The Priest’s Obsession (Obsession of the Month #1)

Chapter 1 Waverly

WAVERLY

The confessional smells like old wood and incense, and my heart is beating so hard I'm certain everyone in the church can hear it.

I've been putting this off for three weeks now, finding excuses not to come, telling myself I don't need absolution for thoughts that haven't become actions.

But the thoughts have gotten worse. They've become vivid and detailed and so consuming that I can barely look at him during mass without my face going hot.

So here I am, kneeling in the dark, waiting for the elderly woman ahead of me to finish her confession.

My palms are sweating against the worn velvet of my skirt, and I keep touching my grandmother's locket like it might give me courage.

Nana would probably have something wise to say about this.

Or maybe she'd just laugh and tell me that wanting things is part of being alive.

The woman exits, and I force myself to stand. My legs feel unsteady as I step inside the confessional and pull the door shut behind me. The screen between us is dark, but I can see the shadow of his profile on the other side, and even that outline makes my stomach flip.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned." My voice comes out thin and reedy. "It's been two months since my last confession."

"Go on, my child." His voice is low and measured, the same voice that reads Scripture on Sundays and makes every word sound like it matters. I've memorized the cadence of it. I've imagined that voice saying other things, things that make me press my thighs together in the dark.

I start with the easy confessions first, the ones that cost me nothing to admit. "I lied to my boss about being sick when I just didn't want to come in. I skipped mass once because I was tired. I've had uncharitable thoughts about my neighbor who plays music too loud."

"Is that all?"

No. No, it's not even close to all. I swallow hard and grip my hands together in my lap so tightly that my knuckles ache. "I've been having impure thoughts," I whisper. "About someone I can't have. Someone forbidden."

The silence on the other side of the screen stretches long enough that I wonder if he's fallen asleep. Then I hear it: the shift of fabric, the subtle change in his breathing. He's affected. I don't know whether that terrifies me or thrills me.

"Tell me about these thoughts." His voice has dropped even lower, and there's something rough in it now, something that wasn't there before.

"I think about him constantly. The way his hands move when he speaks.

The way he looks at people like he can see right through them.

" I'm rambling now, the words spilling out faster than I can control them.

"I imagine what it would feel like if he touched me.

If he said my name. I know it's wrong, Father.

I know I shouldn't want someone I can never have. But I can't make it stop."

"These thoughts," he says slowly, and I hear him shift again on his side of the screen. "Do you act on them?"

"No, Father. I just think about him. I can't stop thinking about him."

Another long pause. Through the latticed screen, I can see his hands moving. He's holding his rosary, I think. Running the beads through his fingers the way he always does during contemplative moments in mass. I've watched those hands so many times. I've imagined them on my skin.

"This man you speak of. Does he know how you feel?"

My throat tightens. "I don't know. Maybe. I think he sees me differently than he sees other people. But I could be imagining that. I could be seeing what I want to see."

"And what is it you want to see?"

The question catches me off guard because it doesn't sound like something a priest should ask during confession.

It sounds personal. It sounds like he actually wants to know the answer.

I press my hand against my collarbone, feeling the rapid flutter of my pulse beneath my fingers.

"I want him to want me back," I admit. "Even though I know that's impossible.

Even though I know it would ruin everything. "

Silence. Then, very quietly: "Come back tomorrow. Same time."

I wait for the rest of it. The absolution, the penance, the Our Fathers and Hail Marys that are supposed to wash me clean.

But nothing comes. He just sits there on the other side of the screen, breathing in that changed way, and I realize with a shock that runs through my entire body that he's not going to absolve me.

He's not going to give me penance. He's just going to let me walk out of here with my sins still clinging to my skin.

"Father?" My voice shakes.

"Tomorrow, Waverly." The way he says my name makes my breath catch. Like it's something precious. Like it's something he's been holding in his mouth and finally letting go. "Come back tomorrow."

I stumble out of the confessional on legs that don't feel like they belong to me.

The church is nearly empty now, just a few scattered parishioners praying in the pews, and I don't let myself look toward the altar where he sometimes stands after confession.

I push through the heavy doors and out into the cooling evening air, and I don't stop walking until I'm three blocks away with my hand pressed against the brick wall of a building, trying to remember how to breathe.

He knows. He has to know. I didn't say his name, but I didn't have to. The way his breathing changed, the way he said my name at the end like a confession of his own... he knows it's him I think about. Him I dream about. Him I touch myself imagining.

I should be mortified. I should transfer parishes, find a new church where no one knows me and the priest is old and kind and doesn't make me feel like I'm burning from the inside out. That would be the sensible thing to do. The good-girl thing to do.

Instead, I'm already thinking about tomorrow.

My apartment building sits across from St. Augustin's, which felt like a sign when I first moved here three months ago.

I'd just lost Nana, the only family I had left, and I was drowning in grief and loneliness and the terrifying freedom of being completely alone in the world.

The church was a comfort. The rituals were familiar and steady when everything else felt like chaos.

I started attending mass on Sundays, then twice a week, then more often than I'd like to admit.

I climb the three flights of stairs to my apartment, unlock the door with hands that still aren't quite steady, and stand in my small living room watching the evening light fade through the windows.

From here, I can see the church spire, and if I look just right, I can see the rectory where he lives.

Where he's probably returning right now after hearing my confession.

After hearing me describe how much I want him.

I sink onto my couch and press my grandmother's locket between my palms. "What am I doing, Nana?" I whisper to the empty room. "What am I doing?"

She doesn't answer, of course. She's been gone four months now, and the silence where her voice used to be is the loneliest thing I've ever known.

She raised me after my parents died when I was eight, and for fourteen years she was my whole world.

My best friend. My only family. And now I'm here in this city where I don't know anyone, working at a bookshop that barely pays my rent, going to a church where I've developed an impossible, sinful obsession with the priest.

The worst part is that I've spent my whole life being good.

Being quiet. Being the kind of girl who never causes problems, who follows the rules, who makes herself small so she doesn't inconvenience anyone.

And for what? I'm twenty-two years old and I've never been in love, never had a real relationship, never let anyone close enough to hurt me.

I'm careful and cautious and invisible, and it's kept me safe, but it's also kept me empty.

When Father Brennan looks at me, I don't feel empty. I feel terrifyingly full.

The night stretches on, and I try all my usual tricks for calming down.

I make tea that I don't drink. I open a book that I can't read.

I take a shower and let the water run until it goes cold, and still my mind keeps circling back to the confessional.

To his voice. To the way he told me to come back tomorrow without giving me absolution.

Eventually, I give up on sleep and go to my window.

The church is dark except for one window in the rectory.

His study, I've learned from watching. I've noticed the patterns of his life the same way I notice everything about him.

He reads late into the night. He takes walks around the church grounds at dawn.

He smokes occasionally, though he tries to hide it, and I've seen him standing in the shadows by the entrance after evening mass, the ember of his cigarette glowing in the dark.

As I watch, a silhouette moves behind the curtain. He's there. He's awake. And I wonder if he's thinking about me the way I'm thinking about him. If he's replaying my confession in his mind. If he's horrified by what I told him or if some part of him, some small and secret part, wants me back.

My hand drifts to my throat, tracing down to my collarbone, and I think about how it would feel if those were his fingers.

If he came to my apartment right now and pushed me against the wall and told me all the things I've been imagining him saying.

My skin feels too tight, too hot, and I let my hand drift lower before I catch myself and pull away.

The guilt that floods through me is familiar and unwelcome. I've been feeling it for weeks now, every time I let my thoughts wander somewhere they shouldn't go. But beneath the guilt, there's something else. Something that feels dangerously like power.

He was affected. He didn't absolve me. He told me to come back.

I press my palm against the cold glass of the window, watching that single lit window in the rectory. "I'll go back," I whisper to myself, to Nana, to the universe. "God help me, I'll go back."

Below, in the shadows by the church entrance, something moves. A figure stepping back into the darkness. The brief glow of something that might be a cigarette, there and then gone.

I tell myself I imagined it. I tell myself it's nothing.

But my heart is pounding as I step away from the window, and when I finally fall into bed, I dream of gray-green eyes and hands that know exactly how to make me sin.