Chapter 5 Callahan
“These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
— John 16:33 KJV
The sun was dying in a blaze of violent orange and bruised purple, bleeding out across the horizon. Callahan sat on the concrete steps of the church, elbows resting on his knees, watching the display with a quiet, desperate sort of appreciation. It was rare for the world to be this still. The air was cooling, stripping away the humidity of the day, and for a moment, he could almost convince himself that peace was a tangible thing, something he could hold in his hands like a breviary.
He watched the clouds drift, enamored by the artistry of it. It was easy to forget, amidst the damp confessionals and the smell of stale incense, that God existed outside of stone walls. That He was in the wind, the pavement, the dying light.
The silence shattered.
A silver coupe tore into the empty lot, tires shrieking against the asphalt. The sound was abrasive, a physical violation of the evening’s calm. The car whipped into a parking spot with reckless disregard for the painted lines, jerking to a halt.
Callahan’s lips thinned. The peace evaporated, replaced by the familiar tightening in his chest. He gripped the cold metal handrail and hauled himself up, adjusting his glasses where they had slipped down the bridge of his nose.
The driver’s door flew open. Dorian stepped out.
Even from this distance, the energy radiating off him was palpable—a storm front of agitation. He slammed the door, the metallic crunch echoing off the church facade. He walked toward the steps with his head down, shoulders hunched as if bracing for a blow. He looked like a man trying to outrun his own shadow.
Callahan stayed where he was, waiting.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon,” Callahan said when Dorian reached the bottom step. “It was only the other week you were here.”
Dorian halted. He didn’t look up immediately. He kicked at a loose piece of gravel with the toe of his boot, grinding it into the cement. “I wasn’t expecting you to be here, Father.”
The title shouldn’t have stung, but it did. It was a wall, a reminder of the chasm between them. Callahan pushed down the selfish thought—Did he not come for me?—and clasped his hands in front of his cassock, retreating into the safety of his role.
“The church needs a priest at all hours,” Callahan said, his voice measured. “Father Rier is under the weather. I’m covering his shift.” He stepped aside, gesturing toward the heavy oak doors. “Come. Let’s sit inside.”
Dorian moved past him, trudging up the stairs. For a brief second, they were level with each other. Callahan caught the sheen of moisture in Dorian’s eyes, the raw redness of the rims. His chest gave a painful, sympathetic throb. He knew that look. He knew the weight that caused it.
The nave was cavernous and silent. Shadows were lengthening across the rows of empty pews, the sanctuary lamp casting a flickering red glow near the altar. Just this once, Callahan offered a silent prayer of gratitude that the flock was absent. It was wrong—sinful, even—to hoard a parishioner’s distress, but seeing Dorian here, seeking sanctuary in the one place Callahan ruled, sparked a dark, possessive warmth in his belly.
They took a pew in the middle. Dorian sat heavily, elbows on his knees, head hanging low. He began twisting a ring on his finger—a cheap, tarnished mood ring that looked childish against his large, capable hands.
Callahan sat beside him, leaving a respectable foot of space between them. He waited. He knew better than to pry open a wound that wasn’t ready to bleed.
The silence stretched, thick and heavy. Callahan used the time to look. Really look.
Even in misery, the man was a devastation. Dorian’s dark hair was pulled back in a hasty, messy ponytail, loose curls escaping to frame his face. His beard was freshly trimmed, sharpening the line of his jaw. He was wearing a dress shirt, the top button undone, the tie loosened like a noose he’d just managed to slip.
Is it possible, Callahan thought, his gaze tracing the slope of Dorian’s neck, to find God in man?
The thought tasted like blasphemy. He jerked his eyes away, staring resolutely at the crucifix hanging above the altar. Guilt flooded him, hot and prickly. He was a shepherd tending a wounded lamb, and here he was, thinking about the texture of the lamb’s skin.
“I got into another argument with my stepdad,” Dorian said. His voice was flat, deadened by the acoustics of the empty room.
Callahan exhaled, daring to look back. “Would you like to tell me about it?”
Dorian pulled the mood ring off, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. “My mom invited me to a fancy dinner. Opal Maree. I didn’t want to go, but I promised her I’d do one family thing. I didn’t know it was a setup.” He let out a shaky breath. “My old best friend, Elara, was there. We spent two hours talking. Catching up. Like nothing happened.”
He stopped. His jaw worked, muscles bunching beneath the skin.
“Then we left. I went back to their house. They started pushing. Saying I should ask Elara out. One thing led to another and I…” Dorian’s voice dropped to a terrified whisper. “I got physical.”
Callahan frowned. The phrasing was ambiguous, but the tremor in Dorian’s hands suggested violence, not passion. The confidence Callahan had seen at the bar—the brash, teasing arrogance—was gone, stripped away to reveal something fractured.
He wanted to fix it. The urge was visceral, a physical ache in his palms. He wanted to offer comfort that wasn’t bound by liturgy or scripture.
Without letting himself think, Callahan reached out.
His hand landed on Dorian’s knee.
The contact was electric. Even through the fabric of Dorian’s trousers, the heat of his skin seared Callahan’s fingertips. Callahan’s heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He shouldn’t be doing this. He should pull away.
Instead, his fingers curled, digging softly into the muscle.
Dorian’s head turned. Their eyes met.
Time seemed to warp, slowing down to a dripping crawl. Dorian’s eyes were wide, dark, searching. Callahan felt exposed, as if the younger man could see every dirty, starving thing living inside him. It was just a touch. An innocent gesture of comfort.
Liar, a voice hissed in his head.
Callahan’s gaze dropped to Dorian’s lips. They were parted slightly, breathless.
“Is it too late for a confession, Father?” Dorian asked. His voice was a hoarse rasp.
The word Father shattered the moment like glass.
Callahan jerked his hand back as if he’d been burned. He clasped his hands tightly in his lap, his knuckles turning white. The shame was immediate, a cold wash over his skin. He was selfish. Dorian was in crisis, asking for spiritual salvation, and Callahan was thinking about the shape of his mouth.
“There is always time for confession,” Callahan said. His voice sounded remarkably steady, a miracle of discipline over instinct.
He stood up abruptly. “Come.”
He didn’t wait. He walked toward the confessionals, his footsteps heavy on the stone floor. He needed the barrier. He needed the screen. He needed the ritual to put the chains back on the beast inside him.
Dorian followed. The sound of their combined movement reverberated off the walls, filling the emptiness.
Inside the priest’s booth, the air was stale and close. Callahan sat down and retrieved his rosary, the wooden beads cool against his sweating palms. He took a breath, holding it, forcing his heart rate to slow. He kissed the crucifix.
The slide opened. The silhouette of Dorian appeared behind the screen.
“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
“Amen,” Dorian murmured. A pause. A shuddering inhale. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been… almost two weeks since my last confession.”
Callahan closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the wood.
“I confess to the following sins,” Dorian continued, his voice trembling. “Wrath. Toward Arthur. For what he said. And toward myself, for what I did.”
A sob, wet and choked, broke through the screen.
“I didn’t even think twice before I swung. He just… he looked straight through me. I couldn’t take it anymore. I’m so sick of him looking at me like I’m nothing. Like he finds the very idea of me repulsive.”
Callahan’s heart twisted. The pain in Dorian’s voice was a physical weight in the small booth. It resonated with a frequency Callahan knew too well. He remembered the way his own father had looked at him, decades ago—the disgust, the disappointment.
“There comes a point,” Callahan said softly, “where we have to stop living for those around us and live for ourselves. And for God. Especially when their presence in our life drives us into sin.”
“That’s why I left,” Dorian whispered. “I never wanted to come back to this God-awful fucking town.”
The profanity hung in the air, raw and honest. Callahan didn’t correct him. He couldn’t. The sheer vulnerability left him grasping for a platitude that wouldn’t sound hollow.
“God,” Dorian sniffled. The bench creaked as he shifted. “Why am I even telling you all this?”
“Confession offers a safe place,” Callahan recited, though he tried to infuse the words with genuine warmth. “To lay oneself bare without judgment. It is not uncommon to reveal things here that you would never tell another soul.”
“But what makes this different from talking to you out there?” Dorian asked. The defiance was weak, wet with tears, but it was there. “I could barely get the words out when we were sitting in the pews. What makes this shitty little box so special?”
A small, pitiful smile tugged at Callahan’s mouth. “If I had to guess? The anonymity. I am not supposed to know who is on the other side of the screen. And even if I do, I am bound by the Seal of the Confessional. I must keep whatever is said within these walls a secret until my dying breath.”
“That’s a little fucking morbid,” Dorian scoffed.
“It is, isn’t it?”
Callahan ran his thumb over the wooden beads of his rosary. He thought of the hundreds of secrets he carried. The infidelities, the thefts, the hatreds. He was a vessel for the town’s darkness.
“Though,” Callahan added, “there is beauty in it.”
“In hearing people bitch about their lives? Telling you all the awful things they’ve done?” Dorian let out a rough, watery laugh. “How so?”
“When a person comes to confess, they are choosing to trust another human being with their soul. Even if they trust no one else. Even if they don’t trust themselves.” Callahan lifted the rosary, staring at the simple wooden cross in the dim light. It was the same one he’d received at the start of seminary, back when he was trying to scrub the stain of his old life from his skin. “They trust me to bring them from the darkness into the light.”
“Do you think everyone can be brought into the light?”
Callahan remembered the man he used to be. The sin. The filth. The things he had done before he found the collar.
“I do.”
“Even those that hate their stepdad?” Dorian asked. He sounded small. Like a child asking if he was going to be sent to his room.
Callahan wished, violently, that he could tear down the screen. That he could reach through the wood and hold him.
“The Bible teaches us to respect our parents,” Callahan said. “But it also teaches, in Colossians and Ephesians, that parents should not provoke their children to anger. So yes. Even those that hate their father are capable of forgiveness. So long as they seek absolution.”
“Guess that means I’ve done my part then, huh?” Dorian’s tone held a ghost of his usual playfulness.
“You have done your part.”
Callahan heard the exhale from the other side of the screen—a long, shuddering release. It sounded like Dorian was letting go of a burden he’d been carrying for years.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For this. I… I really needed this. To talk to someone, I mean.”
Callahan’s heart jumped, a traitorous leap against his ribs. “I am more than happy to talk with you at any time. Be it out there, or in here.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you again, Father.”
Before Callahan could say another word—before he could ask him to stay, to wait, to let Callahan make sure he was alright to drive—the slide slammed shut.
Footsteps retreated down the aisle. The heavy thud of the church doors opening and closing echoed through the nave, leaving silence in its wake.
Callahan stayed in the booth. He sat in the dark, clutching his rosary, listening to the silence. He wondered if he had done his duty as a priest, or if he had merely fed the hunger of the man.
He lowered his head and prayed, with shameful fervor, that Dorian would come back.