Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
LANZ
Early Sunday morning, very early, and the chapel is cold and hushed. Not even the rectory staff is here yet to set up. No movement except for the gentle play of dust motes in the colored shafts of light streaming onto the flagstones and me.
I’ve been kneeling so long that I’m losing feeling in my feet. My fingers interweave on the bench in front of me. And yet I haven’t asked for a single damn thing—forgiveness, understanding, wisdom.
I can’t.
I woke up early as usual. My body’s too accustomed to our early morning warm-ups, but it’s Sunday, the one day we have off from those, and so I figured…I figured this was where I needed to be.
I messed up, I fucked up, big time. I shouldn’t have kissed her, even if I liked it, even if she liked it—which, there’s no way she could have—and I fucked up even more, because we got seen.
I’ve never been big on confessing my sins. Self-awareness is good, I guess, but the whole self-flagellation thing is a step too far for me—I torture myself plenty in my own mind. I don’t need to invite God or a priest to step in as well .
But right now, I need all the help I can get.
The problem is, I just…can’t make it all line up. Temptation, sin, wickedness, adultery—the words don’t mean anything to me, don’t apply to where I am, to who she is.
She’s not darkness; she’s light. She’s not degradation or corruption; she’s…a higher standard.
I shouldn’t have kissed her, I know that much. And yet I also know that if I were ever going to kiss her again—which I won’t—I’d have to be twice as worthy and three times as good as I am now. A better fighter, a better knight, a better man.
But Jesus. If this is what winning does to me, then I’m a goner. If this is what happens when I’m put to the test, I’m failing at every turn.
I let my head fall to my fingers and tense my jaw, when suddenly, I hear footsteps—a gentle rustle of movement to my right as someone slides in next to me, kneels.
I don’t need to look up to see who it is. Callahan.
It’s still silent, but a different kind of silence than before; the incense-scented air feels taut, electric, thick, even though it’s cold and dry in here. I press my lips together, run my tongue over my teeth.
Cal speaks first.
“Praying?” he says.
“Trying to,” I mutter. “Can’t think of any words to say.”
Cal gives a low chuckle.
“Should have been raised Catholic. Say Hail Marys in your sleep.”
He’s got a rosary in his hands, I notice now. I’ve never seen that before.
But then again, I’ve never been in this kind of situation either.
I clasp my fingers together a little more tightly and tip my chin up to look at the rose window and the stained glass scene beneath it—the altar silent and draped with a red cloth, the arches of the choir loft looming shadowy.
I made a mistake. Or several. Maybe. Does it count as more than one if it was a single action? Or was it even? Have I ever been doing the right thing? Or is this all just a selfish quest to get freed from my own fate? Is that why I treat the vows like an escape hatch, Cal like a loophole?
He won’t talk, either. I know that much about Cal. Calling him a man of few words would be a generous overstatement.
“Are you…doing okay?”
That’s the best I can manage. Best I can phrase it in a semi-public place where we could be overheard.
I can’t meet his eyes; I can’t look anywhere now, except for the very center of the rose window—the hundreds or thousands of multicolored facets, winking and gleaming as somewhere in the east the sun is rising.
“Fine.” Cal’s tone is even, controlled, and I realize how hollow my own words sound compared to his. He never lies, except by omission. Never is anything but stalwart. He doesn’t seem so plagued with inner turmoil. “You?”
“I don’t know,” I reply at last, genuinely uncertain.
I can practically hear Cal swallow. He’s put his hands up on the bench too, stringing the rosary beads through his fingers—even if he’s praying, he’s doing it silently.
“The pressure got to me, or not—the pressure, you know how it is after a bout like that. It’s nerves, I guess.
Just….adrenaline. Hard to stay focused. You know. ”
Cal shakes his head. “Not really.”
Right. Of course he doesn’t know. Cal’s…
intent. Dedicated. I’ve known that since the moment I met him, written all over him, the way he walks, talks, holds himself.
I never could have been like that—never would have been able to pledge myself to waiting for marriage, for Christ’s sake.
The Dell’Acqua curse notwithstanding, I fall hard and fast.
Not Cal. Even when he’s stumbled, he’s never fallen .
And his next words send an arrow straight to my heart.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No,” I say quickly. Fuck, God, no, Cal. “Don’t…say things like that. You don’t need to do anything. To…change anything.”
He knows what I mean. I know he does.
“I’ll get back on track,” I go on. “I just…” I scratch the back of my head. “Momentary lapse.”
Cal doesn’t move for a moment. Then he nods.
“Okay.” He looks at me, directly, for the first time in minutes. “I know how much this means to you.”
I don’t know what this he’s even talking about.
But no matter what…he’s right.
The light from the stained glass window plays across his face, and unable to stare at him any longer, I look up at it too. Beneath the rose window is a tableau of the Last Supper—serene disciples, a table piled high with food, and a shining gold chalice in the middle.
I have to shake my head.
“They don’t even know if it’s a cup,” Callahan says.
“What?” I turn to him, frowning.
He nods just barely at the stained glass.
“The Holy Grail. It’s disputed. Could be any kind of object. Lots of people think it’s the same as the Philosopher’s Stone. Or a place. Garden of Eden, Fountain of Youth, Lost City of Atlantis.”
Oh. I don’t want to talk about this now—logistics, semantics—but this is what Cal does, I’ve noticed.
Changes the subject. Gets down to brass tacks.
Anything but talk about feelings.
“Huh,” I say. “Go figure.”
“Yeah.” Cal’s voice is low. “Do you think…” He pauses. Continues. “Do you think this is all worth it?”
I chew the inside of my cheek. I don’t want to lie to him, but I don’t know if I can tell him the truth.
Being one of us knights has been—I hate to overstate it—but basically what brought Cal back to life.
It gave him a purpose after losing his parents, the swim team.
It gave him, as terrible as it sounds, me—something to live for.
If I tell him what I think, what I’ve been thinking , it could destroy him and—selfishly, I admit—it would destroy me, meaning that everything I’d worked for was just an excuse.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” I say. “And if we’re the ones to do it, then we have to do it.”
It’s not an answer to his question, not really. But Cal says nothing in reply. For a moment, I imagine the tension dissipating—that we won’t have to talk about the one thing I know we’re both thinking about, or at least that I’m thinking about enough for the both of us.
“Does she change anything?”
God damn it.
“No,” I manage.
It’s a half-truth again.
Because the whole truth is, I can’t let go of what I’m feeling for Gwenna—the magnetic pull that she has on me. It feels like the only way to rid myself of it would be to carve my soul out of my body somehow. Let it all go at once—the curse and my life. Which, I suppose, is how it works.
And yet, it hasn’t changed how I feel about Cal. It doesn’t make me want him less or care about him less.
That’s why I have to answer the way I do.
“Well, well, well.” The cracking of boots startles both of us—me so much I nearly jump out of the pew.
“Isn’t this a nice little surprise.” Kai cocks his head at us as he advances from the back of the nave. “Here I am thinking I’ll have the place to myself to clear my conscience over nicking that Sainte-Odile guy, but what am I to find but Callahan with Pretty Boy on his knees. ”
The barest flash of panic goes across Callahan’s eyes. I see it. I feel it.
“That what you’re here to confess?”
Neither of us says anything. Kai’s expression shifts from smirking and smug to curious, intrigued—as if he might have hit a nerve and could pry more out of us.
No, God, no. A one-time lapse is, well, one thing. But a continued…whatever-it-is-that-Cal-and-I-have. Affair? I don’t even know what to call it. That would be something else entirely.
And for Kai to find out…it’d be almost as bad as Kingston finding out.
No , I think, worse .
I have to throw him off the trail, and fast.
“I kissed Gwenna,” I blurt out.
The admission hangs in the stillness of the morning air. But it works.
Kai’s eyebrows leap up, his mouth slightly open, total surprise overcoming him.
“You what ?” he says, almost spitting the T at the end of the word.
“It was after the match,” I say. “Adrenaline, excitement, I don’t know. She gave me a hug and I just—” I loosen my shoulders, raised my hands in defeat, like the pathetic excuse for a man that I am. “I wasn’t thinking. I couldn’t think. And so I’m just here to…”
Kai waves a hand in the air. “Hold on to your panties.” He draws a quick sign of the cross over his chest, curls his hands to his breastbone, closes his eyes, and says the quickest prayer I’ve ever seen.
“I can’t believe you,” he says, and there’s no teasing in his voice anymore—just disgust, so raw and undiluted that it actually surprises me, even from Kai.
“Everyone makes mistakes,” Callahan says, and my heart squeezes to hear him defend me—defend me against the very thing that I know hurts him three times as much as it could ever hurt the integrity of our code.
“Cram it, Ms. Rachel,” Kai says, then turns to me. “Does Kingston know?”
“No,” I say quickly. “And he’s not going to find out. I’m here. I got forgiveness. I’m…I’m good.”
But the look on Kai’s face doesn’t go away. Like I’m a worm. Like I’m reprehensible.
“You don’t understand,” I say. “It was…”
“Of course I understand,” Kai says, fierce but cold. “Of course I do.” He spreads his arms wide. “You think I don’t have trouble with these vows? Me, of all people? For Christ’s sake.” His scowl at me is next level. “You shouldn’t even be on this team, Lanz. ”
My name, not Pretty Boy or some other demeaning nickname. I don’t know what to say because I don’t know that he’s wrong.
“Don’t tell Kingston,” I say quickly. Begging. A pathetic 10-year-old caught up past his bedtime. “Please, I just…”
Kai puts up a hand to silence me.
“I won’t,” he says. His eyes dart up to the stained glass.
“Stays between you and God. And”—he glares at Callahan—“big guy here, I guess.” He swivels back to me.
“But you know why I won’t tell?” He advances, jabs a finger barely an inch from my eyes.
“Because you can’t keep a secret for shit.
And I have a feeling it’s just a matter of time before you slip up again and fuck all of us over. ”
With that, he spins on his heel and leaves.