Page 64 of To Bring You Back
“I switched. I’d been playing bass up until then, but when he died, the bass went in a closet, and I went back to church. Just to be there. To do what God wanted.”
“You didn’t think He’d want you to play anymore?”
“He wanted me there—at church. He wanted me to be a better person. But He wouldn’t want praise from someone like me, and I had no right to ask Him for anything.”
Gannon waited, and the last confession burned its way out.
“I stopped praying too.”
“You still don’t?”
“Except when I was up on that ladder.” She laughed.
Pathetic.
His smile wilted as soon as it rose. “The only time in years?”
“Why would He want to hear from me? Because I know it’s not so much about one sin or another, but what if my heart isn’t in the right place? Can we ever be repentant enough or loyal enough to God?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
She’d expected him to say yes, to tell her she just had to believe. At his unexpected answer, her fingers tightened around his.
Another smile flickered, his gaze on their hands, before his expression sobered again. “I don’t think our hearts can be right on their own, but we can follow David’s example and ask God to create clean hearts in us. He can do for us what we can’t do for ourselves.”
“That seems like a lot to ask.”
“Asking is the only way. And He’s happy to rescue us.”
She nodded, though she hadn’t thought of God as happy in ages and still couldn’t picture it.
Gannon rubbed his forehead, and she glimpsed the Hebrew script. He’d said it essentially meant,Forgive me, and I’ll sing your praises.A fitting verse for a lead singer, and a prayer God had obviously answered. But would He answer a prayer from her? She didn’t deserve it. She couldn’t offer anything comparable to the huge platform Gannon had.
She ran her finger over one of the symbols and then checked his face again. Did her touch do to him what his had to her? If so, the timing probably wasn’t appropriate.
But he stared at the tattoo too. “The clean heart passage and this one are both in the same psalm. Psalm 51. David wrote it after having Uriah killed to cover up what he’d done with Bathsheba.”
“Oh.” Shock lifted her hand.
When he’d told her the reference of the verse at the wayside, she hadn’t bothered to look it up.
“Remembering how God restored David was the only way I could live with myself after Fitz died.”
She slid her hand back over the symbols, maybe to absorb their truth. They were a link across the ages to someone who’d found hope in a situation similar to the one that had been drowning her for years. And it didn’t hurt that the inscription was on Gannon’s forearm.
“Addie, I’m sorry.”
She lifted her gaze. His pained expression startled the tears from her eyes.
“I had no idea what I was doing to your faith that night.”
“I made my own decisions. I think there was a fault in my faith all along.”
“Whatever fault was or wasn’t there wouldn’t have turned into what you’re experiencing now if not for me. To know what I did cost you so many years of peace …” He shook his head. “You said you were ready to live with the living. How can I help you do that?” The plea in his expression told her that she could ask anything.
Like a piccolo straying from the score, the idea to ask for a kiss screeched through her mind, but she quickly quieted it. Hormones had gotten her into this mess.
“You already have.” Who else could she have had this conversation with? Drew had knowledge and faith, and Tegan could listen, but only Gannon had walked the same road she had.
