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)
I cleared my throat and tugged on my collar, which felt a little tight right now. “You drive a Bentley. What looks like a very new one. I’ve seen you carry a Louis Vuitton, Burberry, and what I believe is called a Birkin purse. You’re stunning, the kind of perfect that is intimidating, to the point of making a priest tongue-tied.” I smirked and rubbed at my stubbled jaw, embarrassed I’d just admitted that. “If someone didn’t know you, they’d assume you were…well, not one who would spend thirteen—and oftentimes more—hours a day in a free clothes closet, where homeless people come in, smelly and dirty. Not only that, but you also make those people feel important. Wanted. You give them a taste of dignity that many have long since lost. I mean, you have to know what you are doing. It’s not normal for anyone to work this hard for no pay. Not even the Sisters in our parish. But you want to. You enjoy it. I can see it on your face.” I stopped, although I could go on.
She dropped her eyes from me to the taco on her plate. When she said nothing, I replayed my words in my head to make sure I hadn’t been insulting in any way.
“I do enjoy it,” she said. “But I didn’t decide to do it because I was some selfless humanitarian. I did it because my life had no point. I held no meaning. When I woke up, I did nothing to benefit anyone. Not even myself. It was time I changed that. The void in my chest. The reason I came to your church to begin with was because I couldn’t find a way to fix what was broken in me. This was what was broken. I hadn’t even known who I was without Crosby. He had been my identity. And not only was he dead, but what I’d thought I had wasn’t real either.” She shook her head, then lifted her eyes back to meet mine. “If he hadn’t died and you’d met me, you would have seen that shallow, self-absorbed, spoiled girl. And it makes me sad that it took his death to open my eyes. To fix myself.”
This wasn’t something I’d ever considered eleven years ago, when I decided that my life would be best spent helping others, living alone, taking a vow of celibacy. I had never expected to feel anything remotely close to how I’d felt about Delana. Yet here I was.
I closed the space between us. A thirst drawing me in, the craving taking over everything I knew, controlling my actions, erasing and rewriting the rules, pushing me to taste her. See just how soft her lips felt under mine. Hear the quick intake of her breath as I delved inside her sweetness and experienced it.
Those almond-shaped eyes, the color of the deepest sea as the sun glistened over it, widened as I stopped with barely an inch between us before my legs brushed against hers. With her head tilted up, the angelic platinum hair, pulled up high on her head, swung gently. Her chest was no longer rising and falling. She’d stopped breathing. My gaze dropped to her lips just as the bottom one trembled. The tip of her pink tongue darting out to moisten them.
Leaning down close to her face, the warmth of her stuttered breath heating my skin, I could picture it. I could already taste her on my tongue. She would be worth a thousand lifetimes spent in hell.
“Jude.” My name passed her lips in a shaky whisper.
That was what saved me. That one word. Reminding me that I was not just Jude. Although the sound of her saying my name would replay over and over in my mind. It would be my favorite song, hymn. If I could record it, I would. Just to live in the same torment that I was experiencing right now.
With a strength that could only come from God, I fisted my hands, held my breath so that her scent didn’t weaken me, and straightened, stepped back, then took brutal strides toward the door. Not looking back. Not speaking. Because either could strip from me the sliver of a hold I had on my willpower. My vow.
The sound as the heavy metal door closed behind me made me wince. I sucked in a deep breath and locked my eyes on the rectory. I could not look back.
Fourteen
Saylor
How was it that one moment could make everything you knew appear differently? For example, as I sat in the center of my canopy bed—my knees pulled up to my chin, my arms tightly wrapped around my legs—and studied my bedroom, it was brighter. The items I saw every day stood out, like the French bedding that broadcasted its luxury.