Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86841 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86841 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Eyes like hers shouldn’t look so lost and broken. I preferred when they had sparkled with amusement that I was the priest. What I saw in them now made my chest ache.
“You can light it for anyone. But did you pray? That’s what it’s for. A petition to the Lord or a saint for intercession on your behalf.” I didn’t want to get too complicated and bore her with the entire reasoning behind it.
Her eyes shifted to the votive stand. “That’s the thing. I don’t know what to pray. I’m not sure if I even believe in God. This is the second time I’ve been inside a church in my life. I just…well, nothing else seems to work. I figured I’d give the God thing a go.”
The heaviness behind her words were what made me say what I did next.
“Listen, I have two hours before men’s Bible study. Why don’t we sit here and you can talk? I might have some wisdom to share. It is my job.”
Her eyes did a quick take of my jeans and boots again, and she almost smiled. “How old are you?” she asked me.
“Twenty-nine.”
“They let you be a priest at twenty-nine?” she asked, sounding shocked.
“They will let you at twenty-five if you’ve received your degree and other requirements. I was twenty-seven, however, when I finished my internship at a parish in Fort Worth and was assigned this one.”
She licked her lips, then pressed them together. I shouldn’t be looking at her mouth, but it was extremely difficult not to. Another reason letting her leave would have been the best choice.
“Okay,” she replied and walked over to take a seat at the end of a pew. “Since you’re an elder in the priesthood at the ripe ole age of twenty-nine, I suppose I can talk. Might help. It’s either this or go get drunk and show up at a wedding when I’d rather eat glass than attend it.”
This could not be about heartbreak. There was no straight male on this planet who would have dumped her for another woman. Not possible. But then maybe that was it. He wasn’t straight. She’d been in love, and he was gay and hadn’t come out of the closet until it was too late and her heart was involved.
I sat down in the pew in front of her, sitting sideways and bending my knee so that I could face her. Resting an arm along the back of the seat, I told myself this would be fine. She was in need of guidance, and I could do that.
She gave me a small smile, and I noticed the slightest gap between her two front teeth. You’d have to be close to her to see it, but it was there. An imperfection that only seemed to make her more appealing.
Try again, God. That one ain’t working.
“I hate a dead man,” she said, then let out a long breath. “It’s been ten months since I watched the boy I’d loved for most of my life get shot and killed and eight months since I found out he’d left behind a pregnant girl that he’d been cheating on me with.”
Whoa. Okay. I hadn’t expected murder or guns or cheating—at least not on her. Good Lord, what had the other girl looked like? No. That was not the point. She was hurting. She had come to seek out a god that she wasn’t sure existed. I was here to help her see that he did and that he cared.
“Whose wedding do you not want to attend?” I asked, wondering how this fit into the reason why she was here.
A laugh—which could have been labeled as cynical, but I knew was threaded with heartbreak—fell from her lips. She dropped her gaze to her hands, fisted in her lap. “Oh, that. Yes. Well, you see, the baby momma was taken in by my dead boyfriend’s older brother. He fell in love with her—really damn fast, if you ask me. The baby was born two months ago. It’s a boy. I haven’t seen him, and I do not want to. Anyway, they are getting married today, and seeing as our families are all connected in a way that is stronger than actual family, everyone in my life will be there. They are all happy for them. Everyone is just fucking full of joy.”
Except her. She was lonely. She felt abandoned. Left out. Forgotten.
Nothing I would have thought this woman would ever experience. Seemed I had gotten one look at her and forgotten that fate did not care who you were or how stunning you might be. It happened regardless.
“I not only hate a dead man, but I also might actually hate a baby, and if that is the case, then I don’t need to be in here because I am for sure going to burst hell wide open,” she said, starting to stand up.