I shake my head and cover my chest with my hand. “To protect you from me.”
Torrin’s jaw hardens. He works it loose the moment after. “I don’t need protection from you.”
“Everyone needs protection from me. There’s something dark in me now, Torrin, and I can’t get it out. It’s growing, spreading, and I don’t want it to infect the people I love.”
He pushes off the closet doors and crosses the room before I know he’s coming. “There is nothing dark in you, Jade. Nothing.” He backs me into the wall and stares at me, unblinking. “There is light and good in you. There always has been. There always will be.”
“That’s gone. He took it from me.”
“No, he didn’t.” Torrin’s hand slams into the wall beside my head. “It’s still there. You had to bury it to keep it safe, but it’s still there. You’ll find it. I know it.”
I want to believe him, but that doesn’t make it true. “You can’t find what isn’t there, Torrin.”
“Dammit, stop talking like that,” he says, his jaw tightening. “It’s there. I know it.”
“I’ve tried. I can’t find it.” Even as I say it, I start to feel differently. It’s because of him being so close, saying what he is in the way he is. He’s the tether that keeps me from floating away.
His eyes lower to mine. “I’ll help you find it.”
I feel my heart again. My lungs. Everything else. I feel them waking up after a week. “What makes you so sure you can find it?”
“Because when I look in your eyes, I still see it.” His other hand fits against the wall. “Because when I’m close to you like this, I can still feel it.” He leans a little closer, and I feel something too. “It’s there, Jade. It’s not gone. He took ten years of your life—ten years.” The corners of his eyes crease as an emotion fires in his eyes. “Don’t hand him the rest of it by believing that kind of shit.”
I’m so surprised by his sudden outburst I’m kind of shocked right out of whatever grey patch I’ve been hovering in. The constraints around my chest start to loosen. “You just said shit. Again.”
His brow cocks. “So?”
“You’re a priest. Again.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. He leans in and winks. “I’m not a very good one, remember? I forget the small stuff all the time.”
His hands are stationed around my head, his face aimed right in front of mine. I feel . . . alive. “Like cussing?”
“Like cussing.” His shoulder lifts. “And other things.”
“What other things?”
He leans in even closer, until I can see the flecks of pewter in his light eyes. Then he shoves away from the wall. “You’ll know them when you see them.”
My palms are stuck to the wall, and when I peel them away, they make a sound. It’s nice to feel alive. To feel something . . . for someone. Even if it’s just sweaty palms caused from an intense stare.
“So now that we’ve cleared up all that, you have no reason to avoid me anymore.” Torrin’s fingers brush across my vanity where my dried corsages used to be.
“Nothing’s cleared up. I won’t let everyone think you’re some kind of immoral person because there are pictures of us dancing and someone said you followed me out of a party.”
His eyes drop to the spots on the wall my hands were just splayed across. His head tips, and I notice two slightly darker impressions from my clammy hands. He doesn’t say anything. But that kinda says more than any words could.
He does a slow spin. “I’m a priest. Everyone already looks at me and thinks the worst. I don’t care what anyone thinks anyway. I care what you think. What you want.”
“I can’t have what I want.”
“Maybe you can’t. Maybe you can. But first you have to decide what you want.”
I don’t know what to do again. Where to hold my arms. Alone. In my bedroom. With Torrin. It messes with my mind. “I like spending time with you. I want to spend time with you—”
“I like being with you too.” He stops in front of my nightstand, his brows coming together like he’s trying to figure out what’s missing. Him. He’s missing. The photos of us that used to sit there. “So what else is there left to talk about?”
“Just this little thing known as the international media. You. Me. Headlines trying to draw an illicit connection between us. Just those things and a few hundred others.” I decide to settle on the bottom corner of my bed. Seems like a safe spot . . . without seeming like I’m looking for one.
Torrin makes a face. “Their objective is to sell papers, advertising time, not the truth. People know that. Let them write whatever the hell they want about me. I don’t care.”
My eyes cut to him. “Well, I do.”
He walks to the end of the bed and stares at the same spot on the carpet I was concentrating on. He comes close to smiling, then he scrubs his face. “Earl Rae kept you chained up for ten years. He took a decade. How much longer are you going to let him keep you chained away from doing the things you want to do and being with the people you want to be with?”
His question hits me in the gut like he’s swinging a bat. I lean forward and comb my fingers through my hair. “I don’t know, Torrin. I don’t know. I miss the strong girl I used to be. The one who wouldn’t let anything slow her down or get in her way.” My fingers curl into my hair. “God, I miss her.”