“You know better than almost anyone that there are no guarantees. Honestly, if I let myself dwell on everything that could go wrong—especially now that Hannah’s pregnant—I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed. I wouldn’t be okay if I lost her. I know that. But I know that someday I’ll lose her, or she’ll lose me. Our kid will lose both of us. But we’re here now, and that’s what matters.”
“I just don’t know. I don’t even know if Sasha wants me, or if she thinks she wants me because she can’t have me.”
“You were never this afraid before.”
“It never mattered this much before.”
Patrick dropped his head in his hands. When did his best friend become the smart one? It was like falling in love had made him silly and then wise. But he didn’t know and couldn’t be sure about how Sasha felt about him. He knew that his life had value as a priest. He helped people every day, whether it was listening to some of the elderly ladies who came in for confession but really just needed someone to talk to or delivering food and supplies to people who needed them.
And he couldn’t get the hurt look on Sasha’s face as she’d walked out of Dooley’s out of his head. In the past decade, to his knowledge, he hadn’t hurt anyone—not like that. It was selfish of him to want more of Sasha when wanting her as much as he did left her feeling like that. It was wrong, and he should leave it alone.
“The real question is, do you love her?”
Shit. He hadn’t been thinking in terms of love. He’d only been thinking about what she did to him in making him remember that he was just flesh that would turn to dirt in the end. And she filled that flesh with something other than the Holy Spirit. Something he hadn’t let himself want for a long time. He didn’t—couldn’t— know if it was right to let that thing win.
And part of him thought his faith was being tested. The question of whether he loved her was minor. And whether he loved her was separate from the question of the right thing to do about it. If he loved her as a man of God, he would protect her from what his flesh wanted. Her lack of belief wasn’t important in that equation. If he loved her just as a man, then he would have to change his whole life and his faith wouldn’t be in God and His love anymore— it would be in one person.
And that was too scary to contemplate. All of that made him say, “No,” and return to the game.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE NEXT TIME SASHA went to St. Bart’s to meet with Father Patrick, the forbidding nun was in his office with him. When she entered, her spine straightened, and she fought the urge to curtsy.
Nuns had always terrified Sasha, since before she attended her Catholic elementary school—the one that still allowed teachers to beat the children. Before that, Sasha had always found nuns in full habits who floated around like penguins on unseen dark clouds to be very scary. This was before she’d known any cool nuns who rode around on buses to protest the death penalty.
She had the feeling that Sister Cortona was not a cool nun who protested poverty. She seemed more like one of her elementary school teachers that slapped small children across the face for taking the Lord’s name in vain.
When Patrick motioned for her to sit, her training kicked in. She glided into the chair, crossed her ankles, and folded her hands in her lap over the tablet she’d brought that held the contracts that she needed Patrick to sign.
Maybe it was spending five whole days with her mother before she and Madison had convinced Moira that her charities would simply not be able to go one more day without her adept guidance that made her so jumpy. Or, at least, that was a convenient lie she told herself to cover up that she was still shaken by what had happened in that bar with Patrick. She was using all her pretty, polite manners to cover it up.
Thankfully, Patrick seemed to be buying it. She was grateful to the mean mugging nun for that.
It was all going to be fine. Patrick would sign the contracts for the donated equipment—mostly assuring the vendors that the parishioners wouldn’t wreck their stuff—and she would leave.
She wouldn’t have to see him again until the carnival, and there would be a crowd. Hannah would henceforth handle all of the weddings at St. Bart’s.
“Are you going to sit there all day staring at each other, or are we going to get down to fucking business?” Sasha started when Sister Cortona spoke. She’d never heard a nun use the f-word before.
“Um, if you can sign these contracts,” Sasha said, opening the cover of her tablet.
Before she could hand it over, Sister Cortona grabbed it. “Let me look at that.”
“I went over all the pertinent points with Father Dooley over the phone.” Sasha was a little miffed that the nun was acting as more than just a chaperone. She was miffed—at herself—that they needed a chaperone at all.
“I don’t know what you went over with him on the phone, and he doesn’t understand numbers.” If looks could kill, Sasha would be lying there dead.
“Oh—okay.” Sasha wasn’t sure what was going on, so she looked at Patrick. He looked as though he were trying really hard not to laugh. And that made Sasha feel like she was going to laugh. It was like church giggles on steroids—the energy bouncing between the two of them no less potent than the energy between them the other night.
Patrick broke first. His laughter ended the silence in the office and not even a glare from Sister Cortona stopped him. And then Sasha broke, and she laughed so hard that she was doubled over and gasping for air.
When they wound down eventually, the nun was glaring at both of them. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to.
The only thing that saved them was a ringing sound from inside her voluminous robes. She looked down to check her phone, muttering, “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” and stalked out of the room, leaving the tablet teetering on the edge of Patrick’s desk.
After she left, the mirth between them turned to tension. And not the delicious kind that led to a fabulous orgasm and days of tortured guilt. It was the kind between people who were trying to be good and succeeding.
“She’s not normally like that,” Patrick said. “She’s just concerned about me.”
“You told her?” Sasha’s face turned hot. What level of detail did he give? Why would he tell anyone?
For his part, Patrick also looked horrified. “Of course not. She guessed.”
“That we—”
“No. She guessed that I have a thing for you.”
“Are we that obvious?” Sasha rarely let her carefully cultivated façade slip. She’d gotten ghosted more than once by men who—when she ran into them later—told her that they’d stopped calling because they couldn’t tell if she liked them or not. It was usually because she was only pretending to like them until she could figure out if she could actually see herself with them. The fact that she couldn’t hide her feelings for Patrick was an entirely new thing. “Not that there’s a ‘we.’ ”