Him
1304 Words
His face was breathtaking in equal measure... a jaw like something carved rather than born and a mouth pressed into a firm, unreadable line.
Not cold, exactly. Closed. Locked. The face of a man who had made his choices long ago and had not revisited them since.
But his eyes... gods... his eyes...pale, icy blue, the color of a frozen lake in the last days of winter, the kind of cold that burns when you touch them, found me with a precision that stripped away every careful, practiced layer I had built around myself and looked at what was underneath.
I did not look away. I never looked away.
"Father Benedikt," he said—and his voice, God, his voice was low and resonant and filled the cold church like smoke filling a room, slow and complete—"is no longer here."
"I know," I said, taking one step closer.
"I heard there was someone new."
He held very still. I offered my hand.
"Ivy. I've been away ten years. Just came back."
He looked at my hand. Then at my face. Then, he reached out and took it.
His grip was firm. His palm was warm; startlingly, unreasonably warm against my cold fingers; and for one fraction of a second his thumb rested against the inside of my wrist, over my pulse, before he released me with a precision that felt like retreat.
I wondered if he felt it jump. I was almost certain, from the slight flicker behind those ice-blue eyes, that he had.
"Father Johan," he said and returned his attention to the prayer book.
"Father Johan," I repeated, tasting the name slowly, watching the way his shoulders drew almost imperceptibly tighter at the sound of it in my mouth.
"It's a beautiful church."
"It is the house of God," a warning. Flat and deliberate.
"Can't it be both?" I asked.
He didn't answer. But he didn't turn away either, and in the heavy, candlelit silence between us, I could feel it...the thing he was holding back, pressing against the inside of all that discipline, hot and patient and waiting.
I turned and walked back down the aisle. Unhurried. Letting him watch, because I knew he was watching, I could feel it between my shoulder blades like a hand not quite making contact. At the door, I paused, fingers on the iron handle, rain audible on the other side.
"I'll probably be back," I said.
A long silence.
"I know," he said quietly. Two words he hadn't meant to say.
I smiled at the door and pushed it open. Cold rain hit my skin, and I tipped my face into it, eyes closed for a moment, feeling the particular warmth of something just beginning to burn.
Behind me, inside the church, I imagined him standing exactly where I had left him.
Jaw tight. Eyes on the closed door. The prayer book was open to a page he was no longer reading and hadn't been reading for several minutes.
"I know," he had said.
He hadn't meant to say it. But he had.
And men who said things they didn't mean to say to me, those were always the most interesting ones.
The ones that kept me coming back. The ones that burned the hottest when they finally, inevitably, broke.
I had time. I had all the time in the world.
God help him.
They say confession cleanses the soul.
I wouldn't know. I had never been particularly interested in being clean.
I came back to Saint Jude's on a Thursday, just after noon, when the church would be quiet and empty and there would be no audience for what I had in mind.
I wore a white dress this time, long, simple, modest by every outward measure, the kind of thing a good woman wears to church. Except that the fabric was thin enough to suggest everything it covered, and I had left my hair loose, and I wore nothing underneath but my own intentions.
The confessional booth stood in the left alcove, half hidden in shadow, the dark wood old and carved and serious.
The little red light above the priest's door was lit.
He's inside.
Something low in my stomach tightened with a warmth that had absolutely nothing to do with repentance.
I crossed the church slowly, letting my heels find the stone floor, feeling the candlelight move over my skin.
I looked at the altar, out of old habit, out of something that might have been irony... and then I pulled back the heavy curtain of the confessional and stepped inside.
The booth was small and dark and close. The wooden kneeler was hard beneath my knees when I settled onto it.
The latticed screen between us was thick and ornate but not thick enough.
I could see the outline of him through the carved wood. The straight line of his profile. The way his hands were folded in his lap. Still. Controlled. Always so devastatingly controlled.
The silence stretched.
He spoke first.
"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."
His voice, even here, even reduced to a low murmur through the lattice, did something to the air. Filled it. Weighted it.
"When did you last make a confession?"
I considered. "Ten years ago. Maybe eleven."
A pause. Brief, but I caught it.
"That is a long time to carry sin."
"I know," I let my voice drop soft. "I've accumulated quite a lot of it."
Another pause. It's longer this time.
"... Go ahead," he said.
I leaned forward slightly, close enough to the lattice that if there had been nothing between us,
I could have brushed his jaw with my lips.
I could smell him... sandalwood and old parchment and something underneath, something warmer and more human that the incense couldn't quite cover.
"Forgive me, Father," I murmured. "For I have sinned."
"God forgives all who are truly—"
"I have had thoughts," I said, softly interrupting, "about a man I am not supposed to think about."
Silence.
The candle outside the booth threw a thin line of gold through the lattice, cutting across his profile.
I watched his jaw tighten almost imperceptibly.
"Impure thoughts," he said carefully, "are a common—"
"Very impure," I let the words settle.
"The kind that visits me in the middle of the night. The kind I don't try to chase away."
The silence this time was different. Heavier. Like the air before a storm when everything goes completely still.
"You should pray," he said. His voice was controlled. Almost perfectly controlled. Almost.
"When such thoughts come, prayer is—"
"I've tried," I said, tilting my head and watching him through the carved wood.
"It doesn't help. If anything, praying makes it worse," I paused. "The kneeling position in particular."
The sound he made was barely a sound at all. A breath, sharply drawn, was quickly mastered.
His folded hands shifted in his lap, just slightly.
"Ivy." My name in his mouth, low and warning, like a match struck in a dark room.
"The purpose of confession is contrition. Not—"
"I am contrite," I said. "I am deeply, genuinely sorry," I paused. "That I have only thought about it. And not done anything yet."
"That is not what contrite means."
"Isn't it?" I smiled, even though he couldn't fully see it.
"I thought it meant regret. I regret the absence of action. Deeply."
"You are mocking a sacrament." His voice had dropped lower.
"You are mocking the grace of God."
"I'm not mocking anything." I pressed closer to the lattice, close enough that my breath might have reached him.
"I'm being completely honest. Isn't that the point? Isn't this the one place a person is supposed to tell the truth?"
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