Chapter 3 Callahan
Tuesdays always felt hollow at the church. The nave stretched empty, sunlight slanting through the stained-glass windows in pale, dusty bars. Callahan sat in a rear pew and listened to Father Rier’s footsteps echo as the older priest paced between the columns, muttering about the emptiness of the place, about how few souls bothered to seek grace anymore. Callahan offered the occasional nod, nothing more. When Rier finally announced he was heading upstairs for a nap, Callahan only exhaled—quiet, relieved—and let the silence settle back in.
Alone now, he could hear his own pulse, slow and heavy from another short night of sleep. To keep from drifting off, he fetched the shelter binder from his office and carried it downstairs. Someone might still wander in for confession; he needed to be visible. He slid into the same pew, pushed his glasses up onto his head, and opened the binder on his lap.
The repair list stared back at him. HVAC system, top line, underlined twice. Summer was close, and Saint Jude’s shelter would cook without it. The budget was a thin, brittle thing; he’d already shifted what little he could. More than once he’d quietly added his own money for blankets, soap, extra meals—whatever the diocese wouldn’t cover. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, tired of the math.
The numbers blurred. His mind, unbidden, supplied a different image.
Dorian on his knees at the altar rail, mouth open for the host, tongue warm and waiting. Callahan’s fingers placing the wafer there—then lingering, sliding deeper, past the boundary of sacrament into something filthy and deliberate. He pictured Dorian’s throat working around those fingers, eyes lifted, defiant and pleading at once. God forgive him, he wanted to feel the boy choke on the only part of himself he was still allowed to offer.
Heat flashed across his skin. Shame followed instantly, scalding. He was sitting in the house of God with an erection pressing against his trousers, daydreaming blasphemy. He shifted, swallowed, tried to force the image away.
The front doors creaked.
Callahan flinched hard enough to rattle the binder. He set it aside, slid his glasses back down, and stood. The rosary in his pocket felt suddenly heavy, like an accusation. He stepped into the aisle.
Dorian stood just inside the threshold, backlit, letting the door ease shut behind him.
He wore a gray flannel open over a cropped black band tee that ended an inch above his navel. A dark trail of hair started there and vanished beneath the waistband of loose, ripped jeans riding low enough to show the sharp cut of his hips. A tattoo peeked above the denim—black ink, geometric, tempting the eye downward. Rings glinted on his fingers as he pushed a hand through his hair.
Callahan’s mouth went dry. He could not stop looking at that strip of skin, warm and alive in the cool air of the nave. Lord, give me strength.
“Dorian.” His voice came out steady, by some miracle. “Good to see you.”
“Father Callahan.” Dorian’s grin was small, almost careful. He stopped a polite distance away—three feet, maybe four. “I’m all right. You?”
“Well, thank you.” Callahan folded his hands to keep them still. “Your parents?”
The grin faded. Dorian glanced away, rubbed the back of his neck. “They’re okay, I guess. Haven’t talked to them much lately.”
“I’m sorry.” The pastoral reflex rose automatically. “Is everything all right at home?”
Dorian shrugged, twisting one of his rings. “It’s… complicated.”
Callahan heard the strain and changed course. “Your mother mentioned you’d moved back recently. Settling in?”
“Slowly.” Dorian’s shoulders eased. He met Callahan’s eyes again, something lighter in them. “Getting reacquainted with the town. Figured I’d stop by and reacquaint myself with the clergy, too.”
Callahan’s pulse stumbled. He managed a dry smile. “Perhaps you should start with confession.”
Dorian’s gaze dropped. He twisted the ring again, quieter this time. “I’m not sure I remember how.”
A gift, Callahan thought. A chance to reset the boundary between them—priest and penitent, nothing more. He gestured toward the confessional booths at the side of the nave. “Come.”
They walked the short distance in silence. Callahan entered one side, Dorian the other. The door clicked shut. Through the thin wall came the soft creak of wood as Dorian settled onto the kneeler.
Callahan took the rosary from his pocket and laid it across his lap. He stared at the beads instead of at the lattice screen. Old habit; it kept his eyes where they belonged.
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” he began.
“Amen,” Dorian said, voice low. A pause. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been…” A soft, self-mocking laugh. “Shit. Ten years since my last confession.”
Callahan waited.
“I don’t even know where to start,” Dorian admitted. “Being a bad son, maybe. I fight with my dad—Arthur—over nothing. Mom hates it. I hate it. But I keep doing it anyway.”
Callahan heard the frustration coiled there. “Why do you think that happens?”
“No idea.” Dorian’s voice roughened. “Same reason I still lie to her about being straight, I guess. I’ve been out since I was eighteen. I’m twenty-five now. Seven years, and she still doesn’t know.”
The words landed between them like stones. Callahan felt an ache of recognition—his own secrets, heavier, older. He kept his tone gentle. “It’s painful to carry that alone.”
“Yeah.” A bitter huff. “I take the Lord’s name in vain a lot, too. Probably should throw that in.”
Callahan opened his mouth to correct the profanity, then closed it. He still muttered the same words himself when exhaustion won. Hypocrisy tasted sour.
After a moment he asked, “Anything else?”
A longer silence. Then, quieter: “Everything said here stays here, right?”
“The seal of confession is absolute.”
Dorian exhaled. “Okay. Lust, then. I’ve been… thinking about someone. A lot. Every day.”
Heat surged through Callahan so swiftly his vision blurred. He tightened his grip on the rosary until the beads bit into his palm.
“That is a serious matter,” he managed.
“It gets worse.” Dorian’s voice dropped, velvet and deliberate. “I’ve acted on it. More than once.”
Callahan’s thighs tensed. Sweat traced the line of his spine. He could feel himself swelling, shamefully hard, hidden only by the confessional’s dark. “When those thoughts come,” he said, the words scraping out, “turn your mind to Scripture. Prayer. Keep yourself from falling further.”
Dorian’s reply was almost a whisper. “But Father… where’s the fun in that?”
Callahan bit the inside of his cheek to keep from answering. The air felt thick enough to choke on.
“Is that all?” he asked at last.
“Unless you want details.”
“No.” Too quick, too sharp. He softened it. “That won’t be necessary.”
He assigned the Act of Contrition. They began together, voices overlapping in the narrow space—Callahan’s measured and low, Dorian’s quieter, a little unsteady.
“O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee…”
Callahan closed his eyes and listened to the younger man’s cadence, memorizing it for reasons he would confess another day.
“…in His name, my God, have mercy.”
Amen.
The kneeler creaked again as Dorian rose. Callahan stayed seated long after the outer door clicked shut, rosary cutting crescents into his palm, breathing slow and deliberate until the fire in his blood cooled to ash.