ACE KICKED OFF HIS MOTORCYCLE boots and left them at the door while he surveyed my living room. “So you just need me to chill here?”
“Yes.” I grabbed a jacket from the hall closet and shrugged it on. Even though it was still hot outside, I was feverish. “If you hear any suspicious noises coming from the room, go ahead and check on her. If she needs the bathroom, she can use it, but she goes right back to the desk until her lines are finished.”
He bobbed his head and took up residence on the couch. “Man, you gotta get Netflix or something in this place.”
“I like the quiet.”
“It’s cool,” he grumbled. “I’ll just raid your fridge and take a nap.”
I walked toward the door before I thought of something. “Did you get Birdie out of the city?”
Ace hesitated, and he didn’t look at me when he answered. “Yep.”
I trusted him implicitly, but it felt like he wasn’t telling me the whole truth. Regardless, it was out of my hands at this point. I told Gypsy I wouldn’t keep tabs on her sister, and I meant it.
“Is she safe?” I asked.
“Yes.” Ace met my gaze this time, and there was fire in his. “As safe as she can be.”
I nodded. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“Take your time,” he mumbled, leaning his head back against the sofa and closing his eyes. “It’s kinda nice here.”
“How long has it been since your last confession?”
I rapped my fingers against the wall between us. “It’s me, Cristian.”
There was a pause of silence, and I was almost certain he dreaded this conversation as much as I did. I’d come to atone my sins but never in the usual way. I didn’t address him as Father, and I often found myself talking to him as a friend rather than my priest. But over the years, Cristian had become both.
“I saw you at mass on Sunday,” he offered.
“I know.”
“I saw you with her.” His tone was accusatory. Protective. Even slightly scornful. He had a right to those feelings when he’d warned me against this from the beginning, but I had set my path long ago, and it was never to his standards of righteousness.
“I’m only trying to help her.”
“I don’t think you can offer her the kind of help she needs,” he replied.
“If not me, then who can?” I challenged. “As long as she’s been coming here to confess her sins, what good has that done her?”
Another pause. “I give her an ear to listen without judgment.”
“Followed by a healthy dose of atonement,” I mused. “We are not so different, Father.”
He sighed. “I would ask you how you found her, but I don’t think I want to know.”
“Anybody is easy enough to find,” I told him. “If you have the right tools.”
Cristian knew that I saw her here first. I set my sights on her in this place of worship, and that was a problem for him. Despite what he might believe, the decision hadn’t been an easy one. I’d spent months combing through the details of her life, tormenting myself over what I should do. Gypsy was my greatest controversy, and she had no idea.
“How is she doing?” Cristian asked.
“She’s a handful,” I admitted. “More than I probably should have taken on, but I’m in it now. There’s no going back.”
His shadow moved on the other side as he shifted. “What if your plan doesn’t work? What if it only causes her more pain in the end?”
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” I deflected. “I’m only here to teach her. Nothing more.”
“It isn’t nothing I saw in your eyes when you talked about her.”
“I’m incapable of loving anyone,” I told him. “You know that.”
“That’s what you’ve said,” he agreed. “But that doesn’t mean it’s true. God has a way of proving our truths false sometimes.”
“Like your own.”
It was a low blow, and I immediately regretted the jab. Cristian had been struggling for some time with the vows he’d taken, and I knew he questioned his own path, even if he couldn’t admit it himself. That was the truth I saw in his eyes. The torment I recognized too well. In the end, he chose not to acknowledge my words at all.
“While you might be able to guarantee your feelings, you can’t guarantee hers.”
“She won’t fall in love with me.” I bowed my head and pinched the tension in the back of my neck. “She can barely stomach looking at me.”
He didn’t know the full extent of our arrangement, and it was better that way. His conscience wouldn’t allow him to stand by while I went about things the way I chose.
“Your presence in her life can only be a temporary one,” Cristian noted. “You think you are saving her, but how can you be certain you might not equally devastate her?”
“It won’t happen. I won’t allow her feelings to grow roots.”
“You wouldn’t be here talking to me if you didn’t have your doubts,” Cristian argued. “Tell me what it is you want to hear from me?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“I can’t give you my approval.”
“I know.”
We were both quiet then. He took it upon himself to redirect the conversation. “How is your health?”
“It’s fine.” My fingers bounced against my thigh, a nervous pattern that I couldn’t recall making before. “I’m tired. But fine.”
“And you are still certain of your course with that matter?”
“Yes.”
“Then I can offer you only this,” he said. “Do what good you can while there is time.”
“I’m trying.”
“God will light your way.”
I smiled into the darkness. “I hope for your sake, Father, he will light yours as well.”