Page 147 of The Confidant
“That’s so fast.”
“It was,” he said. “I was shocked when they told me because they’d been members for so much longer than me. But we’re all different.” He reached over and took my hand in his. “And I think it’s good to remember that there isn’t a certain deadline for you to decide by. You can go as fast or as slow as you need. You can take a break from the church and see how it feels to just be a regular human living a more secular life. Or…” He squeezed my hand. “You can continue attending all your meetings if that makes you happier while you figure things out. You could even try something in-between.”
It made sense that Hunter would say that. He had always been more of the “take things slow and figure out all the details before jumping into things” personality while I’d been the “jump in headfirst, and then figure it out as I go” type.
“And what if I decided to stay?” I asked. “Would you think any less of me?”
“I would have questions,” he said. “Just because I care about you and always want to know what you’re thinking. But if you really thought The Fold was more of a positive force in your life than negative, then I would hope that I could be okay with us being on different spiritual paths.”
I didn’t know why, but just hearing that I wouldn’t lose him if I came to a different conclusion than him in the end took a huge weight off my chest.
“What about you?” he asked. “If you decide to stay, do you think you could be okay dating someone who doesn’t want anything to do with religion right now? Would that be a dealbreaker for you like it was before?”
I thought about it and everything we’d been through together the past few months.
But I only had to consider his question for a few seconds because I knew my answer. I’d known it since I’d woken up in my dorm room a little over a week ago and found him smiling at me.
So I said, “As long as that person is you, I don’t care what you believe. Because I know your intentions and what an amazing person you already are. And I just want to be with you.”
“Well, that’s good to hear.” He gave me a gentle smile and pulled me closer. “Because I just want to be with you, too.”
52
SCARLETT
The next fewweeks were busy as the end of the school year approached and I prepared for all of my final exams.
I’d taken Hunter’s advice and decided to take some of the pressure off from figuring out my beliefs and where I thought I fit into the universe. I knew I couldn’t forget the things I’d experienced in the Holy of Holies with Xander or the ways my dad and the High Priest had been manipulated into believing there was an actual revelation that said I was predestined to be with someone like him.
But it was nice to know that I didn’t need to have all the answersright now.
I had time.
And Hunter was so great to support me as I worked to figure things out for myself. He was a safe person to talk things out with, as well as a great listening ear when I just needed to vent. And the more I learned—the more bombshells that seemed to be dropped on me—the more empathy I had for him because he’d had to do so much of this on his own.
I hadn’t been there for him when he had to wrestle through his own dark night of the soul.
But when I tried to apologize to him for not beinghissafe person last year, he just told me not to beat myself up over it. Because he understood what it was like to be a true believer and that I’d just been doing what I’d been raised to believe was right at the time.
At the end of May, just a week before graduation, it came out that Xander had actually been the mastermind behind the revelation regarding the Chosen One’s conception all along.
That while he had found Samuel Williams’ journals in his dad’s personal library, he’d taken the one with the “revelation” to a document forger and had him create the pages for the made-up journal entry and then had it bound right into the book.
When I asked my attorney why Xander had chosen me to be his victim in the first place, she explained that Xander admitted to developing an obsession with me when he’d interned with my dad last summer. Xander’s office at the church had given him the perfect view into my bedroom, and he had become infatuated with me after watching me through the window several nights.
“But why go through the trouble of creating the whole revelation in the first place?” I asked. “Wouldn’t most stalkers just try to seduce me the normal way?”
To which my attorney replied very matter-of-factly, “From what our source said, Xander noticed what a tight leash your dad kept on your dating life, and being the religious zealot that he is, he decided to seduce you using the spiritual language that your father speaks fluently.”
So yeah, Xander had basically just taken great notes from his hero and ancestor, Samuel Williams, and figured it could be an exciting way to manipulate young girls into sleeping with him.
Which, as it turned out, was something Xander had done a few times before, according to the handful of other women who came forward to tell the experiences they’d had with him in the past after the story broke.
And while I felt terrible that Xander had preyed on so many other girls, some who had been younger than me at the time of the abuse, I was glad that it just gave the court more ammo to use against him.
Hopefully, he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone else again.
* * *
