“I don’t care if I’m the villain. I don’t mind being the bastard. If I can do anything to ease your suffering, if you sleep better for just one hour of just one night, then it is worth you hating me more than you did before.”
The insides of my eyelids burn a little at that, and I duck my head so no passersby will notice how fiercely my chin is wobbling. The wordsI don’t think I hate youare on the tip of my tongue and they sting more than the unshed tears.
“You can’t atone for what you did,” I say in a whisper instead.
“I’m not trying to, Charlotte, not anymore. I know I can’t buy your forgiveness. Now all that’s left for me is to live with myself and what I’ve done.”
It’s his raw but honest admission that pushes the first sob out of me.
“Little one,” he says, sounding as broken as I feel. “Are you crying? Are you that furious with me?”
“Yes. No.” Another wet, gasping sob. “I don’t know, Church. I don’t know. Some moments I think I hate you, and then other moments, like right now, I wish you were here.”
“That’s the pain talking,” he says gently. “You don’t really.”
The tears are flowing fast and freely now, mingling with the cool drops of rain. “You have no right to say what part of me is talking and what isn’t,” I say, knowing it sounds like nonsense and not caring.
“Of course,” he murmurs.
“And you have no right to decide what will ease any of my sufferings,” I mumble.
He hums in agreement, a soothing noise that immediately makes me feel safe and small and loved.
I’m reminded of all the times I showed up in his office, shaky and exhausted from a night guarding Jax from my father’s drunkenness, a sleepless night sitting against the inside of our bedroom door, terrified that my dad would beat it down at any moment. Me, I looked too much like his dead wife to scream at, but Jax? Jax was the perfect target. And Jax only had me to protect him. Which meant once or twice a month, I’d see Jax safely to school and then stagger to the one placeIfelt safe.
With Church.
He’d take one look at me and then somehow I’d end up in his lap, cradled against his chest as I cried myself to sleep right there in his office, and then I’d wake up on the settee he kept for students to sit on during meetings.
After the second time it happened, he took out one of the bookshelves in his office and bought a long sofa to replace the settee, so that then I’d wake up several hours later on plush cushions with a pillow under my head and a soft blanket pulled over me. Groggy but protected. Cared for. And he listened when I begged him not to get involved, although he did inform me that the next time my father did anything more than look at my brother, he’d be stepping in.
For a kinky, autocratic monster, he was always careful with the boundaries I needed him to be careful with. He only invaded the parts of my heart marked for invasion.
I miss him. I don’t hate him and I can’t forgive him and I miss him.
“Church?”
“Yes, Charlotte?”
“Will I still be your little supplicant even now? Now that I’ve told you to stay away? And now that you can’t ever make up for what you did?”
His voice is pure Church when he answers—like the still, small voice Elijah heard outside the cave: quiet and boundless all at once. “Always. You have the right to ask me to stay away, but there is one thing you can never ask of me, and that is for me to stop loving you. It would be easier to ask me to stop breathing.”
I feel like I can’t breathe myself. I certainly can’t speak. I can’t even cry properly; the tears are just leaking out now without any effort from me.
He makes another one of those noises that makes me feel like I’m tucked against him, listening to the steady, reassuring beat of his heart while he sifts through my hair. “I love you too much not to give you what you need. I won’t approach you, I won’t call, and you are certainly entitled to give back the money if you need.”
The rain comes down harder now, hard enough that it makes it difficult to hear his final words. But I do hear them. I hear them and begin weeping in earnest.
“Be well, little one,” he says, love and arrogance winding through his words in that way I adore so much. “You, Charlotte Tenpenny, smartest and bravest person I know, will always be my heart and my faith.”
And then he hangs up.
6
Charley
Imake it a week.