“Jordan.”
The priest kneeling in front of me didn’t stop praying or even turn to face me. Instead, he kept murmuring to himself in the same measured voice with the same measured pace, and I knew Jordan well enough to know that this was a polite way of telling me to fuck off until he was done.
I sat in the pew behind him.
Jordan was the only priest I personally knew who still prayed the Liturgy of the Hours, a practice that was so monastic as to be almost obsolete, which was probably part of the reason it appealed to him. Like me, he loved old things, but his fascination went beyond mere books and the occasional spiritual encounter. He lived like a medieval monk, a life almost completely and totally devoted to prayer and ritual. It was this mystical, unearthly nature that had brought so many young people into his parish; over the past three years, it had been his presence that had revitalized this old, inner city church that had been so close to closing when he’d taken it over into something thriving and alive.
Jordan finished his prayers and made the sign of the cross, standing with a purposeful slowness to face me.
“Father Bell,” he said formally.
I refrained from rolling my eyes. He’d always been like this—aloof and intense. Even the one time he’d accidentally drank too much at the seminary barbecue and I’d had to babysit him as he puked all night. But what appeared to be haughtiness or coldness was actually just a symptom of his vibrant inner life, the constant atmosphere of holiness and inspiration that he lived in, an atmosphere so palpable to him that he didn’t understand why other people didn’t sense it as he did.
“Father Brady,” I said.
“I imagine you are here for a confession?”
“Yes.” I stood and he looked me up and down. There was a long pause, a long moment where his face went from confused to sad to unreadable.
“Not today,” he finally said and then turned and started walking toward his office.
I was confused. “Not today? Like no confession today? Are you busy or something?”
“No, I’m not busy,” he said, still walking away.
My brows knit together. Was denying someone confession even legal according to ecclesiastical law? Pretty sure it wasn’t.
“Hey, wait up,” I said.
He didn’t. He didn’t even turn around to acknowledge that I had said something or that I was jogging after him.
We went into the small hallway lined with doors, and it was as I was following him into his office that I realized this was more than his usual reserved attitude. Father Jordan Brady was upset.
He definitely hadn’t been upset when I’d arrived.
“Dude,” I said, closing his office door behind me. “What the hell?”
He sat down behind his desk, the early afternoon light painting his blond hair gold. Jordan was a good-looking guy, with the kind of hair and healthy complexion that you usually only saw in Calvin Klein ads. He was fit too—we’d bonded in the first semester of our divinity program after we kept running into each other at the local gym. We’d ended up sharing an apartment for the next two years, and I was pretty sure I was the closest thing this guy had to a friend.
Which was why I refused to be blown off.
He kept his eyes down as he powered on his laptop. “Come back later, Father Bell. Not today.”
“Canon law says you have to hear my confession.”
“Canon law isn’t everything.”
That surprised me. Jordan was not a rule-breaker. Jordan was like two steps away from being the creepy assassin in The Da Vinci Code.
I sat in a chair across his desk and folded my arms. “I’m not leaving until you divulge why exactly you won’t hear my confession.”
“I don’t mind if you stay,” he said calmly.
“Jordan.”
He pressed his lips together, as if debating with himself, and then he finally looked up, brown eyes concerned and penetrating.
“What’s her name, Tyler?”
Fear and adrenaline spiked through me. Had someone seen us? Had someone figured out what was going on and told Jordan?
“Jordan, I—”
“Don’t bother lying about it,” he said, and he didn’t say it with disgust, but rather with an intensity that unsettled me, put me more on edge than his anger ever could.
“Are you going to let me confess?” I demanded.
“No.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because,” Jordan said deliberately, bracing his elbows on his desk and leaning forward, “you aren’t ready to stop. You’re not ready to give her up, and until you are, there’s no point in me absolving you.”
I sank back in my chair. He was right. I wasn’t ready to give Poppy up. I didn’t want to stop. Why was I here, then? Did I think that Jordan was going to say some special prayer over me that would solve all my problems? Did I think going through the motions would change what was in my heart?
“How did you know?” I asked, looking down at my legs and hoping to God it wasn’t because someone had seen Poppy and me together.
“God told me. When you walked in.” Jordan said it simply, the same way someone might share where they bought their clothes. “Just as He is telling me now that you are not at the end of this. You aren’t ready to confess yet.”
“God told you,” I repeated.
“Yes,” he said with a nod.
It sounded insane. But I believed him. If Jordan told me he knew exactly how many angels could fit on the head of a pin, I’d believe him. He was that kind of man—one foot in our world, one foot in the next—and I’d experienced enough with him over our years of friendship that I knew he really was able to see and feel things that others couldn’t.
It had been a lot less frustrating when I hadn’t been one of the others in question.
“You’ve broken your vows,” he said now, softly.
“Did God tell you that too?” I asked, not bothering to keep the bitterness out of my voice.
“No. But I can see it in you. You carry equal burdens of guilt and joy.”
Yep, that about summed it up.
I buried my face in my hands, not overcome with emotion, but suddenly overwhelmed by it all, embarrassed by my weakness in front of a man who would never cave to any temptation.
“Do you hate me?” I mumbled into my hands.
“You know I don’t. You know God doesn’t either. And you know I won’t tell the bishop.”
“You won’t?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think that’s what God wants right now.”
I raised my head, still overwhelmed. “So what do I do?”
Jordan looked at me with something like pity.
“You come back when you’re ready to confess,” he said. “And until then, you be exceedingly careful.”
Careful.
Exceedingly careful.
I thought about those words as I visited Mom and Dad, as I rinsed the dinner dishes in their sink, as I drove home in the dark. As I snuck across the park so I could fuck Poppy again.
Nothing about me was careful right now.