Chapter 4
RAFAEL
I’D WRAPPED UP my duties for the night and gone back to the rectory, but when an hour passed and I couldn’t sleep, I found myself heading back to my office.
The church was empty and so quiet I could hear the clock ticking out the seconds, a monotonous sound that grated on my patience. Or maybe it was just that I was annoyed with myself already, with the thoughts running through my mind that I couldn’t seem to stop.
Memories always flooded back in after seeing Alessio, something I’d learned to expect and deal with, but the last few weeks it’d been nearly impossible to get a moment’s rest from him, and I knew why.
Because he needed me. Or, rather, needed my help. Whatever he was going through, he wasn’t opening up to me or anyone—that much was obvious from the way he’d withdrawn.
The Alessio I’d known was fearless. Never let anyone or anything get to him. Provoked to the limit and somehow still managed to make everyone around him love him anyway.
But that was the problem, wasn’t it? I wasn’t supposed to love him, not as anything more than one of the parishioners under my care. That was the promise I’d made to God and to myself, and that was what had me moving, heading back into the sanctuary to pray.
Pray away all these thoughts and feelings I had no right to have.
I dropped to one knee on the stairs, and mere seconds went by before I heard it, the sound of someone opening the secret entrance, the one that connected to a tunnel that ran beneath St. Andrews. There were only seven men who knew about it, other than myself, and only seven men who would use it.
But they’d just come last night. Who could it—
My thoughts abruptly left me as I turned my head to see a glimpse of long, dark hair that haunted me.
No. Not tonight. I wasn’t strong enough.
I slowly rose as Alessio stumbled inside, jacket hanging off one shoulder as he started forward. He hip-checked the edge of one of the pews and cursed, but then broke into a fit of laughter, gripping the polished wood so he didn’t fall over.
Alessio was drunk. Wildly drunk and barely able to walk in a straight line, which had me wondering first how he’d made it all this way, and second…why?
Like he’d heard my inner thoughts, his dark eyes met mine, and the intensity there nearly knocked me off my feet.
“Oh good,” he said, his words slurred and somewhat amused. “You’re here.”
My stomach dropped. He was looking for me?
I took in a deep breath and tried to remember who I was. “Alessio, you shouldn’t—”
“Be here? Yeah, I know,” he said, waving me off and coming closer. “Trust me, I know all about what I shouldn’t do. Don’t have to tell me. Father.”
I closed my eyes at the word he never spoke. For some reason it felt wrong to hear what so many others called me fall from his lips.
He took a few unsteady steps down the aisle, and I tried not to notice the heavy boots he wore, or the way his t-shirt stretched across his thick muscles. It would be wrong to notice those things. A man of God didn’t look with lustful eyes.
“Looks like I’m too late,” he said.
“Yes.”
He gave me a crooked smile that sent my stomach tumbling. “Story of my life.”
I forced myself not to go to him. To stay still. To keep my voice even. “What do you need, Alessio?”
The smell of alcohol wafting off him reached me then—tequila, if I remembered right.
His gaze flicked to my collar. Then up to my mouth. A slow smirk crossed his lips and he crooked a finger at me to come closer.
Somehow I stood my ground as he lifted his hand to his mouth like he was going to tell me a secret and said, “I want to…confess.”
The words hit like a blow.
I held his gaze and willed my expression to remain neutral, even as my heartbeat began to go wild.
“Confession hours are over for tonight,” I said. “And you don’t seem to be in any condition—”
“Oh, I’m in peak condition.” He swayed a little, and I couldn’t help but reach out to steady him.
But the second I touched his skin, it burned like fire and I jerked my hand back. He tried to catch me before I let go, but his reflexes were slowed by the alcohol and he missed.
Silence stretched between us, thick and heavy. I needed to leave. He needed to leave. This wasn’t going to end anywhere good, not with him in such a state.
“I…think you should go,” I finally said, though part of me rebelled against his leaving. I saw so little of him as it was. Would it be so wrong to keep him there, just a little longer?
Yes. The resounding answer to that was yes.
“Please?” Alessio’s voice was barely a whisper, his eyes pleading with me, and I felt my resolve crumble.
“Very well.” I gestured to the booth. “Can you make it on your own?”
“What if I say no?”
I swallowed back the retort that immediately formed on my tongue, and instead turned on my heel and headed to my side of the confessional.
I didn’t bother to wait and see if he followed. He’d made it through the underground tunnel without hurting himself, so surely he could make it a few more steps.
Plus, I didn’t trust myself to touch him again.
Once inside the small wooden stall, I pulled the curtain shut and took my place facing the tightly woven lattice.
My Bible and rosary sat on the small shelf in front of me as I waited for Alessio to take his spot on the other side of the booth.
The silence that usually brought me so much peace now mocked me.
What in the world did I think I was doing?
Alessio was drunk, that much was clear. Nothing he said in here tonight was going to be said with any kind of clarity, and yet I’d agreed to hear his innermost thoughts.
It was wrong, I knew it, and yet I’d agree to do it anyway. Some masochistic part of me reveled in the fact that he’d come to me for something…anything at this stage.
I should be ashamed of myself.
A foot thumping into the wooden frame of the confessional had me jolting in my seat and turning to the curtain, thinking he might’ve mixed up which side of the booth he needed to enter.
But a loud shuffling sound on the other side of the lattice soon dispelled that notion, and Alessio all but tumbled inside the small space, the strong smell of alcohol following him like a cloud, filling the air between us.
It took everything I had not to ask if he was okay, but that wasn’t what he wanted from me. Not now. Not ever again. He didn’t want me caring for him, didn’t want any kind words from me.
So I sat there in silence, waiting for him to begin.
Seconds passed, then minutes, and for a moment I wondered if he’d passed out.
Then I heard, “Forgive me, Father—” Laughter, then a snort. “Fatherrr. I have sinned.”
I was about to speak when he continued.
“My last confession was, um, fuck… Oh, sorry. It was, um, the night you decided God was a better option than me.”
My breath caught in the back of my throat as Alessio’s words found their way through the barrier between us and shot straight to my heart.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected him to say, but that was not it.
“Alessio—”
“I don’t need you to talk,” he interrupted, then leaned forward, pushing his face against the lattice. “My confession, remember?”
Pretty hard to forget with an opening statement like that.
I shut my eyes and took in a breath, wondering again why I’d agreed to this. I’d known it was a bad idea, a terrible one.
Maybe I should just end it?
“You know what I did tonight?” he asked, a deep chuckle rumbling from his throat. “I went to a sex club.”
The barrage of emotions that slammed into me at his confession shouldn’t have been shocking. The surprise wasn’t. Neither was the irritation.
It was the stab of anger and twist of jealousy that had me reaching for my rosary and wondering exactly why he’d felt the need to come here tonight to tell me this. Because there was more to it. There had to be.
This couldn’t have been the first time Alessio had visited a place like that. His brothers had talked at length about the different kinds of establishments their organization housed.
So why was he bringing this up tonight? With me?
If I were anyone else, I could ask. But I wasn’t anyone else. I was a priest, his priest, and right now my job was to sit there and listen. Something that was becoming more difficult with every word out of his mouth.
“I thought it would help, you know?” he said, tapping his fingers on the wood. “All those hot, sweaty, naked bodies. I thought it would help get some kind of reaction from me, but nooooo, not my dick. And you know why?”
My hand tightened so hard around the rosary that I could feel the imprint of the cross as it dug into my palm.
“Because my cock, my cock wants you…fatherrr. So I’m fucked.
” He snorted. “I mean, not literally, obviously, because, you know, God and all that. Which is why I went there. I was trying to forget you. Forget your fancy robes and whatever’s under them and the fact you smell so fucking good I just want to rub my face all over your naked skin. And…”
Alessio paused for a second.
“Wait, where was I? Oh, right, naked skin. This guy on the stage, he was in the tiniest, skimpiest thong. Oh my God,” he moaned, and then his forehead thumped against the confessional. “You’d look really good in them. What do you wear under that robe?”
Not enough to stop my wayward body from reacting to Alessio’s ramblings.
It was like the tequila had burned through whatever filter was usually in place and every thought he’d had for the last fifteen years came tumbling out.
“Do you ever think about me? You know, when you’re alone?
” He pushed back from the screen and took a seat on the small bench inside the booth.
“I think about you all the time. That’s my biggest sin of all, right?
That I want you? So fucking stupid. How can it be wrong to want someone as good as you?
Oh, wait, I know, because you can’t want me back. Or don’t want to.”
He scoffed, and it took everything I had not to speak. But what could I say?
Nothing that would ease his burden. Nothing that would be true.
“How do you do that?” This question was much softer, the bluster and alcohol now morphing into confusion and incredulity, tinged with sadness. “Just forget what we meant to each other? Forget the way I made you feel, how you made me feel when we touched each other? It’s not fair. Not when I can’t.”
Alessio fell silent, the only sound I could hear now the ringing of blood in my ears as my heart beat out a rapid tattoo. All the years, all the memories he was talking about, rushed back to the surface like a tidal wave about to drag me under if I didn’t get out of this booth.
“You didn’t choose me,” he whispered, and sat forward and put his hand flat on the screen. “And I chose you forever. So where the fuck does that leave me?”
I opened my mouth, sure I was about to answer, but before I could get any words out, he was gone.