Chapter 16 Only Sinners Go to Church
Only Sinners Go to Church
August
Three and a half weeks is a long time to behave.
Three weeks of discipline dressed up as professionalism.
Not romantically. Corporately.
The kind of behaving that reads like leadership maturity on paper and feels like hunger everywhere else. The kind that gets you praised in meetings and leaves you standing in your kitchen at midnight, staring at the espresso machine like it might talk you down.
And that’s the problem with good sex nobody talks about.
Not the act.
The aftermath.
The way your body remembers at the most inconvenient times of day. The way it doesn’t care about timing or context or consequences.
Especially when the good sex is tied to someone you absolutely should not be thinking about.
Someone untouchable for more reasons than I care to count.
Like standing in a budget review, halfway through a conversation about vendor projections, catching the faintest trace of her perfume as she passes the doorway—and losing the next thirty seconds of your life to a memory you have no business revisiting.
After that meeting in my office, nothing was said again. Not because it was resolved—but because I said what needed to be said, and she understood what that meant. Boundaries don’t feel mutual when one person signs the checks.
So we went quiet. Or at least, that was the plan.
What actually happened was far more inconvenient.
She’s three floors below me. Avoiding her should’ve been easy.
Between the Wilde Engineering rotation and her practicum program, proximity is practically a requirement.
Avoiding her isn’t a strategy. It’s a liability.
At work, she calls me James. Like everyone else.
Like it doesn’t feel like putting on something that doesn’t quite fit.
Inside the Kaplan Building and the five floors under my domain, I’m James. Boundaries. Professional. Off-limits.
Outside, I’m August.
Outside, I’m the man who still remembers the exact shape of her smile—the way it starts in her eyes, then steals her mouth.
Like a hook in a song you swear you don’t know until it hits, and suddenly you’re singing it like you wrote it.
The man actively trying to not think about her ass in that peach jumpsuit thingy she was wearing the other day.
I’m in my bedroom when the call comes. Not in bed. Not thinking about how the hell I got here.
Standing barefoot on hardwood, half-dressed, tablet glowing cold against my palm while I scroll tomorrow’s agenda like I can get ahead of it.
My phone lights up.
Harlee.
Not a cc’d email. Not Sadie. Not Naomi.
Not routed. Not filtered. Not work.
Just her name.
For a second, I don’t move. Because in four months, she hasn’t called me once.
Not after that night. Not after she disappeared. Not even when she showed up again as we pretend nothing happened. Not like this. I look at it a beat longer than I should, then answer like I haven’t.
“Hello.” The relief in my voice shows up uninvited.
“Hi,” she says, softer than I expect. Careful. Like she’s testing the temperature before she steps in.
“Why are you whispering?”
“I’m at a lounge,” she says. There’s a small rustle, like she’s shifting her grip. “It keeps going loud then quiet. I’m trying not to yell in your ear.”
I glance at the time without meaning to. Eight-fifteen.
“It’s only eight fifteen,” I say. “Why are you at a lounge so early?”
A little laugh. Then a pause.
“My best friend’s performing,” she says. “Wynter. I told you about her.”
I remember. Not because she told me. Because her life has weight to me in ways I’ve been pretending it doesn’t.
“Open mic night,” she adds. “She’s… a singer and songwriter.”
My mouth curves even though I don’t give it permission. “And you’re there being supportive and responsible.”
“I know,” she says. “Shocking.”
The silence that follows has charge to it. Like we’re both standing at the edge of something we agreed not to step into.
“So,” she says finally, smoothing her tone. “What’s up?”
I could keep it short. Clean. Professional.
Instead, the truth comes out like it’s been waiting for air.
“What’s the name of the lounge?”
A beat.
“August…”
“I’ll come join you.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“No,” I say, already moving. “I want to.”
Another beat. Then her exhale hits my ear like surrender.
“It’s called Church.”
I still. “The old H?O bar on King?”
Her laugh turns nervous at the edges. “If it’s too south side for you, just say that.”
“Funny,” I tell her. “You got jokes.”
Thirty-five minutes later, I push through a blue door and into a room that smells like red wine, perfume, and bad decisions someone will romanticize tomorrow. Heat, bodies, laughter pressed too close. A neon sign over the bar flickers red: SINNERS WELCOME.
Cute.
I’m pulling out my phone when a hand catches my shoulder.
Harlee.
Bucket hat. Curls. That urban-nerdy-baddie thing she does where she looks effortless and dangerous at the same time. Cargo pants, crop top, layered jewelry catching the low light like it’s gossiping.
"How'd you know I was here?" I say, opening my arms for a hug, like we are old friends and not employer and employee.
“You’re hard to miss,” she says, sliding her arm through mine like we don’t have rules.
“Is that a compliment or an insult?”
“Depends on how you take it.”
She leads me to a small table near the stage. “Wynter’s backstage.”
“Getting in the zone?” I ask.
She air-quotes. “Aligning chakras. She's superstitious.”
We chat for a few minutes before I excuse myself to grab drinks. When I come back, she’s frowning at her phone like it personally betrayed her.
“What happened?”
“I got a trivia question wrong.”
I blink. “You came to a lounge and brought a book and trivia?”
She lifts her chin. “I've been coming to these for years, you learn to keep yourself occupied.”
The host takes the mic and starts warming the room, tossing jokes like breadcrumbs.
Acts rotate fast, a collage of voices and instruments.
Harlee’s knee bounces to the rhythm and keeps brushing mine like her body has no interest in pretending.
Every time she laughs, it lands somewhere in my chest and doesn’t leave.
Then the host grins like he’s about to drop a celebrity.
“Make some noise for Wynter!”
The room erupts.
And then she steps out.
Wynter moves like she knows the stage belongs to her. Metallic oversized shirt dress, boots, hoops, a smile sharp enough to cut glass. She clocks Harlee immediately.
“My cheering section came to church tonight,” she says, and Harlee screams like she’s at a stadium.
Wynter sings.
Not for long. Not for thirty minutes. Just long enough to make the room hush, then ache, then clap like they’re trying to keep her from leaving.
Her voice slides through the lounge like smoke and honey, steady and lived-in.
When she hits a note, I feel it in my teeth.
She dominates the stage. Like it was a American Idol and not an open mic night in Chicago.
When she finishes, Harlee practically floats to the side of the stage and I follow, hands in my pockets like that’s going to keep me out of trouble.
Wynter appears a moments later, backpack on, still glowing, swapping her stage fit for a fashion statement jean jacket and attitude.
Harlee tackles her in a hug and Wynter hugs back, like its been years since they seen one another, then her eyes slide to me.
“Oh,” she says. “You.” curiosity and a bit of skepticism in her tone.
I step forward, polite smile ready.
“I know who you are,” she cuts in, teasing but sharp. Her gaze flicks down and back up like she’s taking my measurements for a coffin.
Harlee clears her throat. “Wynter, this is… August.”
Wynter’s eyebrows lift. “August? Not James?” The way she says it sounds like a warning label.
“Show was dope,” I offer. “Seriously.”
She studies my face like she’s fact-checking my soul, then nods once. “Good. I love new fans.”
Then she turns back to Harlee and murmurs something low that makes Harlee’s mouth twitch like she’s trying not to laugh.
Wynter looks at me again, all sweetness with teeth. “You walking her home?”
Harlee answers before I can. “Yeah.”
Wynter points at me. “Cool. Quick rules. You break her heart, I punch you in the dick. You make her cry, I punch you in the dick. You show yo ass—”
I lift a hand. “Let me guess. Dick punch.”
“No,” Wynter chuckles, smiling wider. “I will come to your condo while you sleep and make you regret having anatomy. Understood?”
Harlee is crying laughing.
I blink at Wynter. “Noted.”
She blows Harlee a kiss and disappears into the night in the back of a black SUV, yelling something about pancakes like it’s a battle cry.
And then it’s just me and Harlee—and the city exhaling between us.
She starts walking, and I fall into step beside her, shrugging my jacket off and settling it over her shoulders without thinking. The fabric swallows her a little. I don’t fix it.
She tugs it closer anyway.
The sidewalks shine like it rained earlier and forgot to tell anybody, streetlights stretching gold across the pavement. Lake air slips down the blocks and curls around us, cool and clean, like Chicago’s trying to behave for once.
Somewhere down the street, a saxophone makes a lazy argument for romance.
“You didn’t mind walking?” she asks, glancing over.
“I Ubered,” I say easily. Then, after a beat—because honesty’s been winning more than it should—“I wanted to see you.”
Her eyes cut to mine, sharp and searching.
“You’re dangerously sincere.”
“I’m Dominican,” I tell her. “It’s a cultural hazard.”
She laughs, then goes quiet in a way I’ve learned to respect.
So I adjust my pace. Match her breath. Let the space open without forcing it.
“Do you ever have regrets?” she asks.
“Not usually.”
She swallows. “Maybe regret isn’t the word. More like… unfulfilled.”
And there it is.
The real her.
The one that isn’t performing competence for the world.
She talks. Not in circles. Not in spirals. Just the truth. Picks up like we haven't spent weeks not saying, but saying everything to one another. Two old friends walking innocently side by side down the livelily street, unassuming to the wandering eye. Block after block.
When she starts to talk about working her whole life for a dream and waking up unsure if it still fits.
About being judged before she even opens her mouth—about her whole life being planned for her by someone else.
How she really never gets to make her own choices.
And then she looks up at me and says the part that’s been sitting between us like a loaded weapon.
“If I give in to this… people are going to assume I slept my way to the top.”
My chest tightens.
“Even if we both consent,” she adds, voice low, steady, tired. “You’ll get props. And I’ll be… the girl who fucked her boss.”
I stop walking.
She tries to keep going.
I don’t let her. Not by grabbing. Not by pulling. Just by stepping into her path and holding my ground—making her stay with the truth she’s brave enough to say.
“I’ve been somebody’s secret before,” she continues, eyes bright now. “I refuse to live like that again. Sheets but not streets. I’m not doing it.”
My jaw locks.
Not at her.
At the world that made her think that’s the only version of this that exists.
“Harlee,” I say quietly. “I hear you.”
She scoffs like she doesn’t trust that sentence.
“I won’t pretend I know what it’s like to be you. I don’t,” I admit. “But I see how hard you work. I see how you’ve had to prove yourself twice just to get half the credit.”
Her throat bobs. She looks away, then back, like eye contact might crack her.
“You don’t get to shrink yourself because people are small,” I tell her. “Not with me.”
And because I’m me, because I cannot help myself, the Spanish slips out, soft and steady.
“Ningún hombre en este mundo te merece… pero yo juro que lo voy a intentar.”
No man deserves you. But I swear I’ll try like hell to come close.
Her breath catches.
For a second the city disappears and it’s just her eyes and my heartbeat and everything I’ve been swallowing for three and a half weeks.
She steps in.
She kisses me.
Not sloppy. Not frantic.
Like a question she’s finally brave enough to ask.
My hands find her waist and hold her like an answer. Quiet. Certain. Like I’ve been waiting for permission, not opportunity.
For a second, it hits me—the first time I saw her again in that conference room, standing in my building like she hadn’t disappeared on me for three months. The way it burned. The way I had to lock it down just to get through the meeting.
Somewhere between then and now, that heat changed shape.
Didn’t go away.
Just… settled.
Got harder to ignore.
Got harder to walk away from.
When we break, she’s breathless, lips swollen, looking at me like she hates how much she likes this.
I feel it too.
“So,” she whispers. “What about work?”
I laugh once, low. “Still matters.”
She nods like that’s what she wanted to hear, and then we’re at her building. Her keys in her hand. The door right there like a referee.
She steps closer anyway.
Her fingers slide under my shirt.
Then lower.
Then she tugs at my waistband like she’s trying to rewrite the ending.
Every nerve in my body lights up.
“Don’t,” I say, quiet but firm.
She looks up at me, lashes heavy, voice soft. “Why?”
Because I want to.
Because I could.
Because one bad decision from me becomes a consequence she has to carry.
I catch her wrist—light, steady—and guide her hand back to my chest, where it can’t ruin us.
“Because your reputation matters more than my impulse,” I say. “And I won’t be another man who makes your life harder because he couldn’t control himself.”
She swallows, eyes flicking to my mouth like she’s mad at me for being decent.
I lean in, close enough to feel her breath.
“Say goodnight,” I murmur. “Before I lose the last shred of discipline I’ve got.”
Her face does this small, warring thing. Fear and want fighting for dominance.
Finally, she steps back.
Her hand finds the doorknob.
“Goodnight, August,” she says, soft but resolute, like she’s choosing herself even if it hurts.
I hold her gaze.
“Goodnight, mami,” I whisper.
But she doesn’t turn away. Instead, she just stands there, chewing on her lip.