Page 58 of Beneath His Robes

I turned to face Elias, my eyes wild, my whole body trembling.

“I can’t…I can’t do this anymore. I can’t let him hurt her again. I can’t let him hurt me. He has ruined my whole fucking life. I left you because of him, Mon Pur. He told me he would hurt you.”

Elias faltered for a second at my words, but then he stepped closer, his voice softer but just as firm. “Ronan, you don’t have to do this. I’m here.”

I felt the weight of his words sink in, and for a moment, it was enough. The adrenaline started to fade, and the anger, though still there, lost some of its heat. Jack hadn’t left yet, but now I couldn’t bring myself to care about him anymore.

I just needed to breathe.

And then, I looked at my mom again—broken and hurt in that bed—and I realized something. I couldn’t keep fighting this alone. I needed Elias. Maybe more than I was willing to admit. I always needed him.

“Awe, how cute. The Jesus humper wants your dick, too.” Jack said, turning to Elias and getting right in his face. “You fuck ‘em in that ol’ church of yours, boy? How disgraceful. You ain’t no man of God. A faggot can’t lead no sheep to nothin’ but their own damn slaughter. Shame on you, you fucking queer.”

Elias’s face fell, and I felt his body physically deflate. He believed the words. I could see it in his eyes as they lost their beautiful blue coloring and seemed to turn to a deep, ashen gray. The rage I felt simmer moments before blew up into an inferno that burned me from within. I was blind. My fury controlled my actions while my body followed like a distant spirit.

I picked up the visitor chair beside Miranda’s bed, smashing the metal into his back, knocking him to the ground, and continued to smash the furniture onto his body over and over. I couldn’t feel anything, a numbness consuming my entire being and bringing with me a peace that made me feel as if I was floating over his damaged body.

That smile remained on Jack’s face—a knowing leer of the devil.

“You dumb fuck,” he said, all the other voices blurring except his.

Hands were tugging me backward, hospital personnel swarming around me like flies, people shouting at me, but Jack was there. Smiling. He was bleeding and injured from my assault, but unlike my mother, he wasn’t broken.

“This ain’t over, boy,” he said as he was hauled away by people in uniforms. “I will get you back for this. You better pray real hard because your little boyfriend will burn in his fucking church for this. You just put the nails in his coffin.”

The numbness in my blood slowly dissipated, like water droplets slowly leaking from a small leak. Little by little, my vision returned. The sensation of being dragged was present. The image of the blood on my fists and body was visible.

Elias was walking beside me as police officers pulled me toward the exit of the hospital and toward flashing red and blue lights.

Jack was in another car behind the one I was being roughly shoved into. My wrists felt cold from the metal linked around them. Elias was arguing with the sheriffs. His words flickered through my haze. The soft urgency in the way he spoke.

“Please, You don’t understand, Officers. Jack threatened Ronan and me. This was self-defense.”

He was lying. Another sin my dear pure priest committed for me. I was nothing but corruption.

“That ain’t how it looked, Father. I’m sorry, but it ain’t up to me. We gotta take ‘em in. Ronan was the one with the chair, and Jack has multiple fractures on his arm. He ain’t hurt but for his fat lip. It don’t look good.”

Elias breathed heavily, his fear apparent in the way his eyes flickered to the patrol car, growing closer and closer. “No. You can’t arrest him for this. It was a mistake. I am responsible for provoking Jack. I am the one who deserves this punishment.”

The police officers froze, their bushy eyebrows bunching together in shock at a priest’s omission of guilt to violence.

“It wasn’t the fucking priest,” I said, spitting the blood that pooled in my mouth onto the ground. Elias glared as he stood in front of me, a silent pleading replacing the anger in his eyes. “It was me. I hit Jack. I am not fucking sorry, and I would do it again if you hadn’t stopped me, assholes.”

Elias sighed, shaking his head in defeat when the cop’s meaty hands got rougher, their feet moving toward the car in quicker succession. Elias was angry at me. I could see the defeat in his eyes from the back of the police car. The heavy door shut, locking me inside, and with it the peace and safety I felt with my priest.

He didn’t walk away.

He just stood there.

Snow collecting in his strawberry hair. The other left, the congested onlookers of both patients and hospital personnel. But Elias stayed. His strong hands were clasped in prayer, but his eyes didn’t leave mine.

I could still see his form when the vehicle sped off from the hospital parking lot. He wore those big, heavy black robes, his white collar, and the pain in his beautiful blue eyes.

I’d disappointed him again…the love of my life and the man of God.

He may have grown from all those years without me, but clearly, I was still the punk kid with a temper.

I didn’t change.

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