Page 45 of Savior

She sighs. “You never know. This ismylife that we’re talking about here.” Her gaze turns back toward the Atlantic.

“I thought bringing you here would be a good thing that you’d enjoy it. I didn’t mean to make you sad.”

“I’m not sad.” Her body relaxes as she lets go. Another sigh. “Maybe I am. I don’t know. I think this place, the sound, the smell, the way it calms you, almost makes you… reflective. That’s how I feel. Reflective.”

“That makes sense. There’s peace in nature.” Even with the Boardwalk looming behind us, there’s a calmness the beach offers that has even my insides uncoiling. “What are you reflecting on?”

“All of it,” she whispers, tugging her coat tighter as she crosses her ankles. “So many cogs turning led me to that basement, you know? So many choices, most of them not mine. I hate that I sometimes look back and feel like I was a bystander in my own life. Like I couldn’t control what was happening to me. That’s bothers me the most. Not what Barone did to me physically, but that I’d lost my control again. Like when I was a kid.”

I nod along with her words, trying like hell not to reach for her hand to make this moment even harder for her.

There’s an undeniable attraction between us we are working hard to ignore, and I can’t keep bringing it to the forefront.

It only makes it harder for both of us.

“This one time,” she says, and I perk up. She doesn’t seem the type to open up, let alone talk about her past. She’s what my mama would call atough cookie—she’s had to be to survive. “Dad came home in a rage. He was drunk and probably high, and he misplaced his car keys—not that he should’ve been driving.He wanted to go to the store and had been searching high and low for them. I was asleep, but I woke up to the commotion outside my room and tucked lower beneath my covers to hide away. He was a great dad when the drugs weren’t in control, but when they were…” She swallows and looks toward the sunset, dropping behind the dark horizon, the pink and orange hues bleeding across the sky like spilled paint.

My heart is racing, and I have to fight the urge to prod her. It must be hard for her to speak these things aloud, but I never knew Ray like she did.

Her memories of him are going to taint mine, but it’s something she needs to get out. It’s inevitable.

“He tore me out of my bed by my hair, screaming that I’d taken his keys. My body hurt so bad when it hit the wall he threw me into.”

I wince and close my eyes, anger rising in my stomach for the version of her that was small and afraid of what Ray would do to her.

I don’t like to look at this dark side of the world head-on. The part that’s actively ruining my faith crack by crack.

“Sloane.” I reach for her, but she slides down from the back of the SUV, leaving me gaping at her story.

“I’m fine. Now. There are scars from my childhood, from everything I’ve been through. I wouldn’t be human if there weren’t. The thing is, I’m okay. I need you to stop treating me as if I’m glass. If I want to sit silently and watch the waves in admiration, it doesn’t need to turn into some probing, deep conversation, Luca.”

The way she says my name has me following her as she heads toward the water.

Cold air rips at my face the closer we get to the ocean, salt stinging my cheeks.

“I didn’t mean to press. I just wanted to know you a bit better.”

“Why?” She turns on me, and I falter, nearly knocking into her.

“What?” The very idea she thinks she’s uninteresting enough for me to want to know her on a deeper level is confounding to me.

“Why do you want to know me when you and I can be nothing more than we are?”

Oh.

She steps closer as I grapple for words, and the pull to hold her to me and never let go is strong.

Sloane is an undeniable force to be reckoned with, and even though she came to me battered and bruised and needing shelter, I’m the one feeling as if I’m broken before her—the one who’s pleading for mercy on my knees.

“You and I can’t be, Father Russo. No matter how many tiny sins you let slip daily, that fact remains. You’ve made that clear. So, let’s try to get through this experience unscathed, hm?”

Her chest is touching mine, her brown eyes wide as she looks up at me from below. I can’t help the fraction that my head tilts downward to come closer to hers.

“It doesn’t mean I don’t want…” I whisper as I zero in on her lips, dancing mine dangerously over them in the slightest touch.

“Luca,” she warns.

Here, on the beach, in a moment of pure lunacy, my entire life hangs in the balance. Everything I’ve ever worked toward hovers around me, trying its damnedest to pull me backward.

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