Page 44 of The Forbidden Bride He Stole

I’m sorry for the part that I played in your loneliness,” he said.

“It was probably for the best that I got sent to boarding school. I waslesslonely than I was living at home, even though at the time I resented the change. So in that way, I think you helped. Apollo... How did you get out? What... What happened?”

“That is not a conversation for baklava and espresso and very small cafés.”

It was perhaps not a conversation they ever needed to have. But he could feel his resolve to keep it from her wearing thin.

Everything he’d done with her in the past had either produced quiet capitulation or later, rebellion. And she was right about one thing, all of that had been about her occupying a symbolic place in her life. Talking to her, spending time with her, he was beginning to see something deeper.

Lonely.

They were both lonely.

She had hooked into something within him that he hadn’t even known was there.

It was strange. And entirely unwelcome. He was used to having control, and she... She stripped it from him. It would be easier if it was only in the realm of sex. But here in this little café, she made him question his own resolve, and that was something he didn’t have an excuse or reason for.

“Let’s keep you moving,” he said. “You want to stay awake until bedtime.”

One thing he was certain about, it would be best if they stayed busy. Best if they were able to stay out in public. Because for all the promises he’d made himself about not wanting to touch her again, he could feel himself weakening there.

He did not wish to be weak.

“Will I?” She asked as they swept out onto the street.

“Yes,” he said. “And tomorrow when you have to go into the office you will thank me.”

They decided that they would see each other’s favorite places. And that meant Hannah taking him to The Met, Central Park, and the Magnolia Bakery. While he showed her a gritty art gallery that he had grown attached to as a pretentious new enthusiast of art in his mid-twenties.

She spoke with broad hand gestures about each art piece they stopped at, and her enthusiasm was something more than infectious. Perhaps the thing that hit him hardest was...his own enthusiasm for the art seemed to affect her.

They passed by St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and he hesitated.

“Do you want to go in?” she asked.

He felt frozen to the spot. And seen in a way he wasn’t used to being seen. He was supposed to be sharing his favorite places in the city but he hadn’t counted on this. He hadn’t even thought of it, really.

“Come on,” she said, linking arms with him and propelling him toward the large wooden doors.

As an architectural marvel, it was stunning. All ornately carved gray stone in the midst of the steel and glass of the city. Archaic to some, he supposed, and yet to him, it had created a stillness within. He had been compelled by it, from the first. He could remember being a young man and wondering if he could still go into a church after everything he’d done. Then he’d remembered his mother always had her rosary, even after everything, and he’d decided that he would go.

He touched the holy water when they walked in and made the sign of the cross, a reflex. Hannah didn’t, but walked in with him. “I’ve never been here,” she whispered. “My dad had no use for churches, and my mom even less.”

There were people kneeling, praying, lighting candles. He reached into his pocket and took out a folded American hundred-dollar bill that was there and pressed it down into the slot of an offering box. He’d come in and lit candles in here before he could ever afford to make the suggested offering. He felt compelled to give now, for himself and for anyone else who might need the candle and have nothing to give for it.

“What’s that for?” she whispered.

“Payment,” he whispered back.

God knew that was too honest. But they were in a church. A lie felt like a sin. A funny thing, that he should concern himself with adding another sin to his vast list.

But here, he always wanted something different.

Just as he did when he was with her, he supposed.

He walked deeper into the building, feeling small beneath the arched ceiling, the massive pillars, and soaring stained glass windows. It had been a comfort then, feeling so insignificant and new. He wasn’t sure what it was now.

She held his arm as they walked through, past the kneeling faithful, and back out onto the street, so loud and busy it was like the silence of the cathedral had never been real.

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