Chapter 4 The Confessional

The whiskey burned worse than usual tonight.

I shouldn't have drunk a third glass. Or was it the fourth? Maybe the fifth. Numbers blurred together when the only thing I wanted was for memory to drown, and it refused.

I slumped against the bar, staring at the way the amber liquid clung to the rim of the glass before slipping back down. Weak. Just like my resolve. Just like me, every time Jared's face clawed its way out of the past.

It had started with a sound. A laugh, deep and smooth, drifted from a booth in the back of the bar earlier this evening. Not Jared's, of course, it couldn't be, not here, not in this city but close enough to cut. One echo of him and suddenly I was twenty-three again, stuck in Portland, wide-eyed and foolish.

He had walked into my life like a dream that I wanted to believe. Jared was the kind of man who could order a beer and make it sound like poetry. He was tall, sharp-suited even when no one else bothered, with a smile that made you feel like you were the only person in the room. That first night, he bought a round for everyone, the kind of grand gesture that made people cheer. I was behind the bar, wiping glasses with nervous fingers, and he winked at me like we shared some private joke.

Back then, I thought I was lucky.

For weeks, he kept coming back. Left big tips. Asked about my classes, my family, and my dreams. No one had asked me those things in a long time, not like they mattered. He listened, or at least he pretended well enough that I wanted to believe.

But small cracks appeared almost immediately.

"You wear that lipstick for work, or for someone else?" he asked once, still smiling, but his eyes too sharp.

Another time, he told me I laughed too loudly. "It's cute, baby, just... don't draw attention like that."

Little things. Harmless, I told myself. Everyone had opinions.

But then it grew. The texts asking where I was every hour. The questions about the men who came into the bar. The time he grabbed my phone right out of my hand and scrolled through my messages while I stood frozen. He said it was love, that it was normal to worry.

I almost believed him.

Until the night when it happened. His anger, something I was already used to, spilled into rage. His hand slammed into my ribs before I even had time to realize he was angry. The pain was immediate, sharp, and suffocating. I curled on the floor gasping, and he stood over me apologizing, saying it would never happen again, swearing he loved me too much.

Something broke in me that night. Something fragile but necessary trust, maybe, or hope. I waited until he passed out drunk, took two hundred from his wallet with shaking hands, and boarded a bus out of town before dawn.

That was years ago. But the ghost hadn't left.

Which is why I was here now, with Maggie shooting me the same worried look she always did when I drank too much.

"You're gonna regret that in the morning," she muttered without looking up from what she was doing.

I knocked back the rest of the glass, letting the burn slice me open. "Already regret it now."

Her pen paused midair. She wanted to press, I could tell, but Maggie had known me long enough to recognize a wall when she saw one. Instead, she just sighed. "At least eat something before you pass out. I don't need your sorry ass on the floor again."

"Noted." I shoved back from the stool, my knees unsteady.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"Church."

Her eyebrows shot up. "Now?"

"Best time," I said, fumbling for my jacket. "God's off-duty. Less judgment."

"Or maybe you're looking for the wrong kind of judgment," she called after me, but I was already out the door.

The storm met me head-on. Rain soaked through my clothes in seconds, plastering my hair to my cheeks and for the first time, I welcomed it. The cold, the sting of the drops, the roar of the storm-it was better than the thoughts in my head.

The church loomed ahead, its steeple cutting into the clouds like a knife. One window glowed with warm light.

He's in.

My stomach flipped. I should have turned back. Gone home. Swallowed another drink and forced sleep to take me.

But my boots carried me forward, squeaking across the marble floor as I pushed through the heavy oak doors. The sanctuary smelled of incense and old wood, heavy and familiar, and the candles were too bright causing me to wince and shield my eyes from the ache in my head. Rows of empty pews stretched out like an and kept reducing as I walked forward. Only the candles flickered, red flames against the dark.

And then I saw it. The confessional. Light spilled faintly from beneath the curtain.

I'm such a fucking idiot. What the hell am I doing here in the first place? I turned around, shaking my head preparing to go.

I should have left. Pretended I hadn't seen it. Pretended he wasn't there.

Instead, I stumbled forward and yanked the curtain aside.

Daniel sat rigid in the dim glow, his profile sharp against the lattice screen. He didn't turn. Didn't even breathe. My knees buckled, and I collapsed onto the kneeler, the wood digging into my shins.

"Father," I slurred, "I've sinned."

Silence stretched.

Then his voice, gravel and restraint. "Elena? Elena, you're drunk."

"Your observation is on point Father." I leaned my forehead against the screen. The wood smelled faintly of cedar, and absurdly, of him. "Aren't you gonna say the magic words? 'Tell me your sins, my child?'" I mimicked in a mock-deep voice.

His knuckles whitened where they gripped the edge of the bench. "Go home."

"Can't." My voice cracked. "House is full of ghosts."

Something in him shifted. "What ghosts?"

The whiskey loosened my tongue, but the memories tightened my chest. "The kind that follow you from city to city. The kind that..." My throat closed around the rest. The kind that smells like cheap cologne and leaves bruises shaped like fingerprints.

I swallowed hard. "Can I tell you a secret, Padre?"I didn't even bother to let him answer. Too consumed by the whiskey to care.

"There was a man. Before here. He..."

Daniel went utterly still. I expected him to interrupt, to cut me off, to hand me absolution and be done with it. But he didn't.

So I kept talking.

"I was twenty-three," I whispered. "Worked at a bar in Portland. He was charming. Funny. Bought rounds for the whole place. You'd have hated him."

Daniel's breath hitched.

"At first it was comments," I said. "About my clothes. My friends. Then it was my phone, my schedule, my life. By the time I realized what he was doing, it was too late. I didn't know how to leave."

The booth seemed to shrink around us.

Daniel's voice was barely human. "What changed?"

"The night he broke my rib." My hand went instinctively to my side. "That night, something snapped. I waited until he passed out, stole two hundred, and ran." A bitter laugh scraped my throat. "And somehow, I ended up here. The universe has a sick sense of humor."

On the other side of the screen, Daniel dropped his head into his hands. His shoulders shook once before stiffening.

When he spoke, his voice was raw. "Why are you telling me this?"

The truth perched on my tongue, sharp and dangerous: Because it's you.

Instead, I forced a shrug. "Seemed like a confessional kind of night."

I heard movement and I thought he was leaving. That he was done. Dang! I really scared him off huh?

But then the curtain ripped back.

Daniel stood there, chest heaving, eyes black with something I couldn't name. I entered my own side of the confessional and got so close to me that it was like his three-meter rule didn't ever exist. For one terrifying second, I thought he might kiss me.

Instead, he stepped back, like distance was the only salvation left.

"Go home, Elena." His voice was a blade. "Sober up. We'll pretend this never happened."

I staggered to my feet, the alcohol and adrenaline making the room tilt. "That's your solution? Pretend?"

"Yes."

"Bullshit." I shoved past him, my shoulder brushing his chest. "You don't get to hear that and just-"

His hand snapped out, catching my wrist.

We froze.

His grip was firm, not painful. Just enough to stop me. Just enough to make me feel something other than broken.

"Please." The word tore out of him like he was struggling with just being around me. "Go."

I ripped my arm free.

The last thing I saw before the storm swallowed me again was Daniel collapsing back into the confessional, his head buried in his hands.

And the worst part? I didn't know if he was praying for me or himself.