Page 45 of Almost Priest

“Don’t think I don’t want to, Samantha. I look at you and feel as if I’ll crawl out of my skin if I don’t touch you. You make me feel things I’ve never felt. But my path was chosen years ago. It’s all I’ve ever wanted and I’m only months away from getting there. I cannot…It would confuse things, that’s all. And it would be wrong for me to take something that’s meant for your husband.”

“I’m not a virgin by choice, Colin. It has nothing to do with religion or God or anything other than I never met a man worth giving it to.”

He wanted to know if she’d give it to him if he asked, but knew that would only be inviting trouble.

Instead, he inquired, “Why do you dislike the church so much?”

She laughed without humor. “If there is a God, He’s cruel and selfish and no friend of mine.”

His heart ached to hear such disdain for the one ideal his life had been dedicated to. She wasn’t the first to express such views to him, but for some reason it made him feel like he had even less of her approval he assumed he had a moment ago.

“God loves us all, Sammy.”

“Do not speak pious platitudes to me, Colin McCullough. You have no idea what my life was before I came here.”

She was right. He was only being given this small snippet of her and he wanted more.

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ll comfort me and I’ll only love you more fiercely for it and in the end I’ll be destroyed all the more.”

He stilled. Did she realize what she just said?

She looked up at him, a frown crinkling her brow. “What?”

“Did you hear yourself, Sammy? What you said?”

“That I’ll only love you more? Yes. I know what I said.”

He wanted to convince her it wasn’t so. Somehow persuade her so their separation wouldn’t be as monumentally heart wrenching in the end. He took both her hands in his.

“Sammy, what this is, what you feel for me, it isn’t love. You’re just infatuated right now.”

“Do not presume to tell me how I feel, Colin. I know my heart. People assume it takes years and months to love someone and that our affection must be rationed to only the best of the best. Well, I think that’s bullshit. Life’s too short not to tell those we love that they mean something to us. What I feel for you…you may never be my husband, or my lover, or even my friend, but there is a very real part of me that loves you. Maybe it’s because of the way you are with the others, maybe it’s the way you helped me when I lost it at the lake, or maybe it’s because I’ll never completely have you, but whatever it is, it’s real and you will not take it away from me because it makes this more difficult for you.”

She was right. He loved her too. Still, he wanted to convince her otherwise. How had things gotten so out of control? “Who did you lose the chance to say I love you to?”

She looked down and he tipped her chin back up gently.

“I’ll never have the pleasure of being all those things to you, Samantha, but let me know you. Give me something of yourself I’ll never lose once I take my vows. Something to always hold onto. We’re friends.”

Her gaze lowered as if she were suddenly engulfed in sadness, an abyss of memories only she could see.

“My sister.”

His blood turned to ice at her words.

“She was twelve. I was fourteen. I could’ve saved her. Do you know what it feels like to know you had a chance to make everything different but you made the wrong choice and let it all slip away? It’s an unrelenting guilt that never leaves, a daily reminder that your life should have been different and will always be a little duller, a little less happy, always halfway full. And when you try to convince yourself it’s time to let the guilt go, something reminds you of all the others you hurt by choosing wrong, and you sentence yourself to a million more years of guilt and know it’ll still never be enough to reverse what’s been done.”

“I’m so sorry, Samantha. I had no idea.”

Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears, but he could tell she was working very hard not to let them fall. Was that part of her sentence? Did she take away her right to cry for her own pain over losing her sister?

He moved to the bed and pulled her into his arms. His soul needed to comfort her. Needed to hold her. This was what she was afraid of, him doing just that and making their situation all the more complicated. He should have just let her muddle through, but he couldn’t. He was a selfish bastard.

---