Chapter 13 #2
“It was my cabin. Then I moved back into town, and my sister-in-law asked if she could turn it into a remote honeymoon suite as part of her bed and breakfast. Told her to knock herself out,” he explains.
I try to imagine this man with an innkeeper for a sister-in-law.
The wholesome vision of all of them gathering for holidays and celebrating family birthdays flashes through my mind, and I try to reconcile it with the man I know.
The priest and then the outlaw. So far, I like all the versions of him against my better judgment.
“So you kidnapped me and brought me to a honeymoon suite?” I muse.
“Why? Worried it’s going to ruin your reputation back at the convent?”
“Very funny.” I rinse the soap out of my hair, and it splatters to the floor. “I just thought it all seemed a little much for a place out in the middle of the woods. I imagine it's expensive.”
“Not everyone wants to be doing penance on stone floors and scratchy sheets.” He mocks my tiny room in the convent. It might not be much, but it was home, and I’d been happy there. As happy as I’d been in my adult life anyway.
“You’re right. Some would rather have luxury than a clear conscience.” I’m thinking of my father and my husband, but the barb hits him as well.
“My conscience is clear. There's nothing I’ve done that I would take back. In fact, the only regrets I have are times when I wish I could have done more. Is your conscience clear?”
I nibble my lower lip out of nervous habit.
I have to remember who I’m dealing with, however soft he might seem at times.
He’s the kind of man who has a brand on his chest, a team of men to help him hold someone hostage, and access to private jets and rich men with murderous intent.
I have to assume he’s every bit as dangerous as the men in my family.
I turn away to finish soaping up the rest of my body before I start to rinse off as I catalog my own conscience.
I’ve made more than a few mistakes. Done a couple of things I wish I could take back.
I have some that haunt me. Vices that I wish I could overcome and yet seem to be chained to no matter how hard I try.
Things that make me question if I’m really cut out to be the selfless person I need to be to serve with my sisters if I somehow manage to get an annulment.
Past wrongs that I don’t know if I can ever atone for.
“Sounds like a no.” He interrupts the inventory I’m taking.
I glance back over my shoulder, watching as he leans against the wall that surrounds the shower. The low light of the setting sun casts him in shadow, and I can’t help but notice every lean line of his body. The way the T-shirt clings to him and how broad his shoulders are.
He feels like a test—he is a test—of my morals, my priorities, the very fiber of my being.
Of just how low I’m willing to sink to turn the tables in my favor.
I could give him more than I am right now.
I could put the full weight of everything I know into his hands and maybe, if my husband doesn’t kill us, have a chance at a new life.
The thought of that future taunts me. But it would mean putting everything I’ve been working toward at risk.
There’s no telling what sort of retaliation Corey or my father might take.
Besides, nothing about revenge aligns with who I’m supposed to be now.
The person I thought I’d become when I surrendered to the rules of the convent and vowed to become one of them.
Chastity, poverty, obedience. I’m trying my best to repeat them like a mantra, to hold tight to what I know I should do.
But I didn’t have this temptation standing right in front of me.
A man who’s offering me the chance to do more than hide out in the mountains on a distant continent.
A real chance at justice. Or revenge. Depending on which side of the coin you looked at.
I don’t need the abbess standing here to know what she would say.
“If you don’t say something soon, I’m gonna turn around to make sure you didn’t disappear,” he warns.
“I’m here. I’m just… praying.”
“Praying?” He scoffs in surprise. “For what?”
“Clarity.”
“Clarity about what?” He pries.
“What the right thing to do is. If I should help you. What keeps my conscience clean.”
“That’s a waste of your time. There’s always something we could have done better. Less selfish. More thoughtful. Less greedy. Trying to keep your conscience clean is a fool’s errand.”
“Then I guess I’m a fool.” It’s all I lived for in the wake of my marriage, learning the truth about my father and his associates. All I wanted was some way to escape the rot.
“You’re nothing like him. If that’s what you’re fighting so hard to avoid,” he chimes in, like he can hear my thoughts.
“I know I’m not.” It comes out sharper than I intended. “But I don’t want to just not be like him. I want to make up for what he’s done.”
“That’s not your burden to carry.”
“But it’s yours?” I counter. “This is the problem with men like you, you know. You all think you’re white knights saving the kingdom from danger.”
“I’m not a knight, white or otherwise. There’s no mandate.
No kingdom. I just want the simple pleasure of watching men pay for the wrongs they’ve done.
I don’t want to wait for your hell or wherever you believe men like him go.
I don’t want to hope and pray for justice someday.
I want him to feel that same kind of pain here on earth.
I want to be the one who doles it out and know that I made sure some measure of it was served.
” He speaks with the kind of confidence I wish I had.
“How do you plan to do that?”
“I think you know as well as I do how I plan to do that.”
“And you’re asking me to help you. To doom myself to the same fate as you.”
“What kind of fate is it if you stand by and do nothing, knowing you could have stopped him? You’re focused on one life you might help take, but what about the ones you could save?
Aren’t you responsible for their deaths if you don’t intercede?
” He argues his case in a calm tone. He might have been a lawyer or a philosopher if he hadn’t grown up with this life.
I see reason in it, but I still have my qualms.
“That’s a Faustian bargain.”
I can see the slight shake of his head and the frustrated way he shifts his weight in the shadow.
“One I’d take again and again.”
There’s a long beat of silence as I finish rinsing under the showerhead.
I turn the water off and reach for a towel, managing to snatch it with the tips of my fingers without having to ask for his help.
I run it over my hair and then wrap it around my body, using my elbows and my free hand to get it into a position to cover most everything vital.
“I wish I had your clarity,” I admit at last.
“I’m happy to help you find it.” He turns, satisfied by the sounds of my movements and the lack of water that I’m covered up again.
He rounds the edge of the shower and pulls off one of the fluffy white robes I couldn’t reach from my chained spot.
He unfolds it and opens it for me, resting it on my shoulders while he undoes the lock on my cuff.
He lets me go bond-free for a moment, stretching my wrist before I slip my arm through the sleeve.
I lean forward while pressing the towel to my chest with my free hand to keep the robe on and repeat the process again with the other arm until I can wrap the robe around my waist and tie it.
He pulls my clothes from the cuffs as he takes them off the pipe and tosses them into a pile on the floor.
“Hey!” I protest.
“You gonna put dirty clothes back on or you want me to wash them first?”
“I just want to make sure I have clothes.”
“You have clothes.” He nods to the robe. “I’ve got a shirt you can borrow inside.”
“Underwear. Another dress. Real clothes,” I argue.
“Beggars can’t be choosers.” He shrugs before he slaps one of the cuffs back on my wrist, gently pulling me to the wall, where he chains me to another railing.
“You really think I’m gonna run off barefoot in just a robe?”
“I think I wouldn’t put anything past you,” he answers bluntly.
He reaches back with one hand, grabs the collar of his shirt, and pulls it slowly over his head.
The sound that escapes my lips comes too fast to stop, and I try to mask it with a cough, but he’s clocked me.
A knowing smile dances over his lips as he goes for his belt.
My eyes are torn between watching his progress and studying the ink that covers his chest and arms. There’s so much of it, and I didn’t get a good look at it in the abbey.
But then I’m shocked back into the present when I hear the click of the metal on his buckle.
“What are you doing?” I ask the obvious.
“Getting undressed so I can take a shower. We don’t tend to take them with our clothes on around here.” He makes quick work of the belt, pulling it one-handed and tossing it down to the pile at our feet.
“With me right here?”
“No one said you had to watch.” He turns the handle for the hot water, and the steam billows out as the rain shower starts up again.
“You couldn’t put me back inside first?”
“Wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t give you a chance to peek when I did, would it?”
“You peeked?” I practically squeak the words.
“Did I?” He flashes another devious look in my direction.
“You said you wouldn’t.”
“I thought you didn’t trust me.”
“I don’t, but I thought you were trying to earn it. I at least thought you’d have enough respect for a nun’s innocence.”
“Innocence?” He scoffs, a laugh rumbling out of his chest as his hands hook into his unbuttoned jeans. “I think we both know that’s a word that doesn’t really fit you. You had the list going earlier. What was it again—lying, manipulating, kidnapping? We can add lust to that too.”
“Lust?” I return the scoff in full measure. “Over you?”
“Was there another priest you were fantasizing about in the middle of the night? Father Mark, maybe?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I huff because he knows as well as I do it wasn't one of the aging priests with dentures and gray nose hair.
His mouth twists in amusement, and he closes the distance between us.
“I have my own confession.” His eyes study mine for a minute before they rake down my body, like he’s remembering me naked. I don’t know if I can trust that he didn’t peek now.
“What’s that?” My voice comes out shakier than I intend.
“Before the kidnapping, there was a little light stalking.”
“Light stalking? What does that mean?”
He presses his lips together and tilts his head in faux remorse.
“Truth be told, there was nothing light about it. I watched every single thing you did. Listened to every word you spoke. Followed you everywhere you went.”
“You weren’t at the convent that long, and even when you were, it’s not like you could go all the places I did.” I frown. Guests and men are banned from plenty of the rooms at the abbey.
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a phone, tapping it lightly.
“I didn’t have to be.”
“How?” My heart is skipping beats in my chest as the trepidation wraps its tendrils around tighter and tighter with each passing moment. If he had access to my phone, he knows so much more than I could have imagined.
“Spyware. I installed it on your phone. Created a mirror copy on the one I had. I could watch everything you did. Every search you made. Every file you opened.” His eyes lift behind his dark lashes and meet mine.
“I could turn your camera and mic on too. Listen to those muffled little cries you’d try to stifle on those long, late nights when you were alone and thinking about your mystery priest. Sometimes I could even watch as your fingers curled around your pillow when you—”
“Stop,” I plead, closing my eyes because I can’t stand to hold his gaze anymore.
He does as I ask, and the silence that lies between us feels heavy enough to crater through the ground.
I wish I could follow it down. I knew there was something he was keeping from me, but I didn’t expect it to be that.
“So I know you, little nun.” His fingers brush under my chin. “You don’t have to hide with me.”
“I can’t believe you—” His thumb runs over my lips to silence me, and my eyes open at the same time my brows fall in anger. But he presses his thumb down to keep me silent and shakes his head.
“Stones and glass houses, yeah? You’ve been keeping a lot of secrets from me. A whole husband for starters. That you’re capable of drugging a man and tying him up. You’re not as innocent as you want to be.” He releases me, and I tear my chin from his grasp and take a step back.
“We’re not the same.”
“I think we’re more alike than you want to admit,” he calls back as he walks away.
His hands go back to his pants, and he pulls them down. I whip around, closing my eyes, but not before I get an eyeful of his perfect cowboy butt in the process. A sight I won't be forgetting anytime soon, even if the humiliation of the last few minutes makes me wish I could.