Chapter 25 Saint
Saint
The walls of this house are closing in on me.
I’ve memorized every crack in the ceiling, every knot in the wooden floorboards, every pattern the afternoon light makes as it moves across the bedroom walls.
Two weeks of healing. Two weeks of antibiotics and bandage changes and Calder’s gentle hands applying ointment to the brand on my hip.
Two weeks of being treated like glass that might shatter at any moment.
I’m not glass. I’m not fragile. And I’m going to lose my mind if I spend one more hour staring at these four walls.
The house is quiet. Calder left before dawn, muttering about meeting Sawyer and handling business I’m not supposed to ask about. He kissed my forehead, told me to rest, and disappeared into the gray morning light like he always does. Like I’m something precious to be left behind and protected.
I don’t want to be protected anymore. I want to feel like myself again.
The thought hits me as I’m standing at the kitchen window, watching a hawk circle over the distant pastures.
Today is Friday. And on Fridays, the church holds its community sale.
Tables set up in the fellowship hall are piled with donated clothes and baked goods and old books.
Women from town gather to gossip and sort and price things.
My father oversees it all with his gentle smile and patient presence.
I used to help every week. Used to spend Friday and Saturday mornings folding donated sweaters and arranging homemade preserves and listening to Mrs. Garrison complain about her arthritis while Mrs. Peterson nodded along sympathetically. It was boring and predictable and wonderfully normal.
I want that normalcy so badly it hurts.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I’m pulling on jeans and one of the soft sweaters Calder bought me. The movement tugs at my hip, the brand still tender beneath the bandage, but the pain is manageable now. Dull. Constant. Something I’m learning to live with.
The real challenge is getting there. Calder took the truck, and I don’t have keys to any of the other vehicles on the property. I could walk, but it’s miles to town, and my hip isn’t ready for that kind of strain.
Which leaves one option.
I find Levi at the barn. Restocking shelves in the small building that serves as the ranch’s unofficial gathering place. He looks up when I walk in, surprise flicking across his face. I could look around, study the stalls, but I keep my eyes on his face.
“Well, look who’s up and moving around.” He sets down a bottle of something, horse shampoo maybe, and leans against a high-top table set nearby, that easy grin spreading across his features. “Calder know you’re out of bed?”
“Calder’s not here.”
“I noticed.” His eyebrows rise. “Hence my question.”
“I need a ride to town.”
Levi’s grin falters slightly. “Town? As in, Black Hollow Creek. Where people are. Where people will see you.”
“Yes.”
“Does my brother know about this little field trip?”
“No. And I’d prefer if he didn’t find out until it’s too late to stop me.”
Levi lets out a low whistle, shaking his head.
“You’ve got guts, Saint. I’ll give you that.
Calder’s going to lose his mind when he finds out.
And he will find out. This is Black Hollow Creek.
Someone’s going to see you and mention it, and then my brother’s going to come looking for whoever helped you escape his protective custody. ”
“I’m not escaping anything. I just want to go to the church sale. For a few hours. You know, do normal people things.” My voice cracks slightly on the last words, betraying more than I intended.
Levi’s expression softens, and he studies me for a long moment, a decision forming behind his eyes. With a sigh, he reaches for his keys.
“You’re going to get me killed, you know that?”
Relief floods through me. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. Thank me if we both survive Calder’s reaction.” He grabs his jacket and gestures toward the door. “Come on. Before I change my mind.”
The drive into town feels surreal. The last time I made this trip, I was newly married and terrified, trying to sell a lie to save my life. Now the landscape slides past the windows of Levi’s Jeep, familiar and foreign all at once.
“So,” Levi says, breaking the silence. “The church sale, huh? That’s what you’re risking my brother’s wrath for?”
“It’s a thing I used to do. Before.” I watch a hawk wheel overhead, dark against the pale sky. “I want to feel like myself again.”
“Heavy stuff for a Friday morning.”
“My life has been pretty heavy lately.”
He laughs, short and genuine. “Fair point.” He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “Look, I get it. Being cooped up on the ranch isn’t exactly a party. My brother means well, but he’s got all the emotional intelligence of a fence post sometimes.”
“That’s not entirely fair.”
“Are you defending him?” Levi shoots me a look of genuine surprise. “After everything?”
I don’t have an answer for that. The truth is too complicated, too tangled up in moments of unexpected tenderness. So I just shrug and watch the town come into view.
Black Hollow Creek looks exactly the same.
The false-front buildings, the cracked asphalt of Main Street, the creek glinting through cottonwoods in the distance.
But as we pull up to the church, I feel the weight of invisible eyes.
People on the sidewalk pause to stare. Curtains twitch in windows.
The whole town knows who I am now. What I am. A Bishop.
“You sure about this?” Levi asks as he parks.
No. Not at all. But I nod anyway and push open the door.
The fellowship hall is exactly as I remember.
Folding tables covered with mismatched tablecloths, boxes of donations waiting to be sorted, the smell of old books, and Mrs. Patterson’s famous cinnamon rolls.
A cluster of women looks up as I enter, and the conversation dies so abruptly it might as well have been shot.
I recognize all of them. Mrs. Garrison from the feed store. Mrs. Peterson from the hardware store. Ellen Mackenzie, who runs the bakery. Women I’ve known my whole life, women who watched me grow up, who pinched my cheeks and asked about my grades and told me what a blessing I was to my father.
Now they’re staring at me like I’m a stranger, and even worse than that, like I’m some sort of threat. The whispers start almost immediately. Hushed voices behind cupped hands.
Did you hear? Can you believe she married a Bishop? I catch fragments, enough to understand the shape of what they’re saying, even if I can’t make out every word.
My chest tightens. This was a mistake. I should turn around, find Levi, go back to the ranch and the safety of walls that don’t judge me. I should never have come.
I’m already stepping backward toward the door when my father’s voice cuts through the whispers.
“Saint can work the book table.”
He doesn’t look at me when he says it. Doesn’t cross the room or pull me into a hug. He just sets down the stack of hymnals in his hands and gestures vaguely toward the corner where donated paperbacks are piled in cardboard boxes.
“We’re shorthanded,” he adds, still not meeting my eyes. “Could use the help.”
The other women exchange glances.
Mrs. Garrison opens her mouth like she’s about to object, but something in my father’s posture stops her. He’s protecting me, I realize, in his own stilted, uncomfortable way. Giving me a reason to stay that has nothing to do with him wanting me here.
“Thank you,” I manage.
He nods once, brief and businesslike, then turns back to his own work.
The distance between us feels like miles. Things have been tense between us since he came to the house. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to bridge that gap right now. Not when I can’t tell him the truth yet.
I take my place at the book table anyway because it’s better than running and proving everyone right about the preacher’s daughter who married a monster.
For the next hour, I lose myself in the simple rhythm of work.
Sorting paperbacks by genre. Pricing old hardcovers.
Arranging donated Bibles and devotionals in neat rows.
The whispers continue at the edges of my awareness, but I push them down, refuse to let them take root.
Fuck it, I think, surprising myself with the vehemence. I can’t change who I married.
Can’t undo the brand on my hip or the ring on my finger. But I can decide whether I let the whispers define me. Whether I shrink into nothing or stand tall despite it all.
The girl I was before would have cared desperately what these women thought. Would have crumbled under their judgment, apologized for existing, tried to make herself small enough to be acceptable.
That girl is dead. I’m someone new now. Someone forged in fire and fear. And this new version of me refuses to break.
“You always did have a knack for organization.”
I startle at my father’s voice. He’s standing beside me, studying the neat rows of paperbacks I’ve arranged by author. It’s the first time he’s spoken to me directly since pointing me toward the book table.
“Your mother was the same way,” he adds quietly. “Everything had its place.”
“I miss her.” The words slip out before I can stop them. “Especially lately.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. I expect him to walk away, to retreat to that careful distance he’s been keeping. Instead, he sighs, heavy and tired.
“I don’t understand your choices, Saintlyn.” His voice is low, meant only for me. “I don’t understand any of this, and I won’t even lie and say the day will come when I do, because I don’t think it ever will.”
“Dad—”
“But you’re an adult.” He cuts me off, jaw tight. “I can’t stop you from living the life you’ve chosen. Even if it’s not the life I wanted for you.”
It stings more than I expected. The quiet resignation in his voice. The way he won’t quite look at me even now.
“I love you, Dad.” My voice comes out smaller than I intended.