Priest (A Standalone Bad Boy Romance Love Story) (5 page)

CHAPTER
TEN

JACE

As soon as I heard the sound of her voice,
I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I may have even gasped aloud and I hoped that
she didn’t hear me.

Life as I had come to know it seemed to be
ending rapidly. First, I had lost my grandmother, and then I gave in to the
sins of the bottle and then the sins of the flesh. Now, I heard the beautiful
young woman’s voice again…in the confessional, of all places.

I remembered the sound of it clearly. It
had a sweet little timbre to it, and besides, when a priest has a moment like
that—or an entire night, such as I did that night—he’s going to vividly
remember every detail, no matter how drunk he was.

I couldn't believe that I had asked her if
she’d told anyone. That was a very un-priestly question. I didn’t offer any
words of support or encouragement, I just slapped her penance on her and sent
her on her way.

Now, I couldn’t help myself. I had to know
for sure. I had to be certain that the potential end to my career was kneeling
in my church. I was treading all over the sacraments. I pushed open the
confessional door just a tiny little crack. Luckily, no one else was waiting
for confession.

I could see the shapely young lady walk
towards the altar in her skirt and heels. I begged myself to remember where I
was and to not enjoy watching her walk away. It was hard. She had to have
shapeliest legs and backside that I’d seen in a long time…or maybe it was just
the only one I’d noticed.

Before she knelt down, she glanced up at
the huge crucifix on the wall. I could clearly see her profile and make out her
pretty features. This was absolutely, without a doubt, the girl I broke my vows
with.

I pulled the door closed and once more
felt sick to my stomach.
What have I
done? If she tells anyone, the scandal will surely make the papers, I could
lose my job…and my brothers would find out. They’re both so proud of me, like
Grandmother always was. Grandmother would turn over in her grave and my
brothers…well, I’m sure they’d still love me as much as ever, but the scandal
would be humiliating for them, as well.

I closed my eyes and prayed, “Dear Father,
please forgive me for my trespasses against you, and please God, give me the
strength to walk the straight and narrow path you’ve laid out before me.”

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

DAPHNE

I didn’t make it to church the Sunday
after confession. I had to work and I was disappointed for more than one
reason. The first one being that I really did love going to church. It made me
feel close to God and like things were going to be right with the world.

The second reason was that I was dying to
see the new priest. I kept trying to convince myself that it absolutely was not
him…it couldn’t be, but until I actually saw him, it was going to continue to
niggle away at me. I wanted to see him so that I could tell myself once and for
all that it was all in my head.

My guilt was trying to convince me that I
had created a much more grievous sin than I’d originally thought. It was eating
away at me and I’d have to wait one more week to find out for certain. I prayed
every night that the sound of his voice was nothing more than a coincidence.

I decided to cook myself some dinner after
I got home from work on Monday night. I’d bought some lean beef and I cut it in
strips and marinated it. I caramelized some red onions, bell peppers, and
Portobello mushrooms cut up into quarter-sized pieces. Then I mixed it all
together with some fried rice and rolled it in a whole wheat wrap. I took a big
bite before I even made it to the table. It was delicious and I was proud of
myself for cooking and not eating fast food.

That was just too easy sometimes when I
was alone and it was so bad for me. I poured myself a glass of iced tea and
just as I finally sat down to eat, my phone rang.

I picked it up off the counter, looked at
the face of it and smiled. As soon as I said hello I heard, “Hi, girl!” It was
Carla. Carla was my best friend all throughout high school and through two
years of Community college. She was probably the only person in the entire
world who knew my entire backstory. Poor Carla.

“Hi, Carla! How are you?”

She laughed. “That’s what I called to ask
you. You’re the one who moved. I haven’t heard from you in weeks.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been so busy with the
move and my new job.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I could hear the smile
in her voice. “How is the new apartment?” Carla had given me a lot of the
kitchen items I’d just used to make dinner. When I moved, the only things I
took from my father’s home were my own personal things. I didn’t want to give
that man any reason to think that I owed him anything

“It’s good. I really like it here so far.”
Except the part where I get drunk and
decide to give my virginity to a priest.
“I even cooked dinner for myself
tonight thanks to you and some of the utensils you gave me.”

She laughed again. “You’re so domestic,”
she said.

I giggled. “Yeah right…not,” I said. “I’m
getting better, though, that’s for sure. I’m actually enjoying what I made
tonight, not just eating to stay alive.”

“What about the job? How is that going?”

“It’s good. They’ve all been really nice
to me, and I haven’t dropped any trays of food or burnt anyone with a hot pot
of coffee yet.”

“That’s always good,” she said with a
laugh. “You know, I hate seeing you work as a waitress. You’re so smart. You
were the smartest girl in our class. You should be in nursing school already.”

“I’ll save enough to go back in a couple
of years. I’ll still be young.”

“Well, at least we don’t have to worry
about you getting pregnant and ruining it for yourself,” she said, “Since
you’re a saint, as well.”

I felt a pang of guilt stab me in the
chest. “I’m thinking sainthood is not in my future,” I told her.

“No? I want details.”

“I’m just saying that I’m no saint.”

“Really? You could have fooled me. How
many other twenty-two year old virgins do you know? Especially hot ones.”

“Oh hush,” I said, feeling my eyes fill
with tears.
Did I really give my
virginity up during the act of committing one of the greatest sins against the
Catholic Church?
She had me thinking about it again.
Damn
! “Hey, Carla…I need to tell you something.”

“Good, fess up!” she said. I could tell
she was smiling. Carla loved nothing better than dishing dirt.

“I lost my virginity.”

“You did? To who? Where? How?”

Laughing, I said, “Whoa! Slow down there.
I was angry with my father-”

“He hasn’t been up there bothering you,
has he?”

“No. He called and said some stupid
things, as usual. But afterwards, I was stressed out. I went and found a little
hole in the wall bar and I got drunk. There was this guy there…

“Carla, he was the most gorgeous man I’ve
ever seen. He had these really pretty eyes with long eyelashes and short, sandy
blond hair. And, he also had a killer body to go along with it. He was pretty
drunk himself…drunker than me, I think.”

“Whoa! What is his name?”

“I have no idea…”

“You slut!” She giggled. She had no idea
that was exactly what I felt like.

“I went to his apartment with him and we
had sex. It was pretty amazing sex, too. He was sweet and gentle and all man at
the same time.”

“That sounds better than anything I’ve had
in recent years. Why do you sound so flat?”

“Well, first of all, you know how I feel
about my faith. I was going to wait until I was married…and I blew that on a
one-night stand.”

“Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself. You
waited longer than most. Five years longer than me.”

“That doesn’t count,” I told her. “It’s
not about how long you wait. It’s about saving it for the man you intend to
spend the rest of your life with.”

“So maybe this guy is that man.”

That was when I lost it. I felt the tears
well up in my eyes as I said, “Oh, Carla! I did something terrible…I think…”

“Oh no! You’re not pregnant, are you?”

“No. I’ve taken a pregnancy test. But I
went to confession last week…”

“Girl, you beat yourself up enough. You
don’t need to be confessing to some old priest that’s going to look down his
nose at you.”

I didn’t get angry with her when she said
things like that. I knew she didn’t have the same belief system as I did, and
that was alright. We loved each other anyways.

“They have the old-fashioned confessionals,
at least, so I didn’t have to face him. But the thing is…his voice sounded
really familiar. It took me a bit to figure out where I knew it from. Carla, I
think he was the guy.”

She sounded like she was choking on
whatever she’d taken a drink of right then. “What the hell? You think you slept
with a priest? Baby, your Catholic guilt is working overtime. Did you see him?
I’m sure you’ve been to church since you’ve been there. Can’t you tell by
looking at him if he’s the same guy or not?”

“I haven’t seen him. He’s new at the church,
and I’m new in town. The guy I slept with that night told me he’d just moved
into town. He had boxes all over his apartment.”

“Any priestly stuff?”

“No, no ‘priestly’ stuff,” I said with a
laugh.

“No crosses hanging upside down on the
walls?”

Giggling I said, “No, Carla! That’s so
bad!”

She laughed. “Well, I just thought maybe
this guy was the devil, dressed up as a priest to tempt you.”

“Maybe he is.” I wasn’t joking. What if
that was the case?

“Oh, come on, honey. You’re the best
person I know. You didn’t sleep with a priest.”

“Well, I haven’t really told you what
practically convinced me that I did. When I told the priest about having sex,
he asked me if I’d told anyone else. I thought that was really strange. Why
would he ask me that?”

“What did you tell him when he asked you
that?”

“I told him that I was too ashamed…but
that I thought that it was between God and me anyways and no one else needed to
know.”

“So, maybe that was what he was going for.
Maybe he could sense you beating up on yourself the way you do. I know that you
believe God still loves you, right?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, so maybe that’s all he was going
for. He wanted you to know that your whole life didn’t have to change for one
mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, honey, even saints like you, apparently.”

“Stop calling me that,” I told her. “I
don’t know, Carla. I really sensed he was relieved when I told him I hadn’t
told anyone.”

“Baby, you are letting your guilt eat away
at your brain. You feel guilty for losing your cherry.”

“Carla!”

“Oh Lord, fine. You feel guilty for giving
your maidenhead to a man.”

I laughed and shook my head; she was too
much. “Yes, I do feel guilty.”

“So, your head is messing with you because
of it. You’ll see. You’ll take one look at the priest when you see him and
you’ll know that there is now way you slept with that guy.”

I laughed again and she said, “In all
seriousness, he was probably just trying to understand your situation and your
frame of mind better. Or, I know how fast you talk when you want to just get
something over with. Maybe he just wanted you to slow down and think about it
so you can learn from it. That’s what priests do, right?”

“I suppose…”

“Did he give you a stricter penance than
other priests?”

“No, it was about the same.”

“Well then, I’m sure that I’m right. Of
course, I usually am. You’re letting your thoughts and emotions drive you
crazy. You do it all the time, baby. You’re your own worst enemy.”

That much I knew was true. For the time
being, I wanted to believe she was right and I hadn’t done anything as horrible
as I feared. I changed the subject back to her and we had a twenty minute
conversation about her new boyfriend.

Carla loves men. She unfortunately looks
for love in all the wrong places…except rectories, that’s apparently my
department. Each man she goes out with starts perfect and she thinks, “This is
it, I’ve met the one.” Then by the end of the first or second month, he turns
into a two-headed sloth and she has to try and get rid of him.

The good news is that she never gives up.
The bad news is that she never gives up.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

JACE

The Saturday after I listened to the woman
I’d have sex with confess her sins, I cancelled on my brothers for lunch. I
didn’t know how to deal with all of it myself, but I knew that my brothers were
the wrong ones to ask. I love them more than my next breath, but neither of
them is very religious. Grandmother tried, but I was the only one it stuck onto
to…and look how that turned out.

Anyway, I needed some quiet time so I
spent all day Saturday organizing my new apartment and talking aloud to God as
I did. I wished so badly that He could just tell me what to do. I suddenly
understood those parishioners who came to me and said, “God gives me all of
these choices…why doesn’t he just put the right one in front of me so I know
which one it is?”

I knew what the Catholic Church expected
of me. I’d taken vows to serve God and to remain pious as I did so. I knew that
I should confess my own sins to the priest at our Diocese, and I knew that once
I did that, there would have to be consequences for my actions beyond those of
my tortured soul. I hadn’t been able to do any of that. It’s like I was stuck
in Limbo, waiting for someone to tell me which direction to go in.

The following Saturday morning, my brother
Ryan called me. “Hey! You have to show up for lunch today.”

“I don’t know, Rye…”

“Come on! Too much is changing.
Grandmother is gone, and you’re pulling away from us. I can’t handle it, Jace!”

“I’m not pulling away. I’ve just had a lot
to do and a lot on my mind with the move and all.”

“Two hours, one afternoon. Come on, bro.
Please.”

How could I say no? I dressed in street
clothes and met them at the Applebee’s in town. Max was dressed in his usual
button down dress shirt and slacks, and Ryan had on faded jeans with holes in
them, a Levi jacket with the sleeves cut off to make a vest, and a
white-t-shirt. Colorful tattoos covered both of his arms. They looked like an
odd couple and I had to chuckle at what we would have looked like together had
I worn my collar.

“Hey, there’s the wayward brother. Are you
trying to steal Ryan’s role?” Max asked me as I walked up.

“Nope, he’s still the wayward one,” I said
with a grin. Max got up and hugged me and Ryan followed suit.

“I’m so glad you showed up that I’m not
even going to let your insults get to me,” he said. We all sat down and
ordered. My brothers ordered beers with their lunch. I hadn’t had a drink at
all since that night. I ordered water.

“So, how are things going for you, Rye?” I
felt bad that I hadn’t called more to check in on him. I knew that he was a
grown man, but I also knew that my grandmother had coddled him and made it hard
for him to be able to do things on his own that grown men should be able to do.

“Things are okay. One day at a time, you
know?”

“He’s just mostly having a hard time
learning how to work the appliances,” Max joked. “You know, washer, dryer,
coffee pot…” Ryan flipped him the bird. “Not in front of the priest!” Max scolded
him.

I rolled my eyes and said, “Are you
kidding? He’s blatantly picked up women right in front of me.”

Ryan laughed and said, “Well, in my
defense…I was drunk.”

We all laughed at that. It was good to
just laugh and joke with them and take my mind off of my troubles for a while.
We ate our lunch and carried on light conversation, trading barbs and insults.
For a while, it seemed like the old days and my soul seemed lighter than it had
in a long time.

That was until Ryan leaned in and told
Max, “Don’t look now, but three fine pieces of ass just walked in and sat down
behind us.”

Max took a whiff of the air and said, “I
can smell them. Fresh pussy.”

“Come on, you two; that’s disrespectful,”
I said.

“You’re right,” Max said. “I’m sorry.”

Ryan shook his head and looked back at the
girls. “I have a really hard time understanding how you do it, bro. How could a
man give up pussy…”

“And alcohol,” Max said, raising his
glass.

“Well, he can have wine, right?”

I didn’t want to get into all the rules
with him right then, so I just said, “Yeah, as long as it’s blessed.”

Max laughed heartily and said, “Well maybe
we could have a pussy blessed and then you can have one of those, too.” Ryan
thought that was hilarious and choked on his beer as he laughed.

The girls they were lusting after took
notice of our rowdy table and looked over. Max pasted his most charming smile
on his face and said, “Hello, ladies.” The girls all said hello and then
whispered something and giggled. I thought my brothers were going to actually
let it go until Ryan all of a sudden said,

“Do we have to have the pussy blessed by
another priest, or can you do it yourself?”

He and Max laughed at that like it was the
funniest thing they’d ever heard. Growing annoyed with being laughed at and feeling
so stressed out I thought I might explode, I slammed down my water glass and
said, “You know what? I was drunk two weeks ago…in a bar…and I took home some
amazing pussy.”

The table went dead silent for several
seconds and then I heard Ryan’s fork clatter to the table. Then, in that
eloquent way my little brother has of speaking, I heard, “The fuck you say?”