was asleep, but I woke up to the commotion outside my room and tucked lower beneath my covers to hide away. He was a great dad when the drugs weren’t in control, but when they were…” She swallows and looks toward the sunset, dropping behind the dark horizon, the pink and orange hues bleeding across the sky like spilled paint.
My heart is racing, and I have to fight the urge to prod her. It must be hard for her to speak these things aloud, but I never knew Ray like she did.
Her memories of him are going to taint mine, but it’s something she needs to get out. It’s inevitable.
“He tore me out of my bed by my hair, screaming that I’d taken his keys. My body hurt so bad when it hit the wall he threw me into.”
I wince and close my eyes, anger rising in my stomach for the version of her that was small and afraid of what Ray would do to her.
I don’t like to look at this dark side of the world head-on. The part that’s actively ruining my faith crack by crack.
“Sloane.” I reach for her, but she slides down from the back of the SUV, leaving me gaping at her story.
“I’m fine. Now. There are scars from my childhood, from everything I’ve been through. I wouldn’t be human if there weren’t. The thing is, I’m okay. I need you to stop treating me as if I’m glass. If I want to sit silently and watch the waves in admiration, it doesn’t need to turn into some probing, deep conversation, Luca.”
The way she says my name has me following her as she heads toward the water.
Cold air rips at my face the closer we get to the ocean, salt stinging my cheeks.
“I didn’t mean to press. I just wanted to know you a bit better.”
“Why?” She turns on me, and I falter, nearly knocking into her.
“What?” The very idea she thinks she’s uninteresting enough for me to want to know her on a deeper level is confounding to me.
“Why do you want to know me when you and I can be nothing more than we are?”
Oh.
She steps closer as I grapple for words, and the pull to hold her to me and never let go is strong.
Sloane is an undeniable force to be reckoned with, and even though she came to me battered and bruised and needing shelter, I’m the one feeling as if I’m broken before her—the one who’s pleading for mercy on my knees.
“You and I can’t be, Father Russo. No matter how many tiny sins you let slip daily, that fact remains. You’ve made that clear. So, let’s try to get through this experience unscathed, hm?”
Her chest is touching mine, her brown eyes wide as she looks up at me from below. I can’t help the fraction that my head tilts downward to come closer to hers.
“It doesn’t mean I don’t want…” I whisper as I zero in on her lips, dancing mine dangerously over them in the slightest touch.
“Luca,” she warns.
Here, on the beach, in a moment of pure lunacy, my entire life hangs in the balance. Everything I’ve ever worked toward hovers around me, trying its damnedest to pull me backward.
But Sloane’s power is stronger. My need for her is stronger.
A tiny breath escapes her and seems to imbue my soul with something it hasn’t felt in a long time. Life.
As I press forward, wholly ready to go to hell with my hand in hers, she steps back, shivering out of the same attraction that has me currently hazy.
“We should go,” she says, walking toward the SUV and getting inside. I’m left staring out over the battering waves and dark slinks down over the world like a veil of shadowy canopy.
I know God still sees me. Standing on a beach, grappling with everything I hold dear.
We got back home an hour ago. It’s nearing nine p.m., and I can’t unwind from the day’s events.
Sloane went straight to her room, and I haven’t seen her since.
I ordered food, which still didn’t lure her out. And when I called for her, she didn’t emerge.
I’ve been pacing the floor for thirty minutes now, wearing the wood thin beneath my feet.
When I can’t take it anymore, I burst into her room, not having a barrier because her door’s open, instantly hating myself for invading her space.
I understand her need for no barriers. I shouldn’t use it to my advantage, but after earlier, and because I was so close to throwing it all away for one taste of her, I know I need to explain, let alone apologize.
“Hey, I was just coming to—” My words die as my mouth dries and my eyes widen.
Something dark stretches inside me as I can’t look away from Sloane’s lithe, nude form as she looks up at me from where she has one foot up on the toilet, toweling off.
“I know it’s your house, but you don’t even knock?” she snaps.
She straightens, not bothering to cover anything. No blush tints her cheeks, nor does she seem bothered by her nudity. She’s undoubtedly not as affected as I am.
I note it as odd, but I can’t think past the way her breasts seem to stare right back at me as she moves closer.
“Did you need something, Father?” Finally, she wraps the towel around her body, and some semblance of sanity knocks me over the head.
“I came to say that I was sorry for earlier. I wanted to get you out of here and show you a good time, and then I pushed you too far. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“And the almost kiss?” she asks. There’s a rueful gleam in her eyes, but I think she’s earned the way she’s looking at me, so I soldier on.
“I’m sorry for that, too.”
“Are you?” Once again, she’s standing with her chest nearly touching mine, and this time, all that stands between her flesh and me is a thin wasp of a towel.
I swallow. She’s trying to kill me.
It’s getting tough to deny she’s a test from God.
“Are you sorry that you wanted to kiss me? Or sorry you let it almost happen?”
Her words slam through my head like a dunk shot. “I can’t bring myself to be sorry for wanting to kiss you, Sloane. But I am sorry I took it too far. I shouldn’t toy with you when I can never have you.”
She licks her bottom lip as her eyes narrow in thought. “Apology accepted.”
“I’m sorry, too, for being so short with you. As much as I try to pretend I’m alright, sometimes, the dark days win,” she adds, moving towards the dresser.
I watch her remove clothes from the drawers as she dresses as much as she can beneath her towel, trying not to salivate at every exposed inch of her.
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
She tugs on a T-shirt with her back to me before turning.
Her nipples press into the fabric, and I can’t help but stare at them longingly.
She’s an addiction I’ll never curb. When she leaves here, I’ll be a changed man, down to my very marrow.
“So, we can go back to normal?” she asks.
I want to laugh. I want to ask her what the hell normal between us even was. This gnawing tug toward her only gets stronger daily, and I’m wondering if we’re both fools for ignoring it.
Hell, I’m wondering if it’s something destined.
“We can,” I say anyhow, deciding it’s better to keep all the bullshit in my head where it belongs, locked away in a vault, never to see the light of day.
“Good. Now, did I hear you say something about food earlier?”
I smile. “You did.”