Father Figure Read online

  I gave a harsh laugh. “Then why doesn’t anything ever get better? Life is shit for 99% of people in the world, but does your God do anything? Poverty, hunger, murder, abuse, disease, even frickin’ climate change.”

  “Free Will, I guess. People get to choose their destiny.”

  “That’s such a cop-out bullshit answer. You think a kid chooses to be born into a hovel with shitty parents who sell them into slavery? You think having a druggie mom who forgets to feed you is a choice? Where’s the Free Will there?”

  He nodded, rubbing his hands over his face. “You challenge me, Blue. You make me think. I know God loves me because I feel it. He wants us to make the world a better place and we have the tools to do it. I can’t explain to you how or why I know that God exists: I’d say it’s like love—you know it because you feel it.” He gave a small smile.

  I sneered at him in return. “No one’s loved me my whole life: not my mother, not God, and certainly not you. When you saved me, I thought you were different. You’re not. You’re just a man in a priest’s dog collar.”

  His face blanched. “I care, Blue. I’m not allowed to love you except as a priest.”

  “You’re such a fucking hypocrite, Gabriel! I’ve seen the way you look at me, felt your eyes all over me.”

  He bowed his head.

  “That was wrong of me, very, very wrong, and I’ve prayed to God to give me strength … because that can’t happen again.”

  “Then I think you believe in a cruel, shitty God.”

  He was silent then for a long time as I stared out into the darkness in front of me. Finally, he spoke.

  “I have doubts, Blue. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t. But I’ve made my choice: I’ve chosen to sacrifice personal pleasure to work for God to help my parishioners. It’s not about me—it’s about them.” He paused and spoke more gently, “But it’s nice to know you were listening to my sermon—I was pretty sure you’d fallen asleep again.” His smile dimmed. “I’m sorry if my behavior made you think I didn’t care about you. I think you must know that the opposite is true: I care too much, and not in the way a priest cares for his flock, but like a man for a woman. And that’s a problem for me—the kind of problem that fucks up a life. I’ve worked hard to be a good man and a good priest, especially after … well, since I left the Teams, I’ve been atoning for a lot of shit. And I know my work makes a difference because I see it—not in the big things, but in the small things—a son who’ll talk to his dad again because I helped them reconcile; or keeping a kid in school just because I was someone he could talk to. They’re not big things to anyone else, but they’re big things to the people I help. I’m doing more work with schools now, helping keep kids out of gangs. I believe in my work and I know that God wants me on his team. So when I say that you’re a problem for me, it’s because I care in the wrong way. Do you understand? It’s a balancing act for a priest. If he’s too friendly with people, he runs the risk of losing his moral authority; if he stands on doctrine alone, he’ll come over as cold, officious, and a poor witness to the goodness of God.”

  I cocked my head on one side to study him, listening to what he wasn’t saying.

  “You think doing good can make up for the bad? Are you bargaining with God?”

  He winced. “Sometimes, at first, perhaps. We’re all sinners, but trying to live a life of righteousness is the biggest challenge there is.”

  “So caring about me ‘in the wrong way’,” and I waved my fingers in the air for emphasis, “that’s bad?”

  “For me, yes, it’s bad.”

  “But what if it’s good for me?” I persisted. “What if God made you save me for another reason? What if I’m your … reward? Did you think about that?”

  He shook his head. “You’re young so you can’t imagine the sacrifices a man has to make and…”

  “Don’t fucking patronize me, Gabriel! You have no idea what my life has been like!”

  His lips turned down. “I’m sorry. I seem to say that a lot around you. I didn’t mean to patronize you. So tell me, Blue? What makes you so bitter and angry? How did you end up on the streets so young?”

  “Fishing for my age again, Gabriel?” I taunted him. He didn’t deny it. “It’s not a new story: junkie mom, raised myself, started in the family business.”

  “There was no one in your life to help you? A grandmother, a teacher … a father, maybe?”

  I felt a cold fist of pain tighten around my heart, squeezing, squeezing, making the world turn red.

  “My father was murdered before I was born,” I choked out.

  His eyes widened. “Wow, that’s some heavy shit you’re dealing with there, honey. You’ve had to be tough, I get that—is that why you’re so angry all of the time?”

  “It’s one of the reasons,” I said, shutting him down from that line of questioning.

  “But you don’t do drugs? Ever?”

  I curled my lip. “And end up toothless and pathetic by thirty? No, thanks. Maybe a little weed once in a while, but nothing else. You?”

  He grinned at me and his smile was breathtaking.

  “A little weed once in a while,” he mimicked me.

  We sat in silence, watching the flames dance and leap, the flickering light making the darkness more intense. I shivered and inched closer to the fire, almost close enough to burn as I stretched out my hands.

  “How’d you go from being a SEAL to a priest? That’s a pretty big change.”

  “And that’s a pretty personal question.”

  “More personal than admitting you want me?” I pushed him.

  He nodded slowly. “In some ways, yes.”

  That made me sit up and take notice. “Tell me,” I insisted.

  He gave me that grin again, the one that made him look years younger. No wonder all his parishioners called him Father Oh Em Gee if he smiled at them like that. It made me realize that he never smiled around me.

  “Sheesh, are you sure the CIA didn’t recruit you out of high school?” He leaned back on his elbows and stretched his long legs out in front of him, the hiking boots enormous next to my dirty sneakers. “I was one of the youngest ever SEALS on the Teams,” he said, speaking slowly. “I was about your age,” and he cast me a knowing look, “cocky as hell, so sure that I knew it all twice over, and was bulletproof. Turned out that last part was right—I’ve never gotten so much as a scratch in all the years I served.” His voice softened. “I had a good friend on my Team, my best friend. We’d gone through BUD/S together, he was my swim buddy—and if you know anything about SEALS, you’d know that’s a big deal. Then we’d gotten selected together, as well. He was a couple of years older than me, but we were equals as far as rank went.”

  His voice sank lower so I had to lean closer to him to hear, closer to the fire.

  “On our first deployment, we ran into a shitstorm of epic proportions: bad intel, bad comms, and tangoes where there shouldn’t have been any. We’d walked into an ambush, insurgents on both sides of the valley and, well, shit went down and I made a bad call.”

  He paused and I waited agitated and restless for reasons I couldn’t express to him, a clump of nerves catching at the back of my throat.

  He stared into the fire, the light flickering demonically across his face, reminding me that he was evil and not to be trusted.

  “There were multiple casualties, a lot of body bags for that mission,” he said at last. “My friend caught a bad one.”

  He cleared his throat and I held my breath, but inside I was screaming, Tell me! Tell me! Admit what you did!

  My heart was hammering so loudly, I think he must have heard me. Because I knew, I knew that he was talking about my father, talking like it had just been an accident, but I knew better and I hated him, hated that he could act so sad, hated that he was sitting here when my father was dead because of him.

  Words turned to ash in my throat and I had trouble speaking.

  “What happened to him, your friend?”
>
  Gabriel looked up at me, his eyes hidden in the shadows.

  “He died during evac.”

  And the moment had passed. He wasn’t going to admit it, not here and not now. Well, he’d pay for that. I’d given him a chance—now, I’d enjoy breaking him.

  “I changed after that,” he continued, unaware of the storm raging inside me. “Everything changed. I became harder, colder,” he shook his head, “the stereotype of a steely-eyed assassin, I guess. I killed in cold blood and never felt a thing. I was dead inside and I didn’t care whether I lived or died. It meant that I was completely calculating, nothing fazed me, no emotions, so I was good, I was the best. I didn’t know it at the time, but my heart wasn’t dead inside, just iced over.”

  I touched the knife tucked inside my jacket, drawing strength and reassurance from it. His sob story made me want to vomit, to spew up all the anger and hatred that burned inside me.

  I realized that he was staring at me so I had to think of something to say. I asked the first question that came into my head.

  “You were never scared of dying?”

  He shook his head. “I think people are only scared of dying if they have something to live for.”

  “Or if living is already hell,” I added without thinking.

  He nodded, meeting my eyes, compassion shining in his own.

  “So what happened?” I asked when it seemed as though he wouldn’t go on.

  “I met a priest, Father Michael O’Dowd,” and an affectionate smile touched his lips. He obviously cared about this guy, and a stab of jealousy sliced through me. “He talked, I listened, and in a very real way, he saved my life that night. He made me see that there could be more to being alive and that God had made me for something more than the Government’s killing machine. It took a while to make the decision, but I went to Theological college and then to a Seminary to train to be a priest. Michael became my Confessor.”

  So that was the old dude he’d talked to this morning—the one who told him to get away from me? Shoulda known. The good ole boy system sticking together.

  Gabriel leaned forward, so close that he was just inches from my face. “And I’ve worked hard to be a good priest, a devout man. I’ve promised to dedicate the life I have left to God’s work. And I won’t fuck that up.”

  I stared back: challenge accepted.

  He’d left out the most important part of the story—where, when and how my father died, but I could connect the dots. Guilt at murdering my father had ruled his life. How ironic. Part of me itched to tell him who I was, to slap the truth down in front of him and watch him crumble. But he wasn’t ready to break yet, I could see it in his eyes, his resolution. But there were cracks.

  I could work with that.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Gabriel

  “It still doesn’t explain why you can’t be with a woman … or why Father Neil can’t be with a guy,” she argued, her beautiful green eyes glinting beguilingly in the naked flames of the fire. “Other religions allow their priests to have relationships, to marry.”

  I gave a small smile. “You picked up on that, huh? You see a lot with those pretty green eyes of yours, Blue. Well, there’s a short explanation and a long one. In short, the Pope feels that celibacy ensures that priests have the time and energy to focus on their flock. Some also say that it emulates Jesus, who was unmarried.”

  “Huh, you say? I thought Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene.”

  I laughed loudly. I was surprised and pleased to see that I’d made her smile, too.

  “You been watching too many movies, Blue. Try reading the Bible not Dan Brown. No, Jesus was never married. But in fact, priests did marry up until about a thousand years ago when the clerical law was changed. Since then, it’s become a tradition, and I’m not saying it’s easy because it’s not. But it’s kind of like being in the Teams, too—total focus, nothing gets in the way of the mission.”

  “Sounds lonely,” she said, leaning back and staring up at the stars.

  I shook my head. “I’m never alone because God is with me. And out here, I feel closer to Him.” I took the coffee back from her, drank a few more sips and tossed the dregs away. “Get some sleep. We’ll be starting at dawn.”

  “Starting what?” she asked uneasily.

  I grinned at her. “Our hike. You want to see what I do out here, I’ll show you, but you gotta get walking, honey.”

  She glared at me, but I just laughed. It was hard to admit that I liked the way she smiled at me, or scowled at me when she wanted to laugh. And it felt good to be this version of myself, open and relaxed. I could like being with her like this a lot.

  “Okay, but one more question,” she said, propping herself up on her elbow. “Why do you have so many tattoos?”

  “Also a pretty personal question. Well, some of them I had because I thought they looked cool because I was 18 and dumb—no offense.” She didn’t rise to that. “The rest all mean something. SEALs are also known as Frogs, so when my friend died, I had the skeleton of a frog tattooed on my back to remember him. Not that I need the tattoo for that, but it’s … a memorial. And that really is enough for tonight, Blue. I’m bushed.”

  She didn’t argue and I built up the fire a little then settled down.

  She didn’t look happy. In fact, she seemed confused, uncomfortable, cold and miserable, but she kicked off her shoes and slid into my sleeping bag. I stretched out next to her, feeling as content as a man in a king-size with feather pillows. Talking about Luke to her had brought me a sense of peace—and wasn’t that the definition of ironic? Talking to the only other person who haunted my dreams.

  I was nearly asleep when I heard a strange sound. I was immediately alert but then smiled to myself when I realized it was just Blue—her teeth were chattering.

  “What’s up?”

  “I c-c-an’t sleep! I’m so c-c-cold!”

  I didn’t speak but rolled over, tugged the sleeping bag against my chest and slung an arm over her shoulders.

  “Sleep,” I commanded.

  And she did.

  I lay awake with this woman in my arms, staring up at the stars. I’d come out here to find clarity, but it wasn’t how I thought it would have been. Holding her, protecting her, it felt scarily good.

  I glanced down at Blue who was fast asleep, looking like an angel in the flickering firelight. But she was no angel. She was surely a demon sent to tease and torment me.

  Over the past ten years, I’d fantasized about many sexual scenarios, most of them re-runs of women I’d fucked and forsaken. They’d run the gamut of raw passion to cheap encounters. No matter how much I’d tried to train my brain to be as celibate as my body, the thoughts, memories and fantasies were still there, engrained in me. I’d loved fucking, but I’d given it up for God. It didn’t mean I stopped thinking about it … I just tried to.

  Finally, my brain running in circles, I slipped into an uneasy sleep.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mariana

  I woke up with Gabriel’s hand clamped on my boob and his erection digging through the sleeping bag into my ass.

  I wiggled free so I could turn to face him and met his shocked gray eyes, burning with desire. He jerked his hand away from me and opened his mouth to speak, but I was quicker, fastening my lips to his, feeling the scratch of his scruff against my cheek, and then his hot, probing tongue in my mouth, inhaling every breath in my body. His large hands wrapped around my waist and tugged me even closer, pulling me on top of him.

  Then he was gone, and I was on my back on the ground, gasping for breath.

  “Shit, Blue! We can’t! I can’t!” he groaned, his face agonized, torn between lust and loathing. “I’m attracted to you, God knows, but I won’t give up God for you, I won’t give up this life. I can’t! You have to stay away from me.”

  He strode into the forest, leaving me dazed and confused, a hot mess of desire.

  My legs were shaky as I stood up, following the trail
up the densely wooded mountainside, but Gabriel was gone and all I could hear was the sound of blood rushing in my ears.

  What the fuck had just happened? I’d never been kissed like that, never felt so needed and wanted, and then so utterly abandoned.

  I rubbed my hands over my lips, feeling the sting where Gabriel’s scruff had burned. It had been instinctive, but the line between revenge and desire was becoming blurred. Using him was fine, great, perfect for the plan; wanting him wasn’t. Even a dumb slut like me knew that things were getting complicated. And I couldn’t work it out—I hated him!

  Slowly, my heart rate began to even out and my brain broke free of the fog that filled it. And I needed to take a piss. I tiptoed to the edge of the forest and squatted behind a bush, taking care of business.

  I knew Gabriel would be back, I just didn’t know when, and I was hungry and thirsty. I rummaged through his backpack finding more granola bars, a bag of apples, a pack of ready-meals and some weird gel bags that I thought were to do with heating food, but as I wasn’t sure how they worked, I took a granola bar and an apple, then dug through the pack to see what else I could find. At the bottom I found a bottle of water, hip flask of whiskey—the good stuff one quick gulp told me—insect repellent (thank you!), a First Aid kit, a rosary that I’d seen him with before, a Holy Bible (on a hike? Oh, please), and a long-bladed hunting knife—a wicked-looking weapon that caught the rays of the rising sun, glinting in the cool morning air.

  I rubbed my arms, watching my breath mist in front of me. Then I turned, seeing the view, and I was silent. In the far distance, the warm blue of the Pacific rose to meet the sky, the pale pink sun behind me sending streaks of red and gold into the morning. The city was a tiny hive set by the shore, and the green and gray mountains were wreathed in thin clouds, the tall pines ghostly in the mist.