Priest: A Love Story
: Chapter 18

Careful.

A week later, I stared up at Poppy’s ceiling. She was pressed against me, her head nestled on my arm, her breathing slow and even. I had lain awake watching her after we’d made love, watching the soft lines of her face relax from ecstasy into peace, feeling nothing but mindless contentment. But now that she’d been asleep for several hours, the contentment had ebbed into an anxious doubt.

The last several days had been like something out of a dream or a fairy tale, where my days were chased by the structured benevolence that was my life as a priest, and where my nights were filled with gasps and sighs and skin sliding over skin.

At night, we could pretend. We could drink and watch Netflix, we could fuck and shower together afterwards (and then fuck again.) We could drowse next to each other and fall softly into sleep. We could pretend we were just like any couple a few weeks into their relationship, that there wasn’t anything keeping us from talking about normal couple things, like meeting each other’s parents or where we would spend Thanksgiving.

But we were acutely and painfully aware of our own acting, of our own pretense. We were faking it because facing the truth was so much worse, the truth that this paradise would end one way or another.

What if it didn’t have to end? What if I called the bishop tomorrow and told him I wanted to quit? That I wanted to be defrocked and made into a normal man again?

Laicized. That was the word for it. From the late Latin laicus, meaning layperson. To be made into a layperson.

What if a few months from now I could kneel in front of Poppy and do more than offer her an orgasm and offer her my hand in marriage instead?

I closed my eyes, shutting out the real world and letting my mind go where I hadn’t let it go before—to the future. To a future where it was her and me and a house somewhere and little Bell children underfoot. I would follow her anywhere, and if she wanted to work in New York or London or Tokyo, or stay in Kansas City, I would go with her. I was like Ruth with Naomi, I was ready to make her life and her desires my own, and any place Poppy wanted to go, we would make a home together. Spend our hours together fucking and loving. Someday watching her stomach grow with my child.

But what would I do? I had two degrees, both equally useless in the real world, useless everywhere except temples of God and temples of learning. I could teach, I supposed, theology or maybe languages. I’d always wanted to be a scholar, sitting in some dusty library, poring over dusty books, excavating forgotten knowledge the way an archeologist excavates forgotten lives. The idea excited me, blowing like rain across my thoughts, drops and splashes of possibility. New cities, new universities…a list compiled itself in my head of places that had the best classics programs and the best theology programs—there had to be a way I could fuse the two together, maybe apply for a doctoral program or take a job as an adjunct…

I opened my eyes and that pleasant, fantastical rain stopped, and the weight of everything I would have to leave behind crushed against me. I’d be leaving this town—Millie, the youth group, the men’s group, all the parishioners I’d so carefully courted back to God. I’d be leaving the pancake breakfast and clothes pantry and all the work on fighting predators in the clergy. I’d be leaving behind the gift of turning bread into flesh, wine into blood, of having one hand on the veil that separated this world from the next. I’d be leaving behind Father Bell, the man I’d become, and I’d have to molt him away like so much dead flesh and ruined feathers, and grow a new shape with painful new pink skin.

I had a life building treasures in heaven, beating myself like a runner for the race, and I was thinking of giving that up…for what? I tried to stop the verses I knew by heart crowding my mind, verses about sowing to the flesh and reaping corruption, verses about passions of the flesh waging war against my soul. Put to death what is earthly in you.

Put to death my love for Poppy.

My throat tightened and my mouth went dry; my anxiety spiked, as if someone was holding a knife to my throat and demanding that I choose, now, but how I could I choose when both choices came at such cost?

Because if I stayed where I was, I lost the woman sleeping next to me, this woman who argued about racial and gender disparities on The Walking Dead, who pulled obscure literary quotes from the air, who drank like she was drowning and who made me come harder than I ever had in my life.

That realization made the panic bite at me hard.

Turning to face her, I stroked a hand along her side, down the slope of her ribs and up the curve of her hip. She stirred a bit and snuggled in closer, still fast asleep, and my chest clenched.

I couldn’t lose her.

And I couldn’t keep her.

This kind of fear, this specific brand of panic, shouldn’t have made me hard, but it did. Hard enough that I had to reach down and stroke myself. I was engulfed with the need to claim my girl once again, to bury myself inside of her, as if one more orgasm would make a difference in scaring away our doomed future.

I slipped a hand down between us as I turned my body towards hers, replaceing those soft lips below her legs, and I started teasing them apart, flicking my fingers across her clit and over the frilled pink skin around her entrance. She shifted and sighed a happy, sleepy sigh, her legs falling open to grant me better access, although her eyes remained closed and her face relaxed. She was still asleep.

I bent my head to take a nipple into my mouth, sucking gently, fluttering my tongue around the tightening peak, and she was squirming now, but still asleep and fuck it, I couldn’t wait any longer. I lifted one of her legs and slung it over my hip as I positioned myself at her entrance. Holding her still, I pushed myself in, and like a curtain falling over a sunny window or a door closed against the noise of a party, the doubts were immediately muffled. They vanished in the face of our connection, the sensation of her tight cunt gripping me. God, I could stay like this forever, not even moving, just being inside of her, feeling her rouse and stretch like a languorous cat while I held her hips fast to mine.

Finally, her eyes opened, drowsy but pleased. “Mmm,” she hummed, hooking her leg more securely around my waist. “I like waking up like this.”

“I do too,” I said huskily, reaching up to sweep a lock of hair off her cheek.

She put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me back, rolling with me so that I was laying flat with her on top of me; she began riding me with slow, dozy undulations. Sleep and sex had tousled her hair, and it hung in tangled, messy waves around her white shoulders and soft breasts, and the streetlight streaming in through the window painted her curves in shades of light and shadow.

Sometimes she was too beautiful to look at.

I laid back, lacing my arms behind my head, just watching as she ground her pleasure out of me, as she start moving faster and faster, her eyes falling closed and her hands braced against my stomach. From this angle I could see the needy bud being rubbed against my pelvis, the tiniest glimpse of where I was filling her and stretching her, and fuck, I could lose it right now if I wasn’t careful.

“That’s my girl,” I whispered. “Use me to come. There you go. You’re so fucking sexy right now. Come on, baby, get it. Get it.”

Her mouth parted and I watched in fascination as the muscles in her stomach seized and tightened, as she moaned and quaked her way through her climax, eventually sliding forward to lay against my chest.

I held her tight to me and then rolled us back over, so that I was on top and she was on her back, and then I bent down and sucked on her neck. I reached under her and found what I wanted, the tight, little rim behind her cunt. She pressed herself into the mattress, as if trying to get away from my touch, but that wouldn’t do, wouldn’t do at all, because I had plans for that part of her that extended well beyond what one fingertip could do.

“Are you saying no?”

She bit her lip and then shook her head. “Not a no. Yes.”

“Then give me your ass,” I growled in her ear. “Give it to me and then I won’t have to take it.”

She gave a little gasp, a gasp that made me crazy, and then she stopped trying to fight my touch. “There’s lube,” she panted. “In the end table.”

Not bothering to pull out, I simply stretched my weight over her as I reached for the end table drawer and grabbed the brand new bottle of lube. “Looks like you’ve been preparing, little lamb.”

“It was either that or get my own specially blessed oil,” she said, half-joking, half out of breath.

I withdrew from her, resting back on my knees and spreading her legs wider. I took my time warming her up, gradually working the lube into her while I rubbed her clit with my other hand, fingering both her holes until she was a twisting, slippery mess. Then I grabbed her thighs and pushed into her ass.

I should have stopped, given her a few moments to adjust, but I was so haunted by all the doubt and the dread, and the only things that would quiet my thoughts were the driving thrusts of my hips, her fingers digging into my back, the hot, hot heat of her like a vise around my dick.

“Tyler,” she breathed.

“Lamb,” I said, rising up to my knees and curling my hands around her hips.

“I’m going to come again.”

“Good.” My own climax was almost there as well, a barbed throb in my pelvis, driven on by the sight of the goose bumps rippling up her skin and the flush creeping up her stomach as she played with her clit.

“Oh, that’s so good, baby,” I grunted. “You’re such a good girl. Show me how much you like it.”

Her eyes locked on mine. “Fuck me like you want me to be yours.”

Her words tugged at that ribbon, jerking against my heart, and I pressed my eyes closed. I could so easily fuck her like that, because I did want her to be mine—forever. We’d only known each other six weeks, and I wanted her for the rest of my life.

I was such a fool.

I pulled her closer, stabbing into her narrow opening over and over again, watching her crest and peak as she continued to beg me to make her mine, and how could she not see that she already was? That I was already hers? We belonged to each other, and as I watched her cunt pulse with her orgasm, as I sank up to the hilt and shot my load inside of her, I realized that there was no undoing that, no untangling what had become so tangled over the past month and a half.

As we both came down, we stared at each other, and whatever solace I had managed to eke out vanished in an instant. I got up to get a warm washcloth, and when I came back, Poppy was watching me thoughtfully.

“Tyler.”

“Yes?” I sat on the bed and started cleaning her.

“I don’t know how long I can do this.”

I froze. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” she said, and there was a quaver in her words. “I want to be with you. I want to claim you. I’m in love with you, Tyler, and the fact that there’s no future for us is killing me.”

I finished cleaning her as I thought of a reply, tossing the used towel onto a nearby chair. “I don’t know what the future looks like,” I finally said. “I know that I love you…but I also love my job and my life. Poppy, what I have here…it’s more than just charity or prayer. It’s a way of life. I get to live my entire life for my god, every minute of every day, and I don’t know if I can live without that.”

We both avoided the fact that these past few minutes had hardly been lived for God, that they’d been for us and us alone.

“Don’t you think I know that?” she said, sitting up. She didn’t bother to cover herself with the sheet, and I forced myself to look away from those perky tits so I could focus on what she was saying. “It’s all I think about. I can’t make you give this up—I can see that you love it. Hell, it’s what I love about you. That you are passionate and giving and spiritual, that you’ve devoted your life to God. But then I worry—” and there were real tears now “—that you’re going to give me up instead.”

“No,” I whispered. “Don’t do that to yourself.”

But I didn’t tell her what she wanted to hear. I didn’t know if I would give her up or not, because while it would kill me, being discovered and losing everything I’d fought for would kill me too.

I could see the moment she realized it, that I wasn’t going to tell her that we would stay together, and before I could say something else—I don’t know what, but something—she laid back down, turning on her side so that her back was to me.

“I want you so badly that I can taste blood when I think about it. But I won’t be the reason you lose your life,” she said, her voice reverberating like a bell in my mind. “I won’t be the reason for any regret. I don’t think I could bear it…looking at you and wondering if there was a part of you that hated me just a little bit for being the reason you laicized.”

She even knew the right word for it…she’d done her research. That heartened me at the same time it saddened me.

“I could never hate you.”

“Really? Even if I made you choose between me and your god?”

Fuck, that was stark. “That’s not all there is, Poppy. Don’t do that.”

She took a breath, the kind of breath that usually presaged a sharp retort, but then she seemed to freeze. Instead she said, “You should go home. It’s getting close to morning.”

Her tight voice killed me. I wanted to comfort her, hug her, fuck her. Why did we have to talk about these awful things when we could keep pretending? “Poppy…”

“I’ll see you later, Tyler.”

Her tone was as definitive as any safeword. I was dismissed.

I walked across the foggy park, hands in my pockets and shoulders hunched against the September-night chill, trying to pray but only replaceing snippets of thoughts to send up instead.

She wants a full life, I told God silently. She wanted a life with marriage and kids, a life where love could be just as present as work and family and friends, a life where she didn’t have to hide. And who could blame her?

What am I supposed to do?

God didn’t answer. Probably because I’d broken my sacred vow to serve Him, desecrated His church in all manner of ways, and repeatedly committed a litany of sins that I barely regretted because I was so infatuated. I’d made an idol out of Poppy Danforth, and now I would reap the consequences of replaceing myself isolated from God.

Repent. I have to repent.

But not seeing Poppy any more…even the mere idea tore a hole right through my chest.

I climbed up the stairs and walked to the back door of the rectory, navigating through my kitchen in the bluish light of early dawn. I still had a couple hours to sleep before I had to get up for morning Mass, and I hoped that something would be different in the morning, that the way forward would be clear, but I knew it wouldn’t, and that knowledge was so very, very depressing.

“Late night?”

I nearly had a heart attack.

Millie was sitting in my living room in the half-dark, wearing a matching sweat suit.

“Millie,” I said, trying to pretend that I hadn’t almost pissed myself. “What are you doing here?”

“I take walks every morning,” she said. “Very early. I don’t think you would have ever noticed, given that you seem to sleep in until the latest possible moment.”

“I haven’t noticed, you’re right.” Was she inviting me on a walk now?

She sighed. “Father Bell, I know.”

“Pardon?”

“I know. About you and Poppy. I’ve seen you skulking through the park during the mornings.”

Oh shit.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit.

“Millie—”

She held up a hand. “Don’t.”

I sat heavily in a chair, despair and panic coiled together in my stomach. Someone knew, someone knew, someone knew. Of course it was always going to be like this. I was never going to have the luxury of choosing for myself how this all played out, and I was a fucking idiot for ever thinking otherwise.

I looked up with wide eyes, and what came out was not gracious or kind or selfless, but pure lizard brain survival. “Millie, please, you can’t tell anyone.” I slid to my knees in front of her. “Please, please don’t tell the bishop, I don’t know how I could live with myself…”

But then I trailed off because I was doing nothing less than begging an honorable woman to abandon her honor, all for the sake of an unrepentant sinner.

“I’m so sorry,” I said instead. “You must think I’m such a terrible, awful person…I’m so ashamed. I don’t even know what to say.”

She stood. “You can say that you’ll be careful.”

I looked up at her. “What?”

“Father, I came here to warn you, and there’s a reason I did that instead of going to the bishop. This town needs you, and it definitely doesn’t need another scandal about a priest.” She shook her head with a small smile. “Especially when it’s about something as innocuous as falling in love with a grown woman who would be perfect for you…if you weren’t a priest.”

“Millie,” I said, and my voice was broken, desperate. “What do I do?”

“I don’t have that answer for you,” she said, walking toward the door. “All I know is that you better make a decision soon. These things never stay hidden, Father, no matter how hard you try. And there’s no way a woman like her would be willing to be your secret mistress for the rest of her years. She is worth far more than that.”

“She is,” I echoed, a cold, iron weight crushing me as I realized that I was no better than Sterling. I was making her do essentially the same thing, except I wasn’t even doing her the service of being upfront about it…or offering her anything in return.

“Goodbye,” Millie said, and I nodded a goodbye in return, miserable and agitated, too miserable and agitated to even think about sleeping.

Had it just been a couple weeks ago that I’d given Poppy Lizzy’s rosary? And now everything felt like it was falling apart, like broken rosary beads scattering wildly across the floor, too numerous and fast for me to chase.

Millie knew. Jordan knew. Poppy maybe didn’t even want to be with me…

I went for a long run, and then got to the church early to unlock it and prepare for Mass, distracted throughout the whole service by my encounter with Millie, by my earlier non-fight with Poppy, by the fact that now two people knew about my affair and that was two people too many.

Secret mistress.

Be careful.

I’m in love with you, Tyler.

In fact, I was so distracted that I almost spilled the wine and then I accidentally said the closing prayer twice in a row, my mind miles away from the sacred invocation of the divine and only in the swirling maelstrom of how much was going fucking wrong right the fuck now.

After Mass, I emerged from the sacristy with my head down, checking my phone (Poppy hadn’t been at Mass and she hadn’t messaged me either) and wondering if she was still angry with me. So I didn’t notice that there was some one standing in the center aisle at first, not until they shifted and the noise caught my attention.

It was a man—tall, black-haired, my age. He wore a khaki suit with a blue tie and silver tie bar, far too dressy for a September Friday in Weston, but somehow he made it work without looking ridiculous. He took off a pair of sunglasses and eyed me with an icy blue gaze.

“You must be Tyler Bell.”

“I am,” I confirmed, sliding my phone into my slacks pocket. I had removed my chasuble and stole and all the other trappings of my office other than my collar, and I was feeling suddenly under-dressed, like I needed some kind of extra armor, extra authority, with this man.

Which was stupid. He was a visitor to my church. All I needed was to be friendly.

I strode forward and shook his hand, which he seemed to welcome, a small, appraising smile on his lips.

“Can I help you with anything?” I asked. “Unfortunately, you missed our morning service, but we will have another service tomorrow.”

“No, I think you’ve already helped,” he said as he stepped past me, his head swiveling to take in every corner of the church. “I just wanted to meet you and see for myself what this Father Tyler Bell was like.”

Uh…

Uneasiness knotted in my gut. Even though I knew it wasn’t possible, I couldn’t help but worry that somehow he was a result of Millie and Jordan knowing the truth, that he was here to finally tug on the thread that would unravel my life.

The man turned on his heel and faced me. “I like to know the size and shape of my competition.”

“Competition?”

“For Poppy, of course.”

It only took the barest instant for my mind to catch up, to reassess this encounter, and calculate that I was talking to Sterling Haverford III. To size up his body (in good shape, fuck that guy) and his clothes (expensive, fuck that guy again) and his bearing, which was almost absurdly confident, confident to the point of hubris, and there was the chink in this man’s armor. He had no doubt that he would be successful, he had no doubt that he would leave here with what he wanted (and yes, I suspected that Poppy was a what to him and not a who.) In that bare instant, I knew exactly where we stood, exactly what weapons he’d be fighting with, and I also knew that one of those weapons was the emotional hold he had on Poppy, and that I could very well lose this battle…this battle I had no right to fight.

And that bare instant was all Sterling needed to feel like he had the upper hand. His mouth curled into a sneer, subtle enough to be ignored, but present enough to demonstrate in exactly what light he held his competition.

However, I wasn’t an idiot, whatever Sterling might think, and I certainly wasn’t going to conform to his expectations of how he thought I would behave.

“I’m afraid you are mistaken,” I said, giving him an easy smile. “There’s no competition. Ms. Danforth has been attending my church and she’s interested in pursuing the path to conversion, but that’s as far as our friendship extends.” I almost hated how easily the lie rolled off my tongue—lying was something I used to pride myself on not doing, but there was a lot I couldn’t be proud of anymore. And this moment wasn’t about morality, this moment was about survival.

Sterling raised an eyebrow. “So this is how it’s going to be.” He put his hands in his pockets, everything about his posture screaming boardrooms and yachts and arrogance.

Good Guy Tyler, be Good Guy Tyler, I told myself. Better yet, be Father Bell. Father Bell wasn’t jealous of this man, jealous of his good looks and expensive clothes and the claim he had on Poppy. Father Bell didn’t care about a pissing match with a stranger, and he certainly wouldn’t engage in something as barbaric as competing for a grown woman, who was capable of making her own choices and exercising her own agency.

I leaned against a pew and gave him another smile, knowing my posture conveyed an easy control and a casual friendliness, while also reminding him that I was just as tall and built as he was.

“I’m sorry. I don’t think I understand you,” I finally said. “Like I just told you, there’s no competition.”

He took my words in a different way than I’d meant them. “You would like to think that, wouldn’t you?” He looked me over once again, and then seemed to change tack, leaning against a pew himself and crossing his arms.

“Has she talked about me?” he asked. “I’m sure she has. Confession—that’s a Catholic thing right? Did she mention me in her confessions?”

“I’m not at liberty to—”

He waved a hand and his wedding ring glinted against his skin. “Right. Of course. Well, maybe she wouldn’t want to confess things about me after all. How many times I can make her come. How loudly she cries my name. All the places I’ve fucked her. You know I once fucked her mere feet away from a U.S. Senator? During an art opening at The Met? She was always good to go. For me, at least.”

It was only years of cultivated compassion and self-discipline that kept me from driving my fist right into this guy’s classically square jaw. Not only from jealousy, but from the equally macho urge to protect Poppy’s dignity and stop her choices from being reframed by this asshole.

She doesn’t need you to defend her honor, Feminist Ally Tyler told me. But regular Tyler, the Irish-American one who enjoyed fucking and whiskey and roaring obscenities at soccer games, didn’t care. It didn’t matter if she needed me to and it didn’t matter that I didn’t have a right to—the universe had been knocked off-balance by this guy’s assholery and my fist itched to correct that.

“Did that strike a nerve?” Sterling asked, amused.

“I consider Poppy one of my flock,” I said, inclining my head in admission. Luckily, my voice betrayed nothing but mild disapprobation. “It pains me to hear any of them spoken of disrespectfully.”

“Oh, certainly,” Sterling said. “And I admire how committed you are to your story. I’m a man of appearances myself.” He pulled a manila envelope from the inside of his suit jacket and handed it to me. “However, I’m also a man of means, and so we can move past this initial posturing and right into the heart of the matter.”

I stared at him as I unwound the string at the top of the envelope and pulled out the large glossy pictures inside. Part of me worried that they would be pictures of Poppy and him, more evidence of their past to unsettle me, but no. No, it was much, much worse.

A broad-shouldered man crossing a small park at night. That same man at a darkened garden gate. A shot through a kitchen window of a man and a woman kissing.

I exhaled.

There was no nudity, thank Jesus, and nothing more sinful than a kiss, but it didn’t matter, because it was clearly my face in all of them and that was enough. In fact, they were more than enough—they were damning.

“And be reassured that I have all the digital files of these,” Sterling said cheerfully. “So feel free to keep those. As mementos.”

“You had us followed,” I said.

“I told you that I was a man of means. When Poppy kept refusing to answer my calls, even after I told her I was coming for her, I started to wonder if she’d met someone else. So I looked into it. Since she hasn’t agreed to my arrangement—yet—I wouldn’t have minded if she’d been fucking someone. But falling in love with another man…well, I know Poppy and I know what kind of obstacle that would present.”

“You had us followed,” I repeated. “Do you even hear yourself? That is insane.”

Sterling seemed baffled. “Why?”

“Because,” I said, my anger getting the better of me and making my words tight and forced, “people don’t have other people followed. Especially their ex-girlfriends. That’s stalking—that’s actually the legal definition of stalking. I don’t care that you’re wealthy and can pay for someone else to do it for you—it’s the same damn thing.”

He still looked confused. “That’s what you’re upset about? Not that I have evidence that can ruin your life? Not that I’m going to inevitably walk away from this town with Poppy at my side?”

“You are so assured of this outcome,” I said, forcing myself to move past him having Poppy followed. “But you forget, it has nothing to do with you or me—it’s her choice.”

Sterling shrugged one shoulder, as if I were being either deliberately obtuse or deliberately precious, and he didn’t have time for it any more.

“So what’s the heart of the matter?” I asked, sliding the photos back into the envelope.

“Pardon?”

“You said you wanted to move past the posturing.” I tossed the pictures on the pew next to me and stood up straight, crossing my arms. I was happy to see that Sterling also straightened up, as if unhappy with the extra inch I had on him. (In height, I mean. [Although a really awful, crass part of me was ridiculously pleased to know that I was the biggest Poppy had ever had.])

“Yes. Well, here it is, Father.” He said the word father as if it had quotation marks. (I allowed myself another brief fantasy where I slammed my fist into his eye socket.) “I want Poppy to come home with me to New York. I want her to be mine.”

“Even though you’re married.”

He gave me that look again, that slightly incredulous are you an idiot look, and it would have bothered me if I didn’t have the moral high ground in this competition. Except…I couldn’t really claim any part of any moral ground now, high or low, could I? That thought depressed me immensely.

Luckily, Sterling didn’t notice and continued on. “Yes, even though I’m married. Marriage isn’t a sacrament in my family—it’s a tax write-off. And I have no intention of holding a legal arrangement above what I want out of my life. I’ve never loved my wife and she feels the same way about me.”

“But you love Poppy?”

Sterling pressed his lips together. “Love and want are essentially the same thing,” he elided. “Not that a man like you would know that.”

“I respect your honesty, at least,” I said. “You’re not lying to yourself, and I assume you won’t lie to her.”

This unexpected compliment seemed to surprise him, but he quickly recovered. “Poppy doesn’t care about that as much as she thinks she does,” he told me. “You may labor under the illusion that she won’t come back with me unless I love her, but she’s not like you. She knows numbers, sense, mortgages. I’m offering her the currency she knows—money and lust and security—and that is why I will win.”

I thought of her crying in the confessional booth, of the moment we’d stood together in the sanctuary, bathing in God’s presence. She wasn’t merely a spreadsheet with spread legs, and Sterling was an idiot if he’d grown up with her and managed to miss all the deeply spiritual, deeply emotional facets of Poppy Danforth.

“She’s so much more than that.”

“That’s sweet. That really is.” Sterling put his sunglasses back on. “And just so you know, you are so much less than I expected. Here I was, expecting Alexander Borgia, and instead I replace Arthur Dimmesdale. I was so prepared to fight dirty, and yet I suspect I won’t have to fight at all.”

“It’s not a fight,” I said. “It’s a person.”

“It’s a woman, Father.” Sterling flashed me a white, wide grin. “Soon to be my woman.”

I didn’t respond, even though every neuron was firing you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong. Instead, I simply watched as he tossed me a wave and strode easily down the aisle to the door, his hands in his pockets as if he didn’t have a care in the world.