Chapter 7 Callahan
“Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.”
— Ephesians 4:29 KJV
Callahan’s body felt heavy, as though the morning’s duties at Saint Jude’s had poured lead into his limbs. Sunlight slanted through the high windows and lay across the pews in warm bars; he sat in one of them, head tipped back, letting the light soak into his closed eyelids. The quiet of the empty nave pressed against him like a balm. If not for the sudden, deliberate clearing of a throat—sharp enough to bounce off stone and vaulted ceiling—he might have drifted into sleep.
He jerked upright, heart already racing from the startle, and found Dorian standing at the end of the pew.
Relief and dread collided in his chest. Not Bishop Rier, then. Worse, perhaps.
“Dorian.” The name left his lips softer than he intended. He straightened his glasses, smoothed the front of his cassock. “Forgive me. I believe I was dozing. How may I serve you?”
Dorian’s mouth curved—that slow, knowing tilt that always seemed to pull the air tighter around them. “Taking you up on that suggestion from this morning, Father.”
A simple request. A penitent seeking confession. Nothing remarkable. Yet heat flared beneath Callahan’s collar as though the words themselves were kindling.
He swallowed. The Roman collar pressed against his throat like a reminder and a shackle both. “I’m glad my words bore fruit,” he managed. “The confessional is this way.”
Dorian turned and walked ahead. Callahan rose more slowly than he should have, eyes snagging on the fit of dark jeans, the easy roll of hips beneath denim. A wicked thought slipped in unbidden: how those jeans might look sliding down, pooling at ankles, leaving nothing between his palms and warm skin. His body answered before he could silence it—a twitch beneath the heavy black fabric of his cassock. God forgive me. He lifted the rosary from his pocket, brushed his lips across the worn beads in silent petition, and followed.
Inside the confessional the air was close, scented faintly with old wood and candle wax. Callahan knelt, drew breath to begin the ritual words, but Dorian spoke first through the lattice.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been… I’ve lost count of the days since my last confession.”
A playful lilt threaded the formal phrase. Callahan’s pulse stumbled.
“Go on, my child.”
“You remember my first confession, don’t you?”
Vividly. Too vividly. “I do.”
“Your counsel was… memorable. I tried scripture, like you said. But every verse I read turned into his voice in my ear—low, rough, twisting holy words into something filthy while his hands moved over me.” A pause, deliberate. “I tried to resist, Father. I really did.”
Callahan’s grip tightened on the rosary. Knuckles whitened.
“But I couldn’t stop myself from touching. From giving in.”
A soft groan carried through the screen—low, unashamed. The sound struck Callahan low in the belly, heat pooling swift and treacherous. He closed his eyes, breathed through his mouth, tasting dust and incense and his own rising panic.
“What should I do, Father?”
The question hung between them, innocent on the surface, edged underneath with something that made Callahan’s skin burn.
He forced his voice steady. “The body is a temple, my son. To defile it with solitary pleasure is to turn away from God’s purpose. Scripture warns us against the lusts of the flesh that war against the soul. I urge you to reflect deeply on past weakness and choose continence.”
A breathy chuckle answered him. “I’ll try. Can’t promise more than that.”
Callahan’s jaw ached from clenching. The cross at the end of his rosary bit into his palm, sharp and grounding.
“For your penance, recite the Miserere—Psalm 51—and pray two full rosaries, meditating on purity of heart.”
“That all?” The pout in Dorian’s voice was almost visible.
Callahan heard himself speak before caution could catch the words. “If it’s punishment you seek, I can provide it.”
Silence—thick, electric. Then, softly: “Perhaps another time.”
The slide of the booth door, the muted thud of the outer church door. Footsteps receding.
Only then did Callahan let out the breath he’d been holding. He bent forward, forehead against clasped hands, rosary pressed to his lips. None of the hundreds of confessions he had heard over decades had ever unraveled him like this. Ordinary men and women spoke of lust, of wandering hands and midnight weakness, and he had listened with calm compassion. Dorian’s voice alone turned those same words into fire.
He opened his hand. The skin of his palm bore angry red crescents where the edges of the cross had dug in—small white dents already fading. Proof. He had not surrendered. Not yet.
The sunlight had shifted while he sat there; the pews lay in cooler shadow now. Callahan stayed on his knees a moment longer, tracing the marks with one thumb, letting the small pain remind him who he was.
A priest. Dorian’s priest.
Nothing more.