Chapter 11 Adrian
ADRIAN
The crypt smells like centuries of stone and secrets when I descend the narrow stairs, my phone’s flashlight cutting through the darkness. The text I sent was simple: Crypt.
I pace the stone-walled chamber, my cassock swishing against my legs with each agitated turn.
Decades of forgotten parish records line the shelves, dust-covered boxes holding the sins and triumphs of generations.
The weight of history presses down on me, but it’s nothing compared to the weight of what I’m about to confess.
Marcus arrives first, his footsteps heavy on the stairs.
He’s wearing jeans and a black t-shirt that stretches across his chest, and even in my current state of barely controlled panic, I notice how the fabric clings to his shoulders.
His tattooed arms are crossed defensively as he takes in my pacing and my white-knuckled grip on my rosary beads.
“Adrian.” His voice is rough, concerned. “What’s wrong?”
I can’t answer yet. Can’t form the words until we’re all here.
Elijah appears moments later, his golden hair slightly mussed like he was already in bed.
He’s wearing pajama pants and a thin white t-shirt that does nothing to hide the lean muscle beneath.
His blue eyes are alert despite the late hour, tracking my movements with unnerving perception.
“This better be good,” Elijah says, but there’s no real annoyance in his tone. Just worry.
I stop pacing and face them both. The stone walls seem to close in as I force myself to speak.
“We can’t continue like this.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend. “Circling her separately. Pretending we don’t see what the others are doing. The jealousy is going to destroy us.”
Marcus’s jaw clenches. “Adrian—”
“I saw you touch her hand during Mass preparation yesterday.” I cut him off, my control fraying with each word. “Your fingers lingered too long. You looked at her like you wanted to devour her right there in the sanctuary.”
“And I saw you watching Charlie during the homily,” Marcus shoots back, his dark eyes flashing. “Your gaze kept finding her in the third pew. You stumbled over your words twice because you were too busy staring at the way her dress clung to her thighs.”
Heat floods my face, but I don’t deny it. Can’t deny it.
Elijah shifts against the stone wall, and both Marcus and I turn to look at him. His angel face is carefully neutral, but I see the guilt flickering in his eyes.
“What?” I demand.
“I’ve been leaving her notes,” Elijah admits quietly. “In her apartment. In the sheet music. Little things. Testing boundaries.”
“What kind of notes?” Marcus’s voice drops to something dangerous.
“The kind that make her blush.” Elijah’s smile is small, almost apologetic. “The kind that make her bite her lower lip while she reads them. The kind that tell her exactly what I want to do to her.”
The air in the crypt grows thick with tension.
I watch Marcus’s hands curl into fists, his chest rising and falling with carefully controlled breaths.
My own body responds to the image Elijah’s words conjure. Charlie reading those notes, her hazel eyes widening, her teeth worrying that full bottom lip.
“We’ve all fallen,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. They tried to talk about this before, but I wasn’t ready. But I can’t ignore it any longer. “All of us. We’ve all broken our vows. We’ve all become obsessed with the same woman.”
The silence that follows is deafening. Marcus leans against the stone wall, his tattooed arms still crossed, but I see the defeat in his posture. Elijah’s fingers trace patterns on the dusty shelf beside him, a nervous gesture I’ve never seen from him before.
“I…we became involved,” Marcus says finally, his voice rough with guilt and defiance. “In the confessional.” He flicks a look at Elijah.
I turn to Elijah, who has the grace to look slightly embarrassed.
“I heard you,” Elijah admits. “I was in the nave. The acoustics in this church are…excellent.”
“And you didn’t stop us?” Marcus demands.
“I wanted to watch.” Elijah’s honesty is brutal. “I wanted to see her come apart for you. I wanted to memorize the sounds she made so I could imagine them later when I—” He stops himself, but we all know what he was going to say.
Heat pools low in my belly despite the wrongness of this conversation.
I imagine Charlie pressed against the confessional wall, Marcus’s mouth on her throat, her body arching into his touch. The image makes my cock throb painfully against my cassock.
“When I took her in my office,” I confess, the words tearing from somewhere deep inside me. “I quoted scripture and tried to pray away what I was feeling.”
Marcus makes a sound low in his throat. “I’ve seen how you watched her since. It didn’t work.”
“No.” I meet his gaze. “Nothing works. I think about her constantly. The way she moves through this church like she belongs here. The way her dress rides up when she reaches for high shelves. The curve of her breasts beneath her cardigan. The sound she makes when she’s trying not to cry.”
“The way she bites her lip when she’s concentrating,” Elijah adds softly. “The freckles on her shoulders. How her hair smells like vanilla and cinnamon.”
“The way her hips sway when she walks,” Marcus continues, his voice dropping lower. “How her ass looks in those vintage dresses. The pulse point in her throat that races when we stand too close.”
We’re all breathing harder now, the stone chamber filled with the weight of our shared obsession.
I watch Marcus shift against the wall, adjusting himself, and know he’s as hard as I am. Elijah’s fingers have stilled on the shelf, his knuckles white with tension.
“This is insane,” I say, but there’s no conviction in my voice.
“Is it?” Marcus pushes off the wall, moving closer. “We’ve all fallen for her. We’ve all touched her. We’ve all broken our vows. The only question is what we do about it.”
“We can’t all—” I stop, unable to finish the sentence.
“Why not?” Elijah’s voice is quiet but steady.
“She’s drawn to all of us. I see the way she looks at you, Adrian.
Like you’re salvation and damnation wrapped together.
And Marcus…” He turns to the deacon. “She watches you like she’s memorizing every detail.
The way your hands move. The sound of your voice when you speak Spanish. ”
“And you?” Marcus asks.
“She trusts me.” Elijah’s smile is sad. “She lets me see her vulnerable. She brings me her midnight baking and sits with me in the choir loft like we’re the only two people in the world.”
I pace again, my mind spinning. “This is unconventional. Possibly blasphemous.”
“More blasphemous than what we’ve already done?” Marcus’s voice is sharp. “We’ve all claimed her separately. All we’re discussing is being honest about it.”
“She might not want this,” I argue, grasping for any reason to resist what my body is screaming for.
“Then we ask her.” Elijah moves closer, the three of us are standing in a tight circle in the center of the crypt.
“We tell her the truth. That we’ve all fallen.
That we’re willing to share if she’ll have us.
That we won’t fight each other for her because losing her completely is worse than sharing her. ”
I look at Marcus, see the same desperate need in his dark eyes that I feel burning through my veins. Then at Elijah, whose angel face can’t hide the hunger beneath.
“Once in this exact room,” I say slowly, “we swore never to let our fear turn us into cowards again.”
Marcus nods, remembering.
Three years ago, we sat in this crypt and confessed our worst failures.
Isabella, the married vocal coach, me almost killing a man in underground boxing.
We made a pact that night.
No more failures.
No more abandonment.
We’d protect each other, protect this place, never again let shame or fear destroy something good.
“Charlie is exactly the kind of person that pact was meant to protect,” Marcus says, his voice rough. “Someone broken and desperate and trying to do better. Someone who needs us.”
“Someone we need,” Elijah adds quietly.
I close my eyes, feeling the weight of this decision settle over me.
My possessive nature rebels against the idea of sharing her.
I want to claim her completely, mark her as mine alone. But the alternative is tearing apart the brotherhood we’ve built and destroying the family we’ve become.
And losing her entirely.
“If we do this,” I say, opening my eyes, “we do it right. We tell her everything. We give her the choice. And if she chooses us—” My voice cracks slightly. “We don’t abandon her. Ever.”
“Agreed.” Marcus’s hand finds my shoulder, solid and warm.
“Agreed.” Elijah’s hand joins his.
I place my hand over both of theirs, and we stand like that in the ancient crypt, three men of God making a pact that would damn us in the eyes of the Church but might save us in the eyes of each other.
The decision feels both damning and inevitable. Sacred and profane. Right and wrong in equal measure.
But as I look at Marcus and Elijah, see the same desperate hope in their eyes that I feel burning in my chest, I know we’ve already crossed the line.
The only question now is whether Charlie will cross it with us.