“No, stop.” When he’s reaching for the door, I lunge forward and grab his wrist. It stops him. Momentarily. “People look at me and see a man—Earl Rae Jackson.” When I say his name, Torrin’s jaw locks. “They see what he did and judge him and cross their fingers they’ll never run into someone like him someday.” I pause to catch my breath. “I don’t want the world to look at me and see Father Costigan, because you know that’s what will happen.” I slowly come around in front of him, putting myself between him and the door. “You go out there and start shouting about the way things are between us, shirtless at seven on a Saturday morning, and that will not put an end to anything.” I grab his other wrist and step into him. I don’t look away. I don’t stutter. I just keep telling him the hard truth. “It’s only going to be the start of a long, painful process where in the end, we’ll both come out looking like we swim in the same cesspool of morality as the Earl Raes of the world. I can’t do that to you. Please don’t ask me to.”
Torrin’s eyes cut to the door. His chest is moving as fast as it did during certain parts last night. He’s so torn I can see it about to split him down the middle. “Do you think that’s what I want for you? Another reason for the media to not leave you alone?” The muscles banding down his neck break to the surface. “But I don’t know what to do anymore. They won’t leave you alone. But the thing is . . .” He exhales and lowers his hand around my back. “I can’t leave you alone either. I don’t want to keep pretending we’re old friends. I don’t want to keep sneaking in through dark windows and doors. I don’t want to keep pretending, Jade. It’s killing me.”
The heat from his hand is already coming through my shirt, seeping into my skin, spreading to my head and messing with my sense of reasoning. I squeeze my eyes closed and try to concentrate. “I know. It’s doing the same thing to me, but they aren’t going to leave us alone just because you ask them to. It’ll get worse. Every kiss, every touch, every private moment . . . they’ll find a way to take those from us, to twist them into something ugly and shameful. I can’t let them do that to us. I can’t let them corrupt what we have.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?” His wrist twists in my hand to free itself. He lifts it to slide my hair behind my ear.
I stare at the door, my stomach knotting when I think about what’s waiting. It’s not just the media I’m afraid of. “I know they’re not going away until I tell my story, and I can’t tell my story until I know what that story is. I need time to figure it out. And I won’t drag you into this mess while I’m taking my time and trying to put myself back together.”
His forehead lowers to mine, and our eyes close. “And what if I want to be dragged into it?”
“I’d ask you—beg you—not to.”
He exhales. “Why?”
I don’t pull back, but I open my eyes. His are already open. “Because that’s a choice I want us to make when the time’s right. I don’t want us to be forced into making that choice.”
“No one’s forcing me to do anything.”
My hands form around the sides of his neck. “No, but if you do this, you’re forcing me.”
That gets his attention. The creases iron out of his forehead, and the anger rolling through his eyes fades away.
“Look at me, Torrin.” I step back so he can, and I hold my arms at my sides. He looks at me, but I don’t think he sees what I do when I look in the mirror. “I was reintroduced to the world weeks ago after years of being away from it. The smallest, most insignificant things send me into a tailspin. I have flashbacks and nightmares and images in my head that would traumatize a sadist.” I pause, remembering why I’m saying this. Why this is so important to me. Him. He’s important. He deserves the best and the most, and until I can give that to him, I can’t do this. “I need to get myself right so I don’t do this—us—wrong. I’d be a fool to think I can just get over this or move on or get back to my old life. It’s going to take time. I’m going to need time. Can you give me that?”
I’ve only seen Torrin cry once, and that was the day I found him camped out on his front steps when everyone else was inside after his dad’s funeral. I didn’t say anything when I walked up to him that day. I just sat down beside him, wound an arm around him, and let him cry.
This is the closest to crying I’ve seen him since then.
Like that gray afternoon on his front steps fifteen years ago, he doesn’t say anything. He just closes the space between us, wraps his arms around me one at a time, and draws me close. His head tucks mine against him, and he holds me for an eternity. At least the only kind of eternity Torrin Costigan and I can have.
The finite kind.
“What am I supposed to do?” His voice is hoarse like someone’s been choking him.
“Go back to being a priest. Unsuspend yourself. Be that light. Be wonderful and infectious and compassionate and all the things that drew me to you.” I lean back and look up at him. I have to say good-bye, but at least this time I get to say it. “Go be you. And I’ll try to figure out who I am while you’re doing that.”
His arms slide away from me and fall heavily at his sides. He manages a smile because I think he knows that a frown will kill me “Anything else?”