Chapter 36 Charlie
CHARLIE
The email arrives before dawn, sender unknown, subject line blank.
My hands shake as I open it on my phone, still half-asleep in my small apartment.
The video file loads slowly, and for a moment I think it’s spam, something I should delete without watching.
Then I see him.
Adrian. Twenty years younger, shirtless in a makeshift ring surrounded by screaming crowds.
His body is leaner, harder, covered in sweat and someone else’s blood. But it’s his face that makes my stomach drop.
The savage pleasure twisting his features as he demolishes his opponent, fists moving with brutal precision.
Each punch lands with sickening force, and the crowd roars its approval.
This isn’t self-defense or sport.
This is violence for its own sake, and the man delivering it looks like he’s enjoying every second.
The Adrian I know quotes scripture and grips his rosary beads until his knuckles turn white.
This Adrian grins as his opponent hits the ground and doesn’t get up.
The video ends. A single line of text appears. His time is up. One fight. Or this goes public.
I watch it again, unable to look away. The way his muscles flex with each movement.
The blood on his knuckles. The wild look in his gray eyes that I’ve never seen before, not even in our most desperate moments together.
My chest tightens with something that isn’t quite fear but isn’t quite anything else either.
The message is clear. Adrian’s carefully constructed redemption, twenty years of penance and prayer, could be destroyed with a single click.
The underground boxer turned priest would become a scandal, a cautionary tale, proof that some men can’t escape their nature.
I should be horrified.
I should see him differently now, understand that the violence he keeps so carefully controlled is real and dangerous.
Instead, all I can think is that he’s still the same man who held me in his office, who whispered prayers against my skin, who looks at me like I’m both his salvation and his damnation.
The past doesn’t change that. It just makes him more real, more human, more mine.
I find him in the church basement gym hours later. The space smells like old sweat and decades of violence absorbed into concrete floors.
Adrian attacks the heavy bag with bleeding knuckles, his white undershirt soaked through, his movements precise and brutal.
Each impact sends the bag swinging on its chains, and I watch from the doorway as he loses himself in the rhythm.
Jab. Cross. Hook. The combinations flow like muscle memory, like prayer, like something he’s been suppressing for twenty years that’s finally breaking free.
He senses my presence and stops mid-punch, chest heaving. When he turns and sees me standing there, shame floods his face so completely it makes my chest ache.
His hands drop to his sides, blood dripping from split knuckles onto the concrete floor.
“You saw it.” His voice is rough, defeated. Not a question.
I move closer, my eyes tracking the way his chest rises and falls with each ragged breath.
The undershirt clings to every hard plane of muscle, and even now, even with blood on his hands and violence in his eyes, I want him. “Tommy sent it to me.”
Adrian’s jaw clenches. “I was going to tell you. Before you found out like this.” He looks down at his damaged hands. “I was twenty. Angry. Looking for any way to hurt the world before it could hurt me first. The underground fights paid well, and I was good at it. Too good.”
“What happened?” I’m close enough now to see the old scars on his knuckles, the ones I’ve traced with my fingers in the dark but never asked about.
“I nearly killed someone.” The confession comes out flat, emotionless.
“Bar fight that got out of control. I couldn’t stop hitting him even after he went down.
They pulled me off before I could finish it, but barely.
” His gray eyes meet mine, and the shame in them is devastating.
“That’s who I was, Charlie. A man who enjoyed violence.
Who got off on the power of destroying someone with his bare hands. ”
The words should scare me.
Should make me see him differently, help me understand that the control he maintains so carefully is the only thing standing between civilization and the monster he used to be.
Instead, I take his bloody hands in mine. His breath catches as my fingers trace the split knuckles, the swollen joints, the evidence of what he’s been fighting against. “You’re not that man anymore.”
“Aren’t I?” His voice drops to something dangerous. “You saw the video. You saw what I’m capable of. This man, Tommy, wants me to fight again, and part of me…” He stops, jaw clenching. “Part of me wants to. Wants to feel that power again, that release. What does that make me?”
“Human.” I press my palm against his chest, feeling his heart hammer beneath my touch. “It makes you human, Adrian. You’re not a monster for having violent thoughts. You’re a man for choosing not to act on them.”
His hands frame my face, thumbs stroking my cheekbones, and I watch him wage an internal battle.
The priest who wants to push me away for my own good.
The man who wants to pull me close and forget everything else exists.
“I’m terrified you’ll see me differently now.
That you’ll look at me and see that savage in the ring instead of. ..”
“Instead of what?” I lean into his touch, my body responding to his proximity despite everything.
The heat radiating from him. The way his gray eyes track the curve of my neck, the swell of my breasts beneath my dress.
“Instead of the man who quotes scripture between kisses? Who holds me like I’m something precious?
Who’s spent twenty years trying to be better? ”
“Yes.” The word comes out rough, desperate.
“I’m not afraid of who you were.” My fingers trace the line of his jaw, feeling the stubble there. “I’m only afraid of losing who you are now. Of this Tommy destroying everything you’ve built because you won’t give him what he wants.”
Adrian’s control fractures. He pulls me against him, his mouth finding mine with desperate hunger.
The kiss tastes like blood and salt and twenty years of suppressed need.
His hands slide into my hair, tilting my head back so he can kiss me deeper, and I feel the tremor running through his body as he fights himself.
He rests his forehead against mine, breathing hard. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Good thing that’s not your decision to make.”
Later that afternoon, I’m organizing donated clothes in the parish hall when Isabella appears in the doorway.
She’s wearing a tailored dress that makes me feel young and inadequate in my simple cotton dress.
Her dark hair is perfectly styled, her makeup flawless, and everything about her screams sophistication I’ll never achieve.
“Charlie.” Her smile is warm, but her eyes are calculating. “Do you have a moment?”
My stomach drops, but I nod. She crosses to where I’m working, carrying a leather photo album I didn’t notice before. She sits on the edge of a table, patting the space beside her in invitation.
“I wanted to show you something.” She opens the album, and I see them.
Marcus and Isabella, years younger, their faces full of hope and possibility.
In one photo, they’re laughing at some shared joke. In another, his arm is around her shoulders, protective and tender. They look like a couple planning a future together.
“We were going to have three children,” Isabella says softly, her finger tracing one of the photos.
“Marcus wanted a big family. Said he grew up lonely and wanted his kids to always have each other.” She turns the page, showing more images.
“We’d picked out names. Planned where we’d live.
He was going to leave the priesthood for me, build a normal life. ”
Each word plants seeds of doubt that take root immediately.
I watch Marcus across the room through the doorway, see him laugh at something Elijah says, and wonder if I’m being selfish.
If keeping him trapped in this unconventional arrangement is denying him the life he really wants.
“Can you give him that?” Isabella’s voice is gentle, sympathetic.
My throat tightens. “I don’t know.”
“I’m not trying to hurt you.” She closes the album, her expression kind. “I just think you should consider what’s best for him.”
She leaves, and I stand there surrounded by donated clothes and crushing doubt. Marcus deserves better than this. They all do. Better than a girl who stole from a church, who’s working off her debt, who can’t offer them anything except complications and risk.
I escape to the farmers’ market that evening, needing space to think. The late afternoon sun casts everything in golden light as I wander between stalls, examining vegetables I can barely afford.
My mind spins through Isabella’s words, through the image of Adrian’s violence, through the weight of everything threatening to crush us.
“Charlie Davis?”
I turn to find a woman in her fifties, gray hair pulled back in a practical bun, wearing an apron dusted with flour. Her face is kind, her smile genuine.
“I’m Maggie Anderson. I own The Flour Pot bakery downtown.” She extends her hand. “I’ve been hoping to run into you. Those lemon bars you made for Easter? I haven’t stopped thinking about them.”
My face flushes. “Thank you. That’s very kind.”
“It’s not kindness, it’s truth.” Maggie’s eyes are sharp, assessing. “I’ve been baking for thirty years, and I know real talent when I taste it. Tell me, where did you learn?”
We talk about baking, about Grandma Rose’s recipes, about the joy of creating something beautiful from simple ingredients.
Maggie listens with genuine interest, asking complex questions that next my understanding of the craft.
Finally, she pulls a business card from her apron pocket.
“My head baker just quit. I need someone who can start in two weeks. Full-time, early morning shifts. Benefits after ninety days.” She presses the card into my hand. “Call me by Friday if you’re interested. I think you’d be perfect.”
I stare at the card, my hands shaking. More pay. Benefits. A real job doing something I love, something I’m good at. It’s everything I’ve wanted but never thought possible.
“I…” My voice cracks. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll think about it.” Maggie’s smile is warm. “You have talent, Charlie. Real talent. Don’t waste it.”
She walks away, leaving me standing in the middle of the farmers’ market clutching her card like a lifeline.
This could change everything.
Financial independence. A career.
A future that doesn’t depend on working off a debt or hiding in shadows.
But the timing is catastrophic.
How can I start a new job when my entire life is imploding?
I drive back to the church in a daze, Maggie’s card burning a hole in my pocket.
In my small apartment, I sit on the edge of my bed and stare at it. A phone number that could change my life.
I want this so badly it physically hurts. I want the independence, the purpose, the chance to build something real.
But even worse, I don’t want to leave them.
I don’t want to give up the men who’ve become my entire world, who look at me like I’m worth keeping despite all my failures.
My phone feels heavy in my hand as I dial the number.
It rings once.
Twice.
Then voicemail picks up, Maggie’s cheerful voice asking me to leave a message.
I hang up without speaking.
Not yet. I need to think.