Crossed (Never After Series)

I’M HERE AGAIN.

The same place I’ve been longing for but not allowing myself to go.

I’m planted between prickly bushes in a back alley, watching the object of my desire, the slivers of moonlight slipping through the window I’m currently peering through and caressing a path along her body I wish my hands could trace.

There are a few empty boxes with open lids scattered throughout the area and some taped up and pushed against the wall. I’ve wasted precious moments where I could have been surrounding myself with her.

And now she’s moving in with him. About to be completely inaccessible to me in this way.

I’ve already deduced she no longer works at the Chapel. I went there two nights in a row trying to catch sight of her, and when I couldn’t, I convinced myself it was an act of God, trying to keep me from temptation. Somehow, I resisted coming back here to our window.

But as always when it comes to Amaya, I am weak.

After finding out she’s in trouble and I’m the reason, I can’t seem to stay away, almost as if being here and watching over her will appease the guilt sticking to my insides.

I could come forward, admit it was me who did the killings, and maybe if I were a decent man, I would.

But I’m no hero.

Not when it matters anyway.

Almighty Father, what should I do?

I bow my head and close my eyes, straining to hear a resolution. An answer. Some guidance. But instead of His voice, I’m left in the bitter cold with nothing but silence.

Maybe my passion for Amaya has pushed me too far from God. After all, I had wanted Andrew’s death to be messy. Seeing him with his hands on her body sent fury racing through me, wanting to humiliate him in front of the world, wanting his name plastered across the news and on the front of papers, shamed and disgraced.

But I had never imagined it would come back on her.

A foolish mistake.

She’d hate me if she knew the truth.

How I wish I could hate her instead. But my feelings for her grow stronger every day. Toxic, twisted, and greedy.

She came to me first.

My chest pinches, the way it does every time I realize what she was going through the night I fucked her with my fingers, then used her mother to cut her down.

What could I, a priest bound to his faith, do for her other than offer her prayer anyway?

Parker has money, he has power, and as much as I hate to admit it to myself, he’s the better choice.

They have history. But the thought of him kissing her lips, of him feeling her perfect cunt squeezing the life out of his dick, makes me violently ill.

Has she moaned his name the way I ache for her to scream mine?

My jealousy rears up at the thought. The same way it did when I watched them together this morning in his conference room, when his possessive touches and condescending looks made me want to flip the table and gouge out his eyes with the bones I would rip from his fingers.

I shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but I couldn’t stay away. I needed to find out as much information as I could, and selfishly, I wanted to watch them together, to soothe my green heart by recognizing she’s only marrying Parker because she’s in trouble.

Amaya’s taping up a box and wiping beneath her tear- stained eyes, and I press myself closer to the window, wanting to break inside and gather her in my arms. To apologize for being the reason she’s crying.

To try and take away her pain.

My heart fractures as more tears slide down her cheeks.

You did this to her.

It’s sick what I’m doing here, what I’ve been doing, watching her most vulnerable moments.

But I know she likes it. And I’m desperate for more of what she’ll give, even if it’s just despair.

She turns around, standing up and pulling her long, wavy dark hair off her face and securing it with a fluffy purple band. Her shoulders drop, but then, as though she can feel me, her gaze snaps up and locks on mine.

My stomach somersaults, wishing I was next to her.

Would her breathing stutter and her pouty lips part? Would the heat of her skin tempt me with its warmth, making me ache to sink inside her until I’ve ruined her for everyone else?

She walks up to the window, and now my breath hitches, my cock throbbing against the zipper of my pants. I lick my lips as she slips her delicate fingers beneath the spaghetti straps of her purple nightgown. It glides down her body like a waterfall, and she steps out of it, tossing it to the side with her foot. She’s standing so close, her nipples graze across the glass, the cold turning them into stiff peaks, begging me to wrap my tongue around them and tug on them with my teeth.

I want her in my mouth.

On my cock.

In my bed.

She doesn’t touch herself, not like she has all the nights before, and I don’t relieve myself either. But I soak her in slowly, wishing my eyes could feel the same way as my hand.

She presses her fingers to the window, and I mimic her motion, my palm engulfing hers. My stomach flips even though there’s a thick pane of glass between us. She exhales slowly, her breasts rising and falling like she’s being lulled by the ocean, and then she smiles before turning her back and walking away.

My chest cracks right down the middle, and my hand curls into a fist as I press my knuckles to the glass.

This fucking hurts.

She moves to the bed, pulls back the covers, slips beneath them, and hides herself from my view.

I stay long after her breathing evens out, a black hole festering in my solar plexus, spinning and spitting until an idea forms in my mind. Something that can clear her name.

She came to me first.

I back away from her room, glancing around before heading to the crumbling sidewalk and picking up the largest broken slab I can find. The flickering yellow light of the streetlamp casts just enough light, and I move around the corner to another window, one I assume is her roommate’s.

There’s a chance it’s Quinten’s, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.

I glance around one more time, just to make sure I’m alone, and then throw the concrete as hard as I can at the glass. It shatters immediately and is quickly followed by a loud scream. I rush away, hiding around the corner, but I don’t leave completely until I hear Amaya’s roommate yelling for her to call the cops.

Relief pours through me, and I hustle down the street and around the block, knowing I only have a few precious moments to get away.

Maybe I can’t come forward to clear Amaya’s name…but I can do this.

When I make it to the main square of Festivalé, the one that’s centered around Notre- Dame Cathedral, I make a sharp left turn, and I keep going until I’m out of Festivalé and on the back of a bus, headed to Coddington Heights to search out the depraved and the damned.

I’ll find a soul trapped by demons, and I’ll kill them the same way I killed Andrew Gleeson.

Because I just gave Amaya an alibi.