Chapter 8 Cillian #2
I press a lingering kiss to the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her shampoo mixed with the musk of our lovemaking, and let my eyes drift closed.
The peace that settles over me is profound, complete—something I've been searching for through years of prayer and confession and spiritual discipline.
For the first time in eight years of serving God and parish, I feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, doing exactly what I was meant to do.
Not kneeling in a pew or standing at an altar, but here, holding this woman who saw through the collar to the man beneath.
We sleep for hours, tangled together, waking only when the room has gone dark. I find us food in her small kitchen and bring it back to bed, and we eat picnic-style on her sheets, talking about everything and nothing.
"What will you do?" she asks, spearing a strawberry with her fork. "Once the laicization goes through? For work, I mean."
"I've been thinking about counseling," I admit. "I spent eight years listening to people's problems. Helping them find peace. Maybe I can keep doing that, just without the collar."
"You'd be good at it," she says, her smile warm and genuine as she sets down her fork. "You have this natural way of making people feel truly heard. Like what they're saying actually matters to you."
"You're the first person who ever made me feel heard," I tell her honestly, my chest tight with the truth of it. "Everyone else in my life just heard the priest—the collar, the title, the authority. You're the only one who saw past all that to the man underneath."
She leans over, closing the small distance between us on the rumpled sheets, and kisses me—soft and sweet and tasting faintly of strawberries. "I always saw you, Nathan," she whispers against my lips. "From the very first moment you walked into that confessional. I saw you."
We make love again as dawn breaks, slow and tender, and then we shower together and face the new day.
There are complications ahead, I know. The diocese will make things difficult.
The parish will gossip. There will be hard conversations and harder choices.
But none of it matters, because I'm not facing it alone.
On Sunday, we attend mass at a different church. St. Catherine's, on the other side of the city, where no one knows our faces or our story. We sit together in the pew, her hand in mine, and I listen to the homily with different ears than I used to.
The priest speaks about transformation. About becoming who you're meant to be, even when it means letting go of who you thought you were. I squeeze Waverly's hand, and she squeezes back, and I know that whatever comes next, we'll face it together.
After mass, we light a candle for her grandmother at the shrine.
"She would have liked you," Waverly says quietly, watching the flame flicker.
"You think so?"
"I know so." She smiles, and there's a peace in her eyes that I've never seen before. "She always told me that real love is terrifying. That it demands everything from you, changes you in ways you never expected. She would have looked at you and seen a man who was brave enough to change."
I pull her close and press a kiss to her temple. "I wasn't brave. I was just desperate not to lose you."
"Same thing," she says. "At least, that's what Nana would say."
We walk home through streets dappled with autumn sunlight, and I feel something shift in my chest. The weight I've been carrying for eight years, the guilt and grief and self-punishment, finally begins to lift. In its place is something lighter. Something that feels like hope.
"What are you thinking?" Waverly asks, watching my face.
"That I wasted so many years running from this.
From life. From the possibility of loving someone and being loved in return.
" I stop walking and turn to face her. "I'm not going to waste any more time.
I want to build a life with you, Waverly.
A real life. With a home and a future and everything I never let myself want before. "
Her eyes fill with tears. "Is that a proposal?"
"Not yet." I smile. "When I propose, you'll know. There will be a ring and probably some more kneeling. But this is a promise. A promise that I'm in this for the long haul. That whatever comes next, we face it together."
She rises on her toes and kisses me, right there on the sidewalk, in broad daylight, where anyone could see. When she pulls back, she's smiling.
"Together," she agrees. "That sounds perfect to me."
We walk the rest of the way home hand in hand, and I think about all the years I spent behind a collar, hiding from the world, punishing myself for sins I didn't commit.
I think about the confessional where she first admitted her desire, the alcove where I first touched her face, the platform where I dropped to my knees and chose her in front of everyone.
I've spent my whole life serving something I never truly believed in.
Now I've found something worth believing in. Someone worth kneeling for.
And I'm never letting go.