I hadn’t been expecting that answer. “You have?”
“The one with a picture the size of a soccer ball of the two of us? Yeah, I have.”
“And you’re not concerned?” I let the paper fall open in front of him.
He doesn’t look at it. “About ‘Father Torrin’s Torrid Love Affair’? No, considering it’s a lie, I’m not concerned.”
I turn the paper around to make sure I didn’t see the picture wrong the first time. Nope, still looks like if things aren’t, they’re about to get plenty ‘torrid.’ And why the hell are they referring to him as Father Torrin when even I know you call a priest by his last name? I know why though—torrid and Costigan don’t pack the same punch. “And what about the picture? This doesn’t worry you?”
I shake the paper in his face, but he still won’t look. “It’s a picture. It doesn’t tell the whole story. It can’t show what came before and what came after. If people are going to let a perfectly timed photo and a fancy headline form their opinions for them, that’s not my problem.” His forehead creases when he looks at me. “Are you worried?”
“Very.”
Now his removed expression shifts. Concern takes its place. “This is going to make things worse for you, isn’t it? They’re going to send more reporters to your front door. You won’t be able to sneak out without them following you . . . speaking of . . .” He motions at me. “What are you doing here? By yourself?” He scans the hall, probably looking for my parents.
“Forget about that right now. I’m here—we don’t need to talk about how I got here.” I drop the paper at my side. “I’m not worried about how this affects me. I’m worried about how this affects you.”
“How will this possibly affect me when it’s trash and lies?”
“Because you were about to kiss me”—I wave at him like that explains it all—“and you’re a priest.”
I notice one of the nurses down the hall turn her head toward us. Torrin does too. Taking my arm, he leads me into an empty waiting room.
“You were about to kiss me too,” he says, moving in front of me, “knowing exactly what I am.”
I could deny it. I could argue. I don’t because he’s right. “I shouldn’t have. You’re right, I do know what you are.” My eyes lower to his neck. “I shouldn’t have.”
“Want to try that again? With a little conviction this time maybe?”
The way he says it, the way he closes the space between us, makes me back up because there it is—the urge. The longing. The pull. The attraction. It’s still there. A decade later, and it hasn’t diminished. It hasn’t stayed the same.
It’s grown.
“Why are you doing this, Torrin? What are you even saying right now?” I squeeze my eyes shut because I can’t look away from him when he’s looking at me like that. “You are a goddamn priest. You made your choice.”
“You were gone, Jade. I made the only choice I had left.” His voice rolls over me. He’s upset.
I don’t want him to be upset because of me anymore. I don’t want to be that in his life.
“You’re not just a priest. You’re a good one. A really good one.” I think of the woman in that room and how he made her last moments on this planet better. “You’re doing this for a reason. Don’t throw it all away.”
“And what if I’m willing to? Give it all up? Throw it all away?”
My eyes flash open. “Then I’d tell you you’re a damn fool.”
He moves toward me, matching my every step as I back away. “And what if I don’t care what you say because when you look at me, you’re telling me something different every time?”
“I wouldn’t let you. I won’t let you do it.”
His phone vibrates in his pocket. He exhales when he pulls it out and checks the screen.
“They’re calling about us, aren’t they?”
He pockets the phone. “‘They’ being my governing bishop and the church elders? Probably.”
“What are you going to tell them?”
“The truth.”
“And what is that?” I say, glad we’re in the privacy of the waiting room because my voice is getting louder. “The truth?”
Torrin’s eyes narrow. “You know it. You’re just not ready to admit it.”
I hear the phone vibrate in his pocket again. He can only ignore them for so long. I feel desperate, trying to think of anything I can say to him to get him to change his mind.
Though I’m not sure I want him to change his mind, because he’s right—I do know the truth. But he’s also right about me not being ready to admit it.
“Why did you become a priest?”
He tips his head. “I already told you why.”
“Yeah, because I was gone and maybe never coming back and you wanted to help people. You could have done a hundred different things if you wanted to help people. Why else?”
His jawbone pops through his skin. He glares out the window for a minute, then he falls into the chair behind him. He leans forward and glares at the floor. “After you went missing, I changed. A lot. I was consumed with trying to find you, and that led me down a lot of roads I never should have wandered down. One of those roads took me to a serious beating that almost killed me.” His shoulder lifts. “I wanted to die. That night under the Ship Canal Bridge, when I confronted some bad people who I’d heard might know something about your disappearance, I wanted to just leave this world for good. I thought that if nothing else, maybe you’d be waiting for me on the other side.”