Page 79 of Broken

“Isn’t that the curse of a modern parish?”

“Perhaps. They want lazy priests and I’m not that. I might not believe in everything I preach, but I don’t believe in loopholes.”

“Loopholes?”

“When they sent me to Spain, I lived in this tiny town just outside of Madrid. It might have been on the commuter belt, but the parish wasn’t that large.

“A girl came to me, her mother dragging her there because she’d stolen something. We discussed what she stole, then she told me that she only did that because her mother punished her by denying her food.” His throat works. “Sin is everywhere.”

“What did you do?”

“I told her that stealing was bad and that if she was hungry, she should come to me, and I’d feed her.”

“That sounds like you were a good priest to her.” I reward him with a kiss on the crown of his head this time.

“You’re not getting the point,” he mumbles, but he doesn’t pull away from me. If anything, he tightens his hold. “I’m a Bible scholar. I know the ‘rules’ of religion, and wherever I turn, there are these things that nag at me.

“She stole, Andrea. She should have atoned. Yet she wasn’t to blame. Her mother was, but when I confronted her during her own confession,sherefused to atone for denying her daughter food.” A shaky breath escapes him. “In that situation, I broke the seal of confession.”

“I didn’t know that was allowed.”

“It isn’t. I had the girl taken out of the mother’s reach for her safety. She complained to the archdiocese so I was shuffled onto another town.”

“If you did it once, why didn’t you go to the cops with the others?”

“Becausetheywere unique. A brush with the law wasn’t adequate absolution for their sins. Andthatis why I’m damnedforever: because there is no apology in my heart for God to accept.

“I had the option, and I didn’t take it. I chose my path, and I damned myself forever with that decision, something I believe He’d want me to do to protect His innocent children.”

My brow furrows at his words, but I run my hands through his hair, loving how he huddles into me as if I represent safety now.

He’s a broken man. Twisted. Shattered. But he’s mine, and he needs me.

That’s why I carry on soothing him. Why I don’t run for the hills. Why I stay the night. Why I choose to spend it by his side.

It’s hell not being able to touch him how I want to.

After I clean his back and change the sheets, though the freak in me enjoyed lying on them, we put a towel under his side for extra absorption.

He falls asleep in my arms as I sing to him.

“Hallelujah.”

He softens against me, and shortly after, I manage to rest too.

It’s why I experience Heaven the following morning when I wake in his arms to the dawn chorus of birds tweeting and delivery vans dropping off their wares to nearby businesses.

A part of me fears his expression will be filled with hatred when he first looks at me, his body stiff with rejection, but he turns his face into my throat and whispers, “You smell like home.”

My heart thuds in my chest at those words, leaving me speechless.

I can only lie here, staring at the ceiling, holding him as he dozes in the early morning light.

I smell like home?

Dear God, I don’t think he could have said anything else that might have hit me harder.

His words resonate so strongly, so purely, that I can’t contain the happiness rattling around inside me.

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