Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
LUCA
“ W hat do you mean, she’s gone?” Ardesia grinds out on the other end of the phone. “Father, I try to be a patient man when I speak to you, but I gave you one fucking job.”
My eyes cast over her room again, pulling back the shower curtain as if she’s hidden behind it for some ungodly reason. “I know, Ardesia. Don’t you think I know that? We had a…disagreement. I didn’t know she was going to run.”
“Disagreement?”
I swallow. I don’t think the information is pertinent, so I keep my lips sealed.
“Father Russo, what happened between the two of you?” Ardesia asks, and I swallow again, heat flushing into my cheeks.
“I don’t think that’s important. I just need you to find her.”
“It is important because it gives me an idea of how far she ran or where she ran to. What happened?”
That’s a loaded fucking question.
“She’s a very unnerving young lady, that’s all I’ll say,” I admit, my entire body now flushing at the idea she’d run because of something I had said to her last night.
I hadn’t bothered to check on her all day. I thought it was best to go on about my daily business, leaving her to her own devices. It wasn’t until I returned from the confessional to eat lunch that I realized she hadn’t come out of the room yet.
“Listen,” Ardesia says, and I note an air of amusement in his tone. “I got her back for you. I saved her for you. I can’t keep running after her whenever you lose track of her, Father Russo.”
“Luca!” I shout into the phone, forgetting who I’m speaking to. “Please, call me Luca,” I say, softer.
“Oh, and the way you call me Ardesia and not Slate is going to convince me to do so?” he snaps back, and I shake my head.
“I’m sorry. I’m out of sorts today.”
“Luca,” he starts, clearing his throat and lowering his voice, “did something else happen with the girl other than what you’ve said?”
Shame peppers me like buckshot.
“I don’t need details,” he goes on. “But I need to know if she’s no longer safe in your custody.”
The audacity of this man… I cut off the thought when I realized he was not wrong. Is she safe with me? I’d prayed on her vulnerability no better than a man dying of thirst that finally came upon freshwater. I hadn’t the barest hint of restraint when it came to her, and I’d given into fleshly temptation quicker than I’ve ever knelt to sin before in my life.
“Yes. Things happened between her and me I’m not proud of. It’s what the disagreement was over. I told her she was using me as a soft place to land, and I couldn’t be that for her. You know my vows…” I trail off as he chuckles darkly on the other side of the line.
“I’m sorry.” He clears his throat. “It’s just I know a few of you men of the cloth, and you’re the only one with that moral dilemma out of the handful of you I deal with. The others live an entirely different life outside the church’s shadow.”
I know that better than anyone, but I don’t want to be like them.
I’ve always strived to take my vows seriously. To be the man God wants me to be.
But I’m still human, and being so makes me weak in the flesh.
“What do you want me to do? Go get her?” Ardesia asks.
I flounder for words, not knowing the right thing to do. “She’s not safe out there, is she?” I ask him.
“No. She’s not. Matteo knows I’m hunting for him, and he’s gone into hiding. But I’ll bet everything I have that he’s looking for her, Luca. She’s not safe until I have him handled.”
“How did I fuck this up so bad?” The question—while said aloud—is meant for me.
“Because you like her,” I hear Brynne—Ardesia’s wife—say on the other end, and it’s when I realize Ardesia has me on speaker. Now, two people know of my treacherous behavior with Sloane.
“I don’t… I can’t like her, Brynne. It’s only that…” I can’t find the words, and I hear Brynne chuckle on the other end, getting louder, as she’s probably taken the phone from Ardesia now.
“You’re a man who is attracted to a woman and is grappling with that fact because it’s in direct conflict with whom you are and what you do. I get it. But in my experience, Father, living means breaking out of the shell you’re hiding in and experiencing the world around you. What if you weren’t meant to do this? What if she was your fate the entire time? God works in mysterious ways. Isn’t that what you told Ardesia once? You have to trust that the things in your path are there for a reason.”
I smile brightly, even though she can’t see it through the phone call. “Since when did you get so wise?”
She laughs, and I hear Ardesia mumble something inaudible. “I’ve always been this wise, Father. I’m more confident and assertive now that I know living doesn’t mean just surviving. But if what Ardesia has told me about Sloane is true, she hasn’t discerned that yet. She’s still just trying to survive.”
It’s why she ran, I realize.
I hurt her, and she had to protect herself, even from the sting of rejection.
It’s admirable to know when to run from a situation. But I can’t keep her safe if she’s not with me.
“Find her for me, Ardesia. I’ll get her.”
“Oh, we know where she is, Father Russo. But you’re going to want me to go,” Ardesia says in reply, and I can hear his smirk through the phone.
“Oh, now, don’t ruin all the fun. We’ll all go,” Brynne says ruefully.
“Where is she?” I ask hesitantly.
“Happy Endings,” Brynne says with a laugh. “Foreshadowing at its best. It’s a sign from God.”
I open my mouth to tell her not to twist veiled meanings, selling it as God’s will, but I snap my mouth shut, knowing I’ve made enough of a mess with my mouth lately.
“We’ll pick you up in thirty,” Ardesia says, and the line goes dead.
What the hell is Happy Endings?
Music blasts through the speakers, and lights twirl overhead. Ardesia walks ahead of me, getting waved right through. He tells a big burly bouncer I’m with him, and I don’t get carded, nor do I pay.
I get eyeballed for the clerical collar on my black shirt. Ardesia begged me to change, but I knew it was the right thing to wear to ward off unwanted attention.
Not that I won’t be chastised silently for being in the club in the first place, but I couldn’t send Ardesia to do my work another time. I needed to be present. I need to apologize.
Brynne is dressed in a tight-fitting black number with heels that rival the ones the girl on the pole is wearing.
We find a table nearest the stage, and someone promptly comes over and asks what we want to drink. I wave them off, to which Ardesia tells them I’ll have a soda.
“Try to blend a bit,” he tells me in his defense. Brynne takes up on his lap as if she belongs there.
He kisses her slowly and thoroughly, like we’re not in a public place.
I clear my throat as the song changes and look away, my eyes glancing over as the stage darkens.
Skin by Rhianna is a song I know solely because my brother is obsessed with keeping me hip when I’m around him.
The lights slowly dim, reds and pinks twirling overhead where the last girl had blue and purple lights.
A girl slowly moves to the pole, flirting around it as if it’s a man she’s teasing.
I stiffen in my chair when she turns around, her back hitting the pole as she slides down it, arching her back and baring her beautiful breasts.
Breasts I’d know even if I were stricken blind.
“Holy shit, is that her?” Brynne asks, husk in her tone as she does so.
I can’t even nod. Nor can I answer.
I’m transfixed.
She’s wearing a red G-string and clear heels that look like they take a degree to walk in. Her moves lure the onlookers like moths to a flame, and I’m no exception.
“Yeah, that’s her,” Ardesia says with a sigh. “Not that you should ogle her,” he adds.
“How could you even help it? Look at her!” Brynne retorts.
I don’t register that she’s slid off Ardesia’s lap until she’s before the stage, sliding bills beneath Sloane’s panties, backing up a few steps, and clapping in appreciation of her dance.
Sloane gives an appreciative smile as she turns and drops to her knees, pushing forward onto her hands and then bouncing her supple ass cheeks to the beat of the music.
If this is fate, it’s trying to kill me.
Brynne whistles right as I register a hand on my arm.
“I think you’re lost,” the girl slurs and leans in to yell in my ear.
I narrow my brows, looking her up and down. I’ve never seen her in my life.
“How so?” I ask her.
She has to be referring to my collar. Ardesia told me it would draw the unwanted attention I thought would keep me free from.
“Our party is over there!” She points to a corner where a bachelorette party is in full swing. Signs hang surrounding the table, and balloons with the word bride float in the air.
“What? Why would I want to join your party?” I shout back to her, annoyed that I’m missing Sloane’s dance, even though I shouldn’t be watching it.
Let alone enjoying it.
“Move along, you’ve got the wrong man,” Ardesia tells the girl, coming up beside her.
“What do you mean, the wrong man? Who does she think I am?” I ask, and Ardesia’s lips lift in an unguarded and wild smile.
“Oh, sorry,” the girl says, laughing gleefully as she heads back to her party.
I watch in confusion as she tells the table what happened, and they all laugh at her.
“Who did she think I was?” I ask Ardesia, still confused about what just transpired.
He sits back down, watching as his wife puts bill after bill in Sloane’s panties.
“She thought you were their stripper, Luca.” He sips from his whiskey, a rueful glint in his eyes as I choke on the notion.
“What?! She… But I…” I stammer.
“I told you that fucking collar was going to get you into trouble in a place like this. You didn’t listen.”
I’m taken aback as the music fades, and I look back to where Sloane is collecting money off the stage to leave. Her eyes finally lock on mine and go wide.
I beckon to her with a look, urging her to come over and speak with me, as she appears panicked at seeing me at her workplace.
A deep rouge colors her cheeks, but I don’t know if it’s the embarrassment that I found her or from the mind-numbing dance she’d just performed.
“Give it up for, Lo! A fan favorite that keeps you coming back week after week,” the DJ shouts over the chaos of the club.
And without thinking, I clap.
Ardesia spits whiskey back into his cup, and Brynne slaps him on the shoulder.
“Go easy on him; it’s his first time,” she jokes, and now my cheeks fill with blood.