Sinner (Priest, #2)

by Sierra Simone

I’m not a good man, and I’ve never pretended to be. I don’t believe in goodness or God or any happy ending that isn’t paid for in advance.

“This is my life, Sean. I deal with this every fucking day. What am I supposed to do? Not live? Not go anywhere ever? Not talk to anyone ever?” “But then why aren’t you angry?” I demand. “Because I can’t get angry!” Zenny bursts out, her words loud and shaking with frustration. And then, clearing her throat and glancing around the empty hallway, she says again, “I can’t get angry. If I get angry, then I’m the Angry Black Woman. If I admit to having my feelings hurt, then I’m being too sensitive. If I ask for people to treat me thoughtfully, then I’m being aggressive. If I joke back, then I’m being impertinent or sassy. If I cry, then I’m hyperemotional. If I don’t react at all, I’m intimidating or cold. Do you see? There’s not a way I can react where I win. I can’t win.”

I search her lovely face, which looks sad and tired and still all the lovelier for those things. “How can you want to hold my hand after all this? How can you want to touch me?” She puts her hands on my chest and then slides her arms around my waist in a full hug. I can’t stop myself; I crush her tight against me, bury my face in the crown of her hair. “I’m sure there’s something smart and insightful I could say about human interactions within the locus of marginalizing social constructs, but I can’t think of it right now,” she says into my chest. She tightens her slender arms around me. “All I can think of is that I still trust you. I still like you. I still want you.”

“I want to build a tower around you, and then build a castle around that tower, and then dig a moat around that castle, and then I want to guard you like a dragon. Burn anyone who tries to hurt you into ash and then scorch those ashes a second time.”

I’ve never been in love before. It’s gutting and disorienting and dizzying—and joyful. Like a roller coaster careening wildly around corners, like a car punching into top gear as the highway streaks away underneath you. Like standing in a prairie summer storm—the blowing rain soaking your skin, lightning sawing across the sky, the wind a part of a song that you knew a long time ago but have since forgotten. It’s too soon, but I love her.

I’m more myself when I’m with you. I got to the front of that aisle and I realized that I wasn’t more myself there, not like when I’m with you. I

realized the walk down to the altar wasn’t going to be a walk of joy.” She looks up at me, her eyes meeting mine. “You give me joy, Sean. You give me the space to be strong and to be safe and loved and please say it isn’t too late, please say I’m not too late for us⁠—”

look at this perfect girl, this girl I stole from God, and I think of the other life she could have had. The one where I wasn’t selfish, the one where I didn’t show up at her monastery and claim her in the very dress she was meant to be sworn to God in. She would have a veil in that life, a permanent one, even if she didn’t wear it every day. A veil and a vocation, and maybe the blizzard took the first from her today, but I took the second long before now.

“You’re crying again,” she whispers. “I’m so happy that it hurts,” I admit, pulling away enough to look into her eyes. “And I’m so in love with you that it might kill me.” “Well, we can’t have that,” she says and gives me a mischievous smile. “I have plans for Daddy Bell tonight.”