Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
SLOANE
I move my pawn forward two squares, leaving my bishop unprotected and open to move diagonally on my next move. Luca sits forward, eyeing the pieces on the board meditatively.
It’s been days since the foot rub he gave me on the couch he’s sitting on. I’m perched on a pillow on the floor across from him, legs crossed beneath me. We already tended the animals today, ate two meals by the time snow had begun to fall.
It’s turned to rain again, and its loud thundering pelts resound through the cabin on the roof. It’s almost too relaxing.
The last thing I need to do is relax around Father Russo.
He moves one of his pawns forward, opening up his knight, a powerful piece to unveil so soon. It seems Father Russo wants to win.
I’ve never played this game, but Luca allowed me time to read the rules inside the box and study them while he cleaned up from lunch.
It’s hard not to let these simple moments we share get me to open up to him. I’ve lived a life where people are shit, and you keep all your past and worries close to the chest.
“Did you ever get to see the side of Ray that was kind?” he asks, not making eye contact.
His eyes study the board, where I’ve moved my bishop out of his hole in the back, advancing on him quicker than he’d like. I can tell by how his brows are crawling together on his forehead.
While my brain is busy strategizing my next move, it seems my guard is down, and I don’t realize until after I speak.
“There was once,” I spew, looking up at him after I realize he’s gotten more out of me than I’d have liked him to.
“Go on. Nothing you can say to me is something that will be judged. Or repeated,” he adds.
“Mm, because you can’t break your sacred covenant?” It’s snide of me to say, but it gets under my skin how much I unknowingly let him peel my layers back.
“Sloane, please. I’m in sweats and slippers. This is not a confessional. I’m just…a friend.”
The term grates through my ears and claws my brain as it settles.
A friend.
It’s better this way, of course. But I can’t help thinking about how he came in my mouth in confession. I swallowed him down like holy communion, washing my soul clean.
My cheeks heat, and I duck my face away from sight, pretending to itch my nose beneath the blanket I’m wrapped in.
“It’s not like I haven’t broken the sacred seal of confession before already,” he mutters, and my head flies up, my eyes begging for him to go on.
“What?!” I squeal.
He smirks devilishly. “Nope. You first.”
“You tricky little…” I shake my head as he moves his stupid knight over my pawn and takes it. “It’s only fair. You tell me, and I’ll tell you.”
“A secret for a secret?” I muse.
He nods, sitting back and waiting for my story and my move on the board.
“One time, he came and got me from school. It was in fifth grade. I was so confused because neither of them had bothered with school since third grade. I had to get myself ready and fed, and be there on time. Half of me worried that something bad had happened as I walked to the office; that Mom had finally burned down the house with one of her dimly lit cigarettes, she always fell asleep with. That my life was going to change irrevocably from that moment on.”
“That it was going to be a defining moment in your life. Yeah, your gut usually knows when those are afoot,” he adds solemnly.
I nod. “Exactly.”
I lean over the board and move another pawn, sitting back as I brush my hair over my ear.
“Anyhow, he was there, washed and ready for some adventure. He had flowers and a card for me and told the front desk clerk he was taking me home early to celebrate.”
“Celebrate?” He shifts on the couch, forgetting the game and that it’s his move altogether.
I sigh. “My birthday.”
Luca smiles warmly as if this story is going to redeem the idea of Ray Collins being a shit father in his mind, too.
“It wasn’t my birthday,” I add, and his face falls. I don’t know why I need him to be, but I want him on my side. I want him to see the shit way I was treated as a child.
I want him to see my strength and courage are how I survived and that his friend had nothing to do with it. The world has never been kind to Sloane Collins, and it’s why I don’t trust anyone.
My trust was broken early on.
“Even so, I went with him. He was clean-shaven, alert, and kind to me while we went to lunch together. Afterward, he took me to an arcade, followed me from game to game, paying for everything and just gobbling up how happy I was.”
“Sounds like an amazing day,” Luca adds softly, tugging his leg underneath him on the couch as he wipes his hands on his pants. It’s like he knows the other shoe is going to drop.
It always did.
“It was. Until…” I clear my throat, looking away from his penetrating eyes. “Did you know some arcades sell alcohol? For the adults, obviously.” I shake my head, berating inwardly at the tears about to fall.
Fuck, I thought I was over this shit.
I thought I was tougher than this.
Luca makes no move to rush me or comfort me. He lets me finish.
“He got us kicked out after he chugged his fifth beer. Got into a fight with one of the other dads there. When we left the arcade, he told me to make my way home, that the birthday was over.”
I sniffle and wipe my eyes. “I didn’t even know where I was. You see, I’d let my guard fall too far. I hadn’t been paying attention to where we got off on the subway or any landmarks and street signs like usual. I’m usually aware of my surroundings; I’ve always had to be. But I was so enamored with my dad and how happy and sober he looked, I let myself feel…”
“Safe,” Luca finishes for me.
I bite my bottom lip, and he gets off the couch and sits beside me.
“You should have a space to feel safe and loved, Sloane. Everyone should. And I’m sorry you’ve never had that luxury. I don’t know what else to say.”
“What is there for you to say? There’s no way to go back and change it, you know?”
He sighs, his massive hand touching my shoulder as he squeezes comfortably. “I broke the seal of confession to save a group of women from a trafficking ring,” he blurts, trying to take the spotlight off me.
I’m thankful; the glare was making it hard to think.
“What?!”
He swallows audibly, returning his hand and chewing the inside of his cheek. It makes him look less powerful. Vulnerable, even.
“Guilt has a way of eating at us, especially us Catholics. When that happens, we tell the one person in the world who has to listen and can’t tell,” he begins.
“The priest,” I whisper, covering my mouth.
I wondered how a man like him got into company with the Ricci family; maybe this is the way.
He nods. “The priest,” he echoes.
“A man came in, and I don’t know his name. Sometimes, I can put voices to faces, but often, I can’t. I’ll never know whose trust I broke, making it even harder to swallow. He laid it all out. What he’d done, why he felt so awful, and every detail of where the women were held. See, he was grappling with letting them free. Of unburdening himself, knowing they were suffering, but he was afraid for his life.”
I shake my head, a look of disgust as I listen.
“Don’t judge him too harshly. Sometimes, people get themselves too deep before knowing what’s going on. The spike in trafficking in this area is due to two families getting greedy and trying to grab power, and those beneath them have been raised to listen. It’s what is done.”
I nod, my face sobering as he says, “Anyhow, I had already begun a relationship with Adresia Ricci, having officiated his wedding. I baptized baby Nico when he came along. Ardesia and I would drink in my office and go back and forth on life and faith. I have a deep respect for the man. He’s one of the good ones. The righteous. Even with blood on his hands.”
I nod, remembering how Ardesia and his men saved me from a man who would’ve continued to use me, only to throw me away when my body gave out.
Then he’d have bought a new girl to take up my spot.
Around and around, it would’ve gone.
“What happens if you break the seal of confession? Will you be punished?” I ask him, curiosity overpowering me. It’s a tricky question for him.
He sits back, leaning on his hands, eyes closing as the room grows still and silent.
“Excommunication from the church.”
His words burn into my ears like a brand, pain radiating through me for him at the thought of him losing his spot in the church.
“Did you… I mean, have you confessed?”
“Only to you,” he breathes, his brown eyes going deadly with importance.
“I won’t tell anyone,” I blurt, needing him to know he can trust me, even though I find it hard to trust him.
“I know you won’t.”
I cock my head. “How? How do you know I won’t return to New York and announce that Father Russo is a sham of a man who doesn’t covet his vows?”
He smiles. “Because while you might be an untrusting soul, you’re loyal. Especially to those you care about.”
“And what makes you think I care about you?” I counter without thinking, and how his face changes makes me regret it.
“I’m sorry, that…” I pause as he gets on all fours and crawls closer to me.
“I don’t think you care about me, Sloane. I know. I know it like I know a storm brings wind and winter brings cold. Deep in my bones, I know I can trust you, and I don’t know why or how, so don’t ask. It’s an unnerving, overwhelming feeling, though. I’ll tell you that much.”
He’s so close.
The spicy and dense scent of his cologne wafts up my nose with each inhale, making telling myself he’s wrong for me even harder than it already is.
“Do you think you’ll ever confess and leave the church?” Not only had he broken the seal of confession, but everything he’s done with me compounds on top of that sin, making his vows void; both he and I know it.
“I don’t know,” he admits, sitting back on his haunches.
He scrubs his hands over his face and groans. It’s laced with so much tension and strain, but it makes my stomach thrum at the sound.
Half of me wants to point out that he can be with me if he leaves the church.
But the other half argues that it’s wrong to think that way, let alone speak it to life.
I’m everything that a Catholic priest should steer clear of: a sin walking on high heels, with a sashay in her hips and sass oozing from her lips.
“The church has been my life for as long as I can remember,” he says, uncovering his face.
“Why did you become a priest?” I ask, and for someone so studied and at ease speaking about the hard shit in life, you’d think he’d have been reflective enough to tell me immediately.
But instead, he grapples with the question before sitting back on the floor.
I feel the distance he’s created between us like a blade sinking into my flesh.
“I used to think it was because I idolized the sense of peace Father Victor had. I’d watch him during Mass when I should’ve been paying attention to scripture. He had this sure way he moved and spoke like he knew something we didn’t. Like God touched him and placed him on the apse to speak His message to the flock. I thought I wanted to be like him. To be the man others turned to when they were straying off their path. But now, I don’t know. Looking back, hindsight being what it is, I don’t know what I was trying to prove or to whom I was trying to prove it. Now, it feels like I gave half my life to a god who doesn’t care about us.”
His words were heavy; it felt like a weight bearing on me from above.
“I don’t think he doesn’t care.”
Luca looks at me, blinking as if he heard me wrong. “You have enough testimony to the opposite, Sloane, so forgive me if I’m shocked.”
“Believe me, I’ve seen a lot of the dark shit in this world. There are a lot of things he could clean up. I’ve spent half my life believing he didn’t care. But then I met you, met Dante, met Ardesia…”
“None of us are men God would find worthy, I don’t think. I used to be. But I couldn’t look away from what he was letting happen in my city. In my home.”
I lick my lips, trying to find the words to explain my meaning. “But if you look hard enough, he is doing something. You saved those women and probably saved more women afterward, right? You, Ardesia, and Dante seem much closer than one night breaking into an abandoned warehouse. You kept going. Even though it broke your vows, you did what was right. He shines through those people. The ones righteous enough to do the things that he can’t. But what we see, what we focus on, is the bad—the dark shit. The dark will always seem to blanket the light because it’s the loudest. If you look, however, truly look, I think you’ll see His presence.”
Luca opens his mouth and shuts it again as if words fail him.
“Sorry, I think this cabin is getting to me,” I say, trying to account for how sappy I just sounded defending a god that I thought for the longest time had forgotten me.
“It’s not the cabin, little dove. You’re right. I think you’ve been placed in my path on purpose.”
I knit my brows. “How so?”
“I was wavering in my faith before I knew you were missing, before I made a move to get you back. I asked Him in prayer after prayer to clarify where I belonged. You’re that prayer come to life.”
“But what does that mean, though?” I ask him, sitting up straighter as my heart thunders.
“It means I have a choice. You might be the fork in the road on my journey. He won’t choose for me; I’ll have to choose myself.”
I swallow.
Outside of the cabin, the world is spinning on without us, and much heavier shit is happening than what’s between us right now. This, however, feels like one of those profound, defining moments he and I discussed only moments ago.
And not knowing how things will go is going to gnaw at me.
I sneeze, breaking the moment between as Luca’s face warms.
“Bless you,” he says, and I can’t deny how much more it means coming from him.
“Thank you.”