Chapter 7 Rafael #2
I placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled down at the young man. “Never too busy for you. Never hesitate to reach out to me, for anything. I’m always here.”
“Thank you.”
Kai headed down the stairs to the gardens that surrounded the church, and Lucien hung back for a second. “You’ve officially made his day, you know that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think he’s just happy because you finally asked him to marry you.”
Lucien let out a low chuckle. I’d been one of the few he confessed his intentions to before he popped the big question, unsure of himself and his worthiness when it came to someone as sweet as Kai.
But there’d never been a question in my mind.
Lucien was exactly who Kai needed and wanted in his life.
He’d already chosen him—I’d seen the bracelets. But I understood this was different. This was a union to which they could invite their family and friends, and celebrate their forever.
“Yes, well, I thought it was time to make an honest man out of at least one of us.” Lucien winked at me, then turned to look over at where Kai had taken a seat on one of the stone benches in the garden. “I know you don’t usually perform our kind of weddings…”
“Your kind?”
Lucien slipped his hands into his pants pockets. “Gay. I know the church doesn’t permit or look favorably on it, which is a shame, because he would’ve loved to have it in the church. But as long as you’re there…”
“He’ll love it no matter where it’s held. He’d marry you on Mars if you told him that’s where you’d be waiting for him.”
“It’s the same for me.” Lucien turned to face the gardens. “I knew it the second we met. I’d follow him anywhere. No matter the circumstance of the relationship. I just wanted him close.”
A quiet kind of silence fell between us then, and I couldn’t help but think of my relationship with Alessio, the different phases it had gone through and where it stood now. Friends to lovers. Lovers to enemies. Enemies to…whatever strange relationship we had now.
I didn’t even know what I’d call it. We weren’t friends. We weren’t priest and parishioner, and yet he’d still come around looking for me at the most unlikely of times. He’d trusted me with his deepest secrets and entrusted his closest friends to me too.
I wasn’t sure what that meant to him, but I knew what it meant to me.
At least, I thought I did.
“Father?”
Lucien’s voice cut through my thoughts. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I just asked if you were okay.”
I forced a smile to my lips and nodded. “Of course. I was just thinking how lovely it will be to be a part of your special day. I’m honestly so thrilled you and Kai trust me with such an important moment in your lives.”
“There was no one else even on the list of possibilities. You’re practically part of the family.”
“I’m not sure Alessio would agree with that.” It was out of my mouth before I could take it back, and if I thought Lucien would just let it go, I was in for bitter disappointment.
“Alessio loves you.”
He said the words as though it was a known fact, and the way it made my heart race and stomach flip had my shame from last night returning full force.
He means as a friend, a priest, not anything else.
“There’s no one he trusts more with himself or us. Trust me, he thinks of you as family.”
I swallowed, reminding myself I had no right to feel the ache now radiating through my chest. But there was no stopping it. Not when Alessio’s words from his last confession kept playing on a loop in my head.
Not the scandalous ones, the ones designed to shock, but the painful, heart-wrenching ones. The ones where he’d accused me of deciding God was a better option than him.
Was that really what he believed? That didn’t sit right with me, not in any way.
Choosing this life, this path, had been one of the most difficult and painful decisions I’d ever made.
But I’d been so caught off guard by last night’s confrontation that I hadn’t had a chance to process everything that had been said.
Or at least the parts that came after the desperate release I’d chased down back in the rectory.
I was so weak.
“Does he—” I cleared my throat, suddenly hating the lump caught in the back of it. “Does Alessio live here in the city?”
Lucien cocked his head toward me, a slight frown marring his brow as though my question were an odd one. Then he took the steps down into the garden and I thought that maybe I’d asked too much.
Maybe that was private Kings business.
“He’s closer than you think,” he said, before glancing over his shoulder at me and gesturing for me to follow.
“What do you mean?” I asked as I headed down the stairs and stopped beside him.
“Look outside your window tonight—”
“My window?”
“Your rectory window. You’ll see him.”
I thought about that for a moment, and just as I was about to ask another question, Lucien called out for Kai.
“You ready?” he said, and Kai came back over to take Lucien’s hand.
“Yep. I just wanted to enjoy the sun a little.”
“How about I take you to Central Park and we can enjoy it a whole lot more?”
“Really? I thought you had to work.”
“Work can wait. You want some sunshine, who am I to deny you?”
Kai leaned up to kiss him on the cheek, and as the two of them headed through the small gardens toward the gate, Lucien looked back and said, “Have a good day, father. And don’t forget to do a little stargazing.”
LATER THAT NIGHT, when I stepped inside the rectory, I locked the door behind me and my eyes immediately shifted to the window Lucien had mentioned earlier that day.
If I thought I’d been distracted that morning, that had nothing on how the rest of my day had gone. But as I stood just inside the door, the light from the street shining inside, I wondered if this was some kind of test.
God knew I’d failed the one He’d placed in front of me last night. But as the light beckoned me closer, Lucien’s words echoed in the room all around me.
“Look outside your window tonight… You’ll see him.”
Don’t do it, a voice whispered in my head, even as my feet started in that direction.
My heart thumped with every step I took, the angel and devil on my shoulders waging a war that pounded in my ears until I finally stopped in front of the window and looked out.
That was when I saw it: in the building across the street—I couldn’t say how many floors up—a man. A man whose silhouette I’d know anywhere.
Alessio.