I know why too.
And even though she’s messed with my head to the point where I don’t know what’s up and what’s down, I watch her carefully as she opens the cupboard, and takes a step back so she can look inside without bending down first.
I wonder how many other variations she’s having to make in her regular life to transition into this new phase, one where she’s a little less mobile than I sense she’s used to.
It’s more proof that she’s not as stable as, at first glance, she might appear.
That golden hair just looks like it’s styled into an edgy cut. Her face is a little thinner than the last time I saw her on TV, but that could be down to some fad diet.
She looks normal.
But inside that beautiful head?
I fear she’s anything but, and that makes her dangerous.
For whatever reason, she’s come here, and for whatever reason, she seems to believe she can help me.
There’d been plenty of weirdos who’d taken to me in the aftermath of Oran. Some approached me with kindness, but there’d been a lot of freaks too. I never thought I’d get a stalker from across the ocean... She must have been a kid back when I’d been captive, which makes her far too young to even be thinking of me in the light she evidently is.
What the fuck does she want with me?
She admitted to researching me, and she must have done some heavy work to pull out my previous parishes, although a lie would probably make the archdiocese give her access to me because keeping priests and old members of a flock connected isn’t viewed in a bad light. She’d also said that she’d taken to researching local news stories to discover the truth about the lives I’d slain.
Obsessive.
Unhinged.
Exactly the traits I need in someone who wants to be my savior.
Absently, I watch her. She struggles to bend down, and though I should help her, she’s not going to fall like she almost did earlier. It’s just awkward.
She holds her head, almost supporting it like it’s too heavy for her neck as she leans over and manages to grab the green case the kit’s in.
When she stands again, she leans against the sink after she dumps it on the side, and I watch as she takes some slow, deep breaths.
I’ve been in Rome just over twelve months, and that was when she had the surgery. I can’t imagine what she’s been through in that time, the pain and the medical interventions she’s had.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
The words are hissed out, and for the first time, I sense she’s angry with me.
“How am I looking at you?” I counter, because her back is to me so she can’t even see my expression, never mind know what I’m thinking.
Unless she thinks she has eyes in the back of her head to go with the wings too?
However, in stark contrast to her anger, I feel nothing but calm.
Not because I want to unsettle or rattle her. Make her lose her equilibrium.
Because I don’t.
She threatened me, but she’s no threat.
I see that now.
She truly believes she’s here to help me.
A whack job, for sure, but her ulterior motive is my well-being being well. Not much of a threat in the long run. Especially since I’m curious as to how she thinks she can help me.
Does she think she’s better than the medication the doctors have tried to make me use? Whatever she can suggest, I’ll gladly try. I’ve tried more than most, but each one makes me fall into a pit of depression that is a thousand times worse than what I handle on a daily basis.
Whether it’s a chemical imbalance or not, drugs don’t work on me.
Nothing does.
Except for making a sinner pay.
“I’m not ill,” she rumbles. “I’m getting better.”
Well, that wasn’t a lie, even if I thought it was a case of her stretching the truth.
I say nothing as she turns around and, after reaching for the kit, walks over to me again.
“Take off your shirt.”
She’s turned clinical now, which is a harsher contrast than ever to how she’d been before.
She said she wanted me.
Everything I had to give, nothing more, nothing less. And not as a priest, as a custodian of her faith, but as a man.
I unfasten my shirt, the few buttons I secured together when she started ringing the doorbell, and as I let the cotton fall, she moves around to stare at my back.
No one has seen it before.
Ever.
And I never thought anyone would either.
“How do you clean it when you’re alone?”
“Sometimes I don’t.”
I can feel her tension. “You want it to get infected?”
My mouth purses. “It never does.”
“How is that possible?”
“God’s will?” I suggest bitterly, bowing my head as misery swirls inside me.
“Do you want to die?” she asks, the words soft.
Sad.
Like she hurts for me.
Not because she pities me, but because she doesn’t like what I’m telling her.
She doesn’t want me to feel that way.
Is she for real?
Is anything about this night even happening, or is it a dream sequence gone awry?
Maybe that would make more goddamn sense.
“Not always,” I hedge.
She doesn’t say anything, but then, I guess there isn’t much to say to that, is there?
Not even for dreams that take the shape of pocket pixies who cup cocks as a greeting and lick blood off their fingers.
My body stirs to life at the memory, and I know, point blank, that image will be in my head—dream or not—until the day I die.
The clasp on the box rattles as she opens it, and I tense as I hear her start to set up.
“Seriously, though, how did you clean the wounds?”
“I’d douse a towel in saltwater and lay it on my back.”
“Jesus, that must have been painful.”
“Are you supposed to use profanity in front of a priest?” Anyone else, I’d have reprimanded.
“You’re not a priest,” she mutters absently, and before I can reply, she presses alcohol gauze to my back.
A hiss escapes me as the astringent makes contact, and my limbs lock as I process the pain.
Fuck, it feels good. Weird, not as releasing as when I make the lash marks, but good nonetheless.
She’s thorough, God help me. More thorough than I usually am.
She cleanses everything, and at my side, where she placed the bottle of alcohol on the table, I watch as the level slowly depletes from three-quarters full to nearly empty.
Only then does she murmur, “Jesus.”
“It’ll bleed for a while,” I assure her, knowing that to be the case.
“It looks worse without blood covering it,” she whispers, and something in her voice has me looking over my shoulder at her.
I see her tears, more, I see the trails that pour down her face. Three single track marks, almost symmetrical as they course over her cheeks.
She’s beautiful.
Those tears are beautiful, and I want to taste them because they’re mine.
They fell for me.
I twist around, to the point of pain as it pulls on my wounds, and I reach up, letting my hand cup her cheek even as my thumb strokes along the silken curve of her skin.
As I gather some droplets, I stare into her eyes. Misty green, they’re penetrating, even as they make me feel like I could lose myself in them. Like they were a welcoming fog that would shelter me rather than guide me into danger.