Page 48 of The Sinner and the Priest: Part Two

“This one time, I was maybe nine, outgrowing my dresses fast.” I start pacing. Three steps forward. Three back. The humidity in the air feels just like that night, and I start to sweat. “We were at the club waiting for someone important. Something to do with business, I don’t know. It must have been over ninety degrees outside, and I was tired of it. I wanted an ice cream, but my mother told me not to get one. Didn’t want my dress ruined. They argued, and then she went off networking. My father bought me an ice cream anyway, and we sat in this booth, and I rested my head on his lap and ate down there so my mom wouldn’t see. But she did. Another argument happened, and she said some horrible things. When the important people arrived, and Dad got up to shake their hands, he had . . . white mess on his . . .” I cover my face with my hands. “It sounds so ridiculous now. A fucking ice cream stain!”

A wall of heat is suddenly at my front. Cisco drags my hands away from my face. When I look at him, he doesn’t do his priest thing. Doesn’t mock me with a ‘Go on,’ as if there’s no shame in what I’m about to confess. As if he understands the pain before he hears it.

He just meets my eyes in the cobblestoned street, below a string of lights, and shows me something hotter than emptiness. His expression fills with something more like a need for vindication. Like righteous fury.

“Finish,” he demands, nostrils flaring, finger pointing at the ground. “Now. I want to know everything.”

“She made it look worse than it was, and then sowed rumors at church. At the country club. The hair salon. She told them it was unnatural, the way he looked at me.” Shame flares, turns my skin acid-hot. This is the part I never say. Not even to myself in the shower. “She told them my daddy wanted me.”

I spit out the last part, ugly and low to the ground. Cisco says nothing. When I brave a look up, he’s gone still as if he’s frozen again.

I pace away, gathering courage because it gets worse. When I come back, I blurt it all out. “Daddy lost more business, and then friends, and then eventually he stopped holding my hand. Stopped taking me to the mall. Stopped hugging me.” My throat tightens. “I don’t know why he stayed with her, why he put up with the lies and shame. He should have taken me and left. Should have refuted the rumors. Should have fought for me, but . . .” I suck in a stilted breath. “He hanged himself instead.”

Cisco’s mouth opens to speak.

“Don’t.” I step back. “I need to finish this. If you ask me if I’m okay, I won’t finish.”

He nods once, then glares at his knuckles and cracks them. “Whatever you want.”

I almost crumble, right then and there.

It’s worse than asking me if I’m okay. It’s saying he loves me without words . . . and I’m not finished telling him the bad part. That was just an appetizer.

Scrubbing my face, I force the words out.

“My mother found him in the study,” I say. “She screamed for hours. Then, when the police came, she told them it was my fault. I seduced him, she said. I put wicked thoughts in his head. I was a Jezebel, a demon sent to drag her husband to hell.”

It’s all coming out of my mouth now, come hell or high water.

“He died when I was eleven. I still wore pigtails, for fuck’s sake. Didn’t even know what sex was. But the old men at the parish? They believed her. The neighborhood women believed her. Even the local doctor, who’d stroked my fucking arm more times than I could count—he believed her.”

I feel Cisco’s glower, the rage building on my behalf. He’ll think differently in a minute. Tears sting behind my eyes, but they don’t fall. I’m way past weeping.

“She sent me to a ‘reconditioning’ camp. A place for—fuck.” I jam the heels of my palms into my eyes, trying to block the memory, but it comes anyway. White rooms, the smell of bleach, the burn of a cold gel on my shaved scalp. I drop my hands, let my gaze defocus, and my emotions drift away. “It was a place for ‘deviant sexual behavior’ and ‘depraved morality.’”

Those cold walls, the sheer isolation, and the way I clung to any physical attention still feel horrible inside my body. I stare at the cobblestones and whisper, “They called us sluts and whores before we even knew how to touch ourselves. They shocked us, starved us, and paraded us in front of rooms full of creeps who liked to watch girls break. I was so miserable that I thought, fuck it. I’m going to see what all the fuss is about. I wanted to control the thing that made me wicked.” I look down at the curves of my body, seeing the shape that betrays me. Dirty. Dirty. “But it felt so good,” I confess on an exhale. “I couldn’t stop, and I didn’t want to. I just wanted to feel good.”

Cisco grabs my wrist and yanks me close. I collide with hard muscle twitching with tension. But his hands are gentle and large. Firm. Safe. He runs them up my spine until one wraps around my shoulders, strapping me in like a seatbelt. The other threads through my hair, cups my skull, and forces my head to his chest.

I feel the heat of his body, feel his heart smashing against his ribcage. He tries to soothe me, but my muscles are locked tight in preparation. I know what’s coming, and I can’t stop it now.

“By the time I got out,” I continue, “I was already fucking the older teenage boys. The men, too.” I force a laugh. “And I loved it. I excelled in it. For the first time in my life, I knew why I was born. Turns out, the Sisterhood knew that, too.”

Here goes . . .

I suck in a breath for courage, exhale, and push him away. Lifting my chin high, I meet his eyes.

“I might not have started this way, Cisco, but I willingly embraced it.” My bottom lip trembles. “My sin isn’t the sex or the guilt over using it to get what I want. It’s that I like it. It’s the certainty that I will never, never let someone take that away from me.” My gaze gets hard. “So believe me when I say that if I were fucking Asmodeus, I wouldn’t have lied. I would have shouted it to the sky. I would have made a t-shirt and strutted around the piazza, boasting about taking his giant cock. I would⁠—”

“Okay.”

My jaw clicks shut at his voice.

We stare into each other’s eyes. The sunlight is almost gone. A breeze wafts in, tickling my skin and ruffling his hair. Headlights flash in my periphery. Insects chirp.

Eventually, Cisco’s lips part, and then a high-pitched engine whine drowns out all other sound. Headlights sweep across the brick wall beside us.

It happens in seconds. A scooter heads toward us, but the two riders are talking and not looking where they’re going. I hear a blur of youthful laughter, and then tires screech as Cisco steps in front of me and grabs the chrome handlebars. He wrenches the metal aside, maneuvering the Vespa out of the way. The driver yelps and slams his boots on the cobblestones to catch his balance. His passenger shrieks.