Priest. Part 16

As we both came down, we stared at each other, and whatever solace I had managed to eke out vanished in an instant. I got up to get a warm washcloth, and when I came back, Poppy was watching me thoughtfully.

"Tyler."

"Yes?" I sat on the bed and started cleaning her.

"I don't know how long I can do this."

I froze. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean," she said, and there was a quaver in her words. "I want to be with you. I want to claim you. I'm in love with you, Tyler, and the fact that there's no future for us is killing me."

I finished cleaning her as I thought of a reply, tossing the used towel onto a nearby chair. "I don't know what the future looks like," I finally said. "I know that I love you...but I also love my job and my life. Poppy, what I have here...it's more than just charity or prayer. It's a way of life. I get to live my entire life for my G.o.d, every minute of every day, and I don't know if I can live without that."

We both avoided the fact that these past few minutes had hardly been lived for G.o.d, that they'd been for us and us alone.

"Don't you think I know that?" she said, sitting up. She didn't bother to cover herself with the sheet, and I forced myself to look away from those perky t.i.ts so I could focus on what she was saying. "It's all I think about. I can't make you give this up-I can see that you love it. h.e.l.l, it's what I love about you. That you are pa.s.sionate and giving and spiritual, that you've devoted your life to G.o.d. But then I worry-" and there were real tears now "-that you're going to give me up instead."

"No," I whispered. "Don't do that to yourself."

But I didn't tell her what she wanted to hear. I didn't know if I would give her up or not, because while it would kill me, being discovered and losing everything I'd fought for would kill me too.

I could see the moment she realized it, that I wasn't going to tell her that we would stay together, and before I could say something else-I don't know what, but something-she laid back down, turning on her side so that her back was to me.

"I want you so badly that I can taste blood when I think about it. But I won't be the reason you lose your life," she said, her voice reverberating like a bell in my mind. "I won't be the reason for any regret. I don't think I could bear it...looking at you and wondering if there was a part of you that hated me just a little bit for being the reason you laicized."

She even knew the right word for it...she'd done her research. That heartened me at the same time it saddened me.

"I could never hate you."

"Really? Even if I made you choose between me and your G.o.d?"

f.u.c.k, that was stark. "That's not all there is, Poppy. Don't do that."

She took a breath, the kind of breath that usually presaged a sharp retort, but then she seemed to freeze. Instead she said, "You should go home. It's getting close to morning."

Her tight voice killed me. I wanted to comfort her, hug her, f.u.c.k her. Why did we have to talk about these awful things when we could keep pretending? "Poppy..."

"I'll see you later, Tyler."

Her tone was as definitive as any safeword. I was dismissed.

I walked across the foggy park, hands in my pockets and shoulders hunched against the September-night chill, trying to pray but only finding snippets of thoughts to send up instead.

She wants a full life, I told G.o.d silently. She wanted a life with marriage and kids, a life where love could be just as present as work and family and friends, a life where she didn't have to hide. And who could blame her?

What am I supposed to do?

G.o.d didn't answer. Probably because I'd broken my sacred vow to serve Him, desecrated His church in all manner of ways, and repeatedly committed a litany of sins that I barely regretted because I was so infatuated. I'd made an idol out of Poppy Danforth, and now I would reap the consequences of finding myself isolated from G.o.d.

Repent. I have to repent.

But not seeing Poppy any more...even the mere idea tore a hole right through my chest.

I climbed up the stairs and walked to the back door of the rectory, navigating through my kitchen in the bluish light of early dawn. I still had a couple hours to sleep before I had to get up for morning Ma.s.s, and I hoped that something would be different in the morning, that the way forward would be clear, but I knew it wouldn't, and that knowledge was so very, very depressing.

"Late night?"

I nearly had a heart attack.

Millie was sitting in my living room in the half-dark, wearing a matching sweat suit.

"Millie," I said, trying to pretend that I hadn't almost p.i.s.sed myself. "What are you doing here?"

"I take walks every morning," she said. "Very early. I don't think you would have ever noticed, given that you seem to sleep in until the latest possible moment."

"I haven't noticed, you're right." Was she inviting me on a walk now?

She sighed. "Father Bell, I know."

"Pardon?"

"I know. About you and Poppy. I've seen you skulking through the park during the mornings."

Oh s.h.i.t.

Oh s.h.i.t oh s.h.i.t oh s.h.i.t.

"Millie-"

She held up a hand. "Don't."

I sat heavily in a chair, despair and panic coiled together in my stomach. Someone knew, someone knew, someone knew. Of course it was always going to be like this. I was never going to have the luxury of choosing for myself how this all played out, and I was a f.u.c.king idiot for ever thinking otherwise.

I looked up with wide eyes, and what came out was not gracious or kind or selfless, but pure lizard brain survival. "Millie, please, you can't tell anyone." I slid to my knees in front of her. "Please, please don't tell the bishop, I don't know how I could live with myself..."

But then I trailed off because I was doing nothing less than begging an honorable woman to abandon her honor, all for the sake of an unrepentant sinner.

"I'm so sorry," I said instead. "You must think I'm such a terrible, awful person...I'm so ashamed. I don't even know what to say."

She stood. "You can say that you'll be careful."

I looked up at her. "What?"

"Father, I came here to warn you, and there's a reason I did that instead of going to the bishop. This town needs you, and it definitely doesn't need another scandal about a priest." She shook her head with a small smile. "Especially when it's about something as innocuous as falling in love with a grown woman who would be perfect for you...if you weren't a priest."

"Millie," I said, and my voice was broken, desperate. "What do I do?"

"I don't have that answer for you," she said, walking toward the door. "All I know is that you better make a decision soon. These things never stay hidden, Father, no matter how hard you try. And there's no way a woman like her would be willing to be your secret mistress for the rest of her years. She is worth far more than that."

"She is," I echoed, a cold, iron weight crushing me as I realized that I was no better than Sterling. I was making her do essentially the same thing, except I wasn't even doing her the service of being upfront about it...or offering her anything in return.

"Goodbye," Millie said, and I nodded a goodbye in return, miserable and agitated, too miserable and agitated to even think about sleeping.

Had it just been a couple weeks ago that I'd given Poppy Lizzy's rosary? And now everything felt like it was falling apart, like broken rosary beads scattering wildly across the floor, too numerous and fast for me to chase.

Millie knew. Jordan knew. Poppy maybe didn't even want to be with me...

I went for a long run, and then got to the church early to unlock it and prepare for Ma.s.s, distracted throughout the whole service by my encounter with Millie, by my earlier non-fight with Poppy, by the fact that now two people knew about my affair and that was two people too many.

Secret mistress.

Be careful.

I'm in love with you, Tyler.

In fact, I was so distracted that I almost spilled the wine and then I accidentally said the closing prayer twice in a row, my mind miles away from the sacred invocation of the divine and only in the swirling maelstrom of how much was going f.u.c.king wrong right the f.u.c.k now.

After Ma.s.s, I emerged from the sacristy with my head down, checking my phone (Poppy hadn't been at Ma.s.s and she hadn't messaged me either) and wondering if she was still angry with me. So I didn't notice that there was some one standing in the center aisle at first, not until they shifted and the noise caught my attention.

It was a man-tall, black-haired, my age. He wore a khaki suit with a blue tie and silver tie bar, far too dressy for a September Friday in Weston, but somehow he made it work without looking ridiculous. He took off a pair of sungla.s.ses and eyed me with an icy blue gaze.

"You must be Tyler Bell."

"I am," I confirmed, sliding my phone into my slacks pocket. I had removed my chasuble and stole and all the other trappings of my office other than my collar, and I was feeling suddenly under-dressed, like I needed some kind of extra armor, extra authority, with this man.

Which was stupid. He was a visitor to my church. All I needed was to be friendly.

I strode forward and shook his hand, which he seemed to welcome, a small, appraising smile on his lips.

"Can I help you with anything?" I asked. "Unfortunately, you missed our morning service, but we will have another service tomorrow."

"No, I think you've already helped," he said as he stepped past me, his head swiveling to take in every corner of the church. "I just wanted to meet you and see for myself what this Father Tyler Bell was like."

Uh...

Uneasiness knotted in my gut. Even though I knew it wasn't possible, I couldn't help but worry that somehow he was a result of Millie and Jordan knowing the truth, that he was here to finally tug on the thread that would unravel my life.

The man turned on his heel and faced me. "I like to know the size and shape of my compet.i.tion."

"Compet.i.tion?"

"For Poppy, of course."

It only took the barest instant for my mind to catch up, to rea.s.sess this encounter, and calculate that I was talking to Sterling Haverford III. To size up his body (in good shape, f.u.c.k that guy) and his clothes (expensive, f.u.c.k that guy again) and his bearing, which was almost absurdly confident, confident to the point of hubris, and there was the c.h.i.n.k in this man's armor. He had no doubt that he would be successful, he had no doubt that he would leave here with what he wanted (and yes, I suspected that Poppy was a what to him and not a who.) In that bare instant, I knew exactly where we stood, exactly what weapons he'd be fighting with, and I also knew that one of those weapons was the emotional hold he had on Poppy, and that I could very well lose this battle...this battle I had no right to fight.

And that bare instant was all Sterling needed to feel like he had the upper hand. His mouth curled into a sneer, subtle enough to be ignored, but present enough to demonstrate in exactly what light he held his compet.i.tion.

However, I wasn't an idiot, whatever Sterling might think, and I certainly wasn't going to conform to his expectations of how he thought I would behave.

"I'm afraid you are mistaken," I said, giving him an easy smile. "There's no compet.i.tion. Ms. Danforth has been attending my church and she's interested in pursuing the path to conversion, but that's as far as our friendship extends." I almost hated how easily the lie rolled off my tongue-lying was something I used to pride myself on not doing, but there was a lot I couldn't be proud of anymore. And this moment wasn't about morality, this moment was about survival.

Sterling raised an eyebrow. "So this is how it's going to be." He put his hands in his pockets, everything about his posture screaming boardrooms and yachts and arrogance.

Good Guy Tyler, be Good Guy Tyler, I told myself. Better yet, be Father Bell. Father Bell wasn't jealous of this man, jealous of his good looks and expensive clothes and the claim he had on Poppy. Father Bell didn't care about a p.i.s.sing match with a stranger, and he certainly wouldn't engage in something as barbaric as competing for a grown woman, who was capable of making her own choices and exercising her own agency.

I leaned against a pew and gave him another smile, knowing my posture conveyed an easy control and a casual friendliness, while also reminding him that I was just as tall and built as he was.

"I'm sorry. I don't think I understand you," I finally said. "Like I just told you, there's no compet.i.tion."

He took my words in a different way than I'd meant them. "You would like to think that, wouldn't you?" He looked me over once again, and then seemed to change tack, leaning against a pew himself and crossing his arms.

"Has she talked about me?" he asked. "I'm sure she has. Confession-that's a Catholic thing right? Did she mention me in her confessions?"

"I'm not at liberty to-"

He waved a hand and his wedding ring glinted against his skin. "Right. Of course. Well, maybe she wouldn't want to confess things about me after all. How many times I can make her come. How loudly she cries my name. All the places I've f.u.c.ked her. You know I once f.u.c.ked her mere feet away from a U.S. Senator? During an art opening at The Met? She was always good to go. For me, at least."

It was only years of cultivated compa.s.sion and self-discipline that kept me from driving my fist right into this guy's cla.s.sically square jaw. Not only from jealousy, but from the equally macho urge to protect Poppy's dignity and stop her choices from being reframed by this a.s.shole.

She doesn't need you to defend her honor, Feminist Ally Tyler told me. But regular Tyler, the Irish-American one who enjoyed f.u.c.king and whiskey and roaring obscenities at soccer games, didn't care. It didn't matter if she needed me to and it didn't matter that I didn't have a right to-the universe had been knocked off-balance by this guy's a.s.sholery and my fist itched to correct that.

"Did that strike a nerve?" Sterling asked, amused.

"I consider Poppy one of my flock," I said, inclining my head in admission. Luckily, my voice betrayed nothing but mild disapprobation. "It pains me to hear any of them spoken of disrespectfully."

"Oh, certainly," Sterling said. "And I admire how committed you are to your story. I'm a man of appearances myself." He pulled a manila envelope from the inside of his suit jacket and handed it to me. "However, I'm also a man of means, and so we can move past this initial posturing and right into the heart of the matter."

I stared at him as I unwound the string at the top of the envelope and pulled out the large glossy pictures inside. Part of me worried that they would be pictures of Poppy and him, more evidence of their past to unsettle me, but no. No, it was much, much worse.

A broad-shouldered man crossing a small park at night. That same man at a darkened garden gate. A shot through a kitchen window of a man and a woman kissing.

I exhaled.

There was no nudity, thank Jesus, and nothing more sinful than a kiss, but it didn't matter, because it was clearly my face in all of them and that was enough. In fact, they were more than enough-they were d.a.m.ning.

"And be rea.s.sured that I have all the digital files of these," Sterling said cheerfully. "So feel free to keep those. As mementos."

"You had us followed," I said.

"I told you that I was a man of means. When Poppy kept refusing to answer my calls, even after I told her I was coming for her, I started to wonder if she'd met someone else. So I looked into it. Since she hasn't agreed to my arrangement-yet-I wouldn't have minded if she'd been f.u.c.king someone. But falling in love with another man...well, I know Poppy and I know what kind of obstacle that would present."

"You had us followed," I repeated. "Do you even hear yourself? That is insane."

Sterling seemed baffled. "Why?"

"Because," I said, my anger getting the better of me and making my words tight and forced, "people don't have other people followed. Especially their ex-girlfriends. That's stalking-that's actually the legal definition of stalking. I don't care that you're wealthy and can pay for someone else to do it for you-it's the same d.a.m.n thing."

He still looked confused. "That's what you're upset about? Not that I have evidence that can ruin your life? Not that I'm going to inevitably walk away from this town with Poppy at my side?"