Saint (Priest, #3)

by Sierra Simone

I came here to leave my past life behind, I came here to live entirely for God, but Elijah keeps blooming in me, and I can’t seem to stop him. I can’t stop the tender shoots and slender, seeking roots of him, and I am his garden, his soil, his place, and it would be wonderful if I wasn’t supposed to be the garden of my god instead.

He listened to every word I spoke as if I were uttering a prophecy, and when he did look at me and not at his hands, his gaze was so intensely present. Like all of him was there with me, so very there, like he’d existed his entire life just to look at me for thirty minutes in a cloister.

“I love him so much,” I whisper, rain running off my head and down to my lips, where the drops fall along with my words to the mud and grass below. “And it hurts and I want it to stop. Please, Lord. If you love me, make it stop.”

“Yes,” I confirm wearily. “I knew her in the biblical sense with my Flamin’ Hot Cheeto hand.”

“Brother Patrick,” Brother Denis says carefully. “Is that the dove of the Holy Spirit on your shoulder?” “And is it carrying a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto in its beak?” Brother Amos asks.

Quid si.

At least the cage is discreet enough that I’m not worried about it being obvious, but you know what’s really not discreet? A big tattoo of a dove with a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto in its mouth.

We are husbands as I hold his things while he takes pictures with his phone; we are brand-new lovers as I fumble for the right responses to the paintings and sculptures so he’ll think I’m sophisticated and cerebral; and when we pass through an empty exhibit room with a convenient half-wall and I push him into the corner and shove my tongue in his mouth, then we are just Aiden and Elijah.

I built my life around being a monk—I built my mind around being a monk. I can’t surrender what saved me. Even for the sweetest what if I’ve ever known. Right?

I love you like that. I love you like this. I love you like everything.

Brother Connor reaches down to touch my shoulder. “Many ways to the well, Brother Patrick,” he repeats. “And here you’ve named only two.”

I can’t compete with fireflies in the cloister. Please don’t make me try.

How can something beautiful come from the mess we’ve made?”