Page 101 of Audacity

Sophia blows out a breath. ‘I’m beginning to feel like a relationship counsellor here, but I have to admit I get that. I also get Athena’s frustration.’ She turns to Marlowe, looking her up and down. ‘There’s nothing stopping you from earning that money yourself.’

‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

She grins. ‘Just join Seraph. Easy. Look at you. You’re absolutely gorgeous.’

Marlowe takes a huge gulp of wine and promptly chokes on it.

‘She doesn’t do sex,’ I tell Soph.

‘I hate to be that person,’ she deadpans, ‘but the existence of a kid kind of suggests otherwise.’

‘She doesn’t do sexbecause of the kid.’ My stage whisper may be a little loud, but I’m at least a bottle of wine down.

‘I had a fling with my professor in my first year of uni,’ Marlowe tells Sophia. ‘He turned out to be an idiot with bad condom skills, but I got the best thing in my life out of it—Tabs. I don’t really do the sex thing anymore, though.’

‘Hmm.’ Soph sounds like Marlowe is a total conundrum, which, if your attitude to sex is as liberated as hers is, I can understand. I turn my head back to her. Sitting between them is beginning to feel like a tennis match.

‘How does the idea of what Athena and I do for a living make you feel?’

‘Absolutely physically ill,’ Marlowe says immediately.

‘Okay then. Not the most promising start. Do you find it morally problematic, or it just gives you the ick?’

‘It just gives me the ick,’ she insists.

‘Ever read spicy romance books?’ Soph wonders aloud.

‘I’m a single mum. What do you think? I have to get my kicks from somewhere.’

Sophia pounces. ‘Aha! So you do have a sex drive?’

‘Of course I do. I just don’t ever want to doanyof those things in real life,’ Marlowe says, and Sophia cackles.

‘Look, babes, I get it. You got messed around and now you’ve got a sick little girl to look after. None of that would give me the horn, either. But look.’ She leans forward, and I sit back so she can have this moment of connection with Marlowe. ‘These roles pay like six figures a month. You get twenty-five grand for the first audition, and you get paid up front. You turn tricks for a month or two and then: boom. You’re done. Surgery paid for. You can quit.’

I shoot her a disapproving look. Much as I’m Team Marlowe, I don’t approve of anyone sullying the Seraph name by playing the system. Besides, there’s no way Marlowe would even last two months. She’d probably clutch her pearls and run out of the audition before letting a guy anywhere near her, bless her.

‘I think encouraging Marls to go out for a single date with a nice guy is a more appropriate next step for her love life than throwing her into the Seraph shark tank,’ I protest. Talk about a proposed baptism of fire.

But, to my horror, my gorgeous, prudish friend is staring at my gorgeous, sex-obsessed friend as though she holds the key to all the answers of the universe. When Marlowe speaks, her voice is shaky but determined, and I know Soph has somehow unleashed her fiercest inner mama bear. The one that would sell her own soul to save her cub.

‘You really think I could do it?’

CHAPTER 52

Gabe

When a former priest realises he needs his very owncome to Jesusmoment, you can be sure it’s a low point.

I thought I was done with these revelations. When it came, the epiphany that I needed to—that Icould—walk away from the priesthood hit me like a cricket bat to the head. Now, though, I face nothing but a muddy brain and nebulous plans and conflict upon conflict when it comes to doing what is right.

The one truth over which I have clarity—theonlytruth, in fairness—is that I love Athena, and I am not prepared to lose her.

Night after night of obsessing and questioning and driving myself crazy, wondering if I did the right thing by abandoning my vows, and the clearest sign God has given me belongs in human form.

Everything I’ve done has led me to her, and I will not walk away.

The memory of her face as she safed out yesterday is so seared onto my consciousness that it affords me no reprieve. It was so fucking shocking. If she’d kneed me in the balls, kicked me in the stomach, it couldn’t have hurt more.

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