Chapter Nineteen Soraya
Chapter Nineteen
Soraya
Spells manifest when a witch’s power meets divine opportunity.
—Rules for Witches
Something tapped Soraya on the shoulder early Sunday morning.
You have to go to church.
She hadn’t been for the past couple of weeks because the kids were mad at her anyway, and David was demanding that she move out of the house.
She hadn’t spoken to him at all in the three days since she’d vacated the premises, and she knew he hadn’t been over there to check, because if he had, she would’ve heard from him.
But it was an urgent, insistent feeling that overtook her, that she had to go to church.
Maybe to go without him.
While she got dressed, she checked in with herself. Was she doing this because he’d ordered her to, and she was still responding to that on some level?
No. This was coming from her. She had to trust that.
You have to go, the voice persisted inside her.
She argued with herself the entire time. What was the point of going to church and having everybody stare at her? Going and getting ignored by her own kids if she ran into them. Going and getting hit by a bolt of lightning on account of the light witchcraft she had been involved in.
She almost laughed at that as she looked at her reflection in the mirror while praying that her moisturizer would take away some of the new lines and creases on her face that were a gift of this particularly stressful time.
The truth was, she had never believed that God was only around in church. So going to church wouldn’t reveal anything more than staying home would.
One of the strangest things was how she felt at peace spiritually while feeling at war with so many of the people she would’ve said she agreed with.
But that was what she had been grappling with this entire time. She didn’t feel like she was out of step with God. She felt out of step with this particular community and their reaction to her marital breakdown.
Maybe she needed to go so she could . . . She wasn’t even really sure. It was about dealing with the issues of lingering resentment. Maybe she was supposed to go so that somebody could say the offensive thing that finally drove her away. Or maybe there would be something healing. Maybe.
That felt a little bit optimistic.
She didn’t feel optimistic. She felt driven. If there was one thing she had been taught all her life, it was that she was supposed to listen to the still, small voice.
She was listening. She was going, even if she didn’t really want to.
She opened the door to her apartment and heard a door open across the hall at the same time.
Declan stepped out right as she did, and her heart jumped slightly.
He was just so . . .
Hot.
He was hot, and for the first time in her whole life, she felt free to do something about thinking a man was hot. That hadn’t been the way it was with her and David. She’d found him attractive, yes, but she’d been young and innocent by design.
She was neither of those things now and more interested in Declan because of it.
Madison, who was a child, and it wasn’t like Soraya could actually take serious advice from her, but she’d said mistakes were just mistakes.
He would be a glorious mistake.
“Hi,” she said, because she was very aware she was standing there staring like a creeper. His blue eyes meeting hers made her feel like she was about to go up in flames.
What would happen if she moved toward him?
Are you insane? At least go out to dinner with him. You’re going to go from Purity Culture Princess to dragging a man you barely know to bed?
When she put it like that, it didn’t sound as crazy as she’d hoped it would. It sounded like maybe it was a Band-Aid that needed to be ripped off.
“Good morning,” he said. “I’m just grabbing some coffee before work. I try to open the store in time to catch the rush of the after-church crowd.”
“Ah. I’m the church crowd.” Seemed like an ironic thing to call herself given the riot of illicit images in her head.
He looked at her, a very similar look to the one he had given her when she’d mentioned she had teenagers.
Like she was defying his expectations, and she sort of liked that too.
She was used to being in a group full of people who knew her.
Who knew exactly what to expect from her, and who disapproved when she didn’t do those things.
She had never, not once, felt like an enigma.
She sort of did right now.
“I hope you have a nice morning,” he said.
She let out a breath, her face hot. “Me too.”
She turned away from him and stuffed her hands into her coat pocket as she walked down the narrow stairs and toward her car. She felt awkward because she should have said she hoped he had a good morning, but she’d been thinking about her own nerves and that had just come out.
He was just so gorgeous. He made her want to jump into his arms, kiss him, or more. To embrace spontaneity in a way she never had.
That had felt . . . dangerous and fun and totally not like her. Even though she hadn’t actually done anything.
Her life had been fixed for so long. Her path set. Her ideas of who she was, what she was capable of, what she would let herself do and what she wouldn’t.
What had been a narrow path was now a wide-open field.
It was both terrifying and exhilarating.
But for now, she was going to church and not thinking about the wild impulse she’d had.
She took the short drive to the church, which was on the outskirts of town, a large building with a beautifully manicured facility.
She had always loved the church grounds, but it struck her as being slightly unsettling now.
Because it was so like the people. Perfectly manicured.
Always with everything in place. Yet it concealed so much.
The emphasis on appearances wasn’t doing anyone any favors. Not when the core was rotting.
She got out of the car and shut the door firmly behind her, taking a fortifying breath as she began to walk toward the main entrance to the sanctuary.
She was only about five minutes early, so there were very few people outside, but she saw him out of the corner of her eye. Saw him before he called her name.
“Soraya.”
She looked over at David and felt like she was seeing him for the first time. The anger on his face was unguarded, naked. But there was something else along with that. Like he was looking at a lower life-form. Like she had no right to meet his gaze.
She had never realized before that her husband truly saw her as someone inferior to him. But she could see it now, with all his outrage written there plainly.
“I stopped at the house on the way here. How dare you?” he asked, the question low and angry.
Oh, David Nichols, from Nichols Realty, how dare she?
She wanted to laugh at him, except she was so mad.
“How dare I what? You said you wanted me to leave.”
“I said I wanted you to be back with me,” he said.
Pure, righteous fury filled her, a fire that had been kindling inside her for a while now igniting.
She didn’t want to be beholden to this man anymore. He didn’t own her. He didn’t get to make choices for her.
She was going to be happier than David had allowed her to be.
She was going to have a whole life—goals, dreams, feelings, mistakes, and joy—that David hadn’t allowed her to have.
She was going to stand apart from him and be her own person.
She’d been created to be whole, not to be his.
She’d never felt more certain of God’s love for her, or of her own love for herself.
“That isn’t acceptable to me,” she said. “I’m not getting back with you. Not after—”
“Because of a text?” he asked.
“No. Because of so much more than a text. Because you don’t respect me.
Because you don’t love me, not the way I deserve.
And because you threw a giant, embarrassing tantrum at our sons’ baseball game, which told me exactly who you really are.
A selfish baby who claims to be the head of the household just because he’s a man. ”
“We can talk about it,” he said. “It isn’t like I cheated on you. It was only a text.”
“Was it?”
The discomfort and fury on his face told her it wasn’t.
It wouldn’t have mattered, though. He’d exposed himself.
He wasn’t the man she’d believed him to be, and this wasn’t the congregation she’d believed it to be.
It wasn’t the faith she had. Hers was leading her in a different direction, and they might think that meant she was abandoning it, but that wasn’t true.
Perhaps most important of all, she wasn’t the woman she’d thought she was.
She was stronger. She was clear on her own convictions. They wouldn’t waver, even when her husband asked her to compromise them.
“David, what you did to me was wrong. But you can’t even admit it.
Instead, you’re threatening me. Instead, you’re sending people to talk to me, to emotionally manipulate me by questioning my faith.
But you aren’t talking to me. Not really.
For weeks, we were separated and went to church together, but you didn’t talk to me.
You only sat with me to keep up appearances.
It was about you, not about us. Our sons won’t speak to me.
That’s because of you. But I’m not the one who betrayed our marriage vows. ”
His expression contorted, confusion, anger, and rejection warring on his face. He couldn’t handle her changing his story. Couldn’t handle her calling him out—rightly—as the villain, because he saw himself as the hero. As the wounded party.
Right then, she saw the fatal flaw in their marriage. In how it had been constructed from the beginning.
He saw himself as the one who mattered. Everyone else existed to support his view of himself, his own comfort, his own supremacy.
A lot of people went to this same church, had marriages that were structured like theirs, but crucially: The men wanted their wives to be happy.
They loved them.
David loved himself.