Page 82 of Vicious Souls

There’s a certain madness that attaches itself to a man in love. If I live to be a hundred years, Kingsley is the only woman whose scent I want to breathe in. She’s the only woman I want to touch and the only one I want to wake up to.

She is the picture of perfection as we sit on the terrace and enjoy our food. She is wearing my shirt, which falls to just above the knees, and nothing else. She is swimming in the fabric, but she looks like she just stepped out of a magazine. She lifts a leg to the chair, exposing her thighs, and I almost choke on the food in my mouth when I am treated to that amount of exposed flesh. She laughs and puts her leg down before she continues to eat, regaling me with more stories of her education in Switzerland. I stop eating when she throws a question at me. I don’t pause because I want to keep secrets from her, but because I don’t know how she’ll absorb the answer, and I’m not sure that now is the time to get into my past.

“So?” she urges. “What was your degree in?”

I swallow my food and dab at my mouth before answering. If I’d thought Kingsley was beautiful before, she is absolutely shining with the glow of sex.

“Is that important?”

She’s silent as she observes me with some curiosity. It’s the wrong thing to say, because now she’s more curious than ever.

“It’s not important if you didn’t go to college,” she starts, an embarrassed blush curling up the side of her neck. She will never understand my reluctance to share this bit of information with her. So I throw it out.

“Theology,” I blurt out.

She looks at me in surprise. Anyone with that information would. Not many people are interested in the subject, and it’s an unusual study for a man like me. A man who carries two guns across his chest and a third in the back of his waistband.

“As in…”

“Yes.”

“And yet, you don’t seem very religious,” she points out.

“I was at one point. My destiny turned out to be a different direction.”

“Tell me more.”

“You really want to know?”

It intrigues me that she’s so invested in knowing everything there is to know about me. She nods her head quickly and leans into the table, an anxious listener.

“I was in the seminary.”

There. Might as well let it all out.

Her fork goes clanging to the table and she opens her mouth, then quickly snaps it shut again.

“You’re a priest!?!” she shrieks in disbelief, and it’s all I can do to hold her back. I knew this wouldn’t go down well. She looks physically ill at my revelation. I reach out a hand to cover hers and hold her in place. I just need her to listen to me so we can clear up a few things. But she won’t listen. “I slept with apriest?”

She is shell shocked. So much so that her lip starts to quiver in disbelief, and she looks everywhere but at me. I need to direct her attention back to me before I lose her for good.

“Iwasa priest. I left the Church a long time ago.”

“You don’t think this was pertinent enough for me to knowbeforewe slept together?”

There she is with that harsh, accusatory tone again. I can understand her anger. And maybe I should have told her before we got together. But what significance does my past have on what we are now? On what we’re becoming? I’d been with plenty of women since leaving the cloth. Granted, it wasn’t anything as serious as this, but it didn’t diminish the fact that the priesthood was well and truly far behind me.

“I can’t fucking believe this,” she mutters, putting her legs down and turning her face to the side, fuming.

“It’s in my past, Kingsley.”

“Why did I not know this about you?Howcould I not know?"

“How would you know, Kingsley? It’s not a highly circulated topic.”

“A priest,” she laughs. “I can’t believe you. That’s the last thing I would’ve pegged you for.”

“It was a long time ago. I didn’t get to the finish line.”

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