Free The Confessions by Tiffany Reisz Page B

me?”
    “Sorry, sorry.” She held the tissue in her hand. Her eyes were bright green, incandescent from her tears. “He did it to protect me. That’s all.”
    “That’s all it is,” Stuart said. “But you can still be hurt by it. You should forgive him, though. His intentions were good.”
    “They were. They always are where I’m concerned. I’ll forgive him, I promise. Once I get up the courage to confess to him I looked through his Bible.”
    “Good luck with that. He still scares the shite out of me.”
    “Oh, no, he doesn’t.”
    “He doesn’t, but don’t tell him that. It’ll hurt his little feelings.”
    “You’re a very good priest,” she said. “I’m glad we finally got to meet. He speaks very highly of you.”
    “Not so fast. You still haven’t given me a real sin yet. I can’t wrap this thing up until you do. It’s not reconciliation until I’ve absolved and reconciled you.”
    “We went over everything. I have committed no mortal sins.”
    “Make something up then!”
    “Um…” She held up her hands. “Come on, Nora, you make up stuff or a living. Wait. I got it. Daniel Craig.”
    “The actor?”
    “Yes, him. James Bond. He’s married.”
    “He is.”
    “I want to fuck him.”
    “Well, who doesn’t? He shows up in half the confessions I hear.”
    “Doesn’t Jesus say that if you look upon someone and lust after them in your heart, you’ve committed adultery?”
    “He does, yes. But we’re fairly certain lust means you’d do it if given the opportunity. Simple sexual attraction doesn’t count as lust.”
    “It’s not simple sexual attraction. I’d steal him from his wife, and we’d run away to Italy and live together in a crumbling Tuscan palazzo, and we’d leave the world behind, and it would be nothing but wine and food and sex until we ate ourselves, drank ourselves, and fucked ourselves to death. Now that’s lust. But more importantly, it’s adultery.”
    “That is adultery. Excellent. Well done.”
    “So you can absolve me?”
    “I will the second you tell me who we’re really talking about.” He raised his eyebrows at her and waited.
    “You’re good,” she said. “Very good.”
    “I’ve had a lot of practice seeing through masks. Take off yours.”
    “Zach,” she said with a heavy sigh. “Grace’s husband. My editor. I still have feelings for him. Very strong feelings that make me tempted to do things I shouldn’t do.”
    “You and Marcus have a complicated relationship with this couple, don’t you?”
    “Understatement of the century. And it doesn’t help that I traded Grace a night with Søren for a week with Zach. She ended up with a child. I ended up with a…I don’t know, a dream of what could have been. And the man is ridiculously so good at anal.”
    “Eleanor.”
    “An ass-master, I swear. He’s better than Nico and Søren and they’re both fantastic. Every night for a week. I couldn’t walk, but I was happy.”
    “You’re trying to give me a heart attack. That’s not nice.”
    “Sorry. Sorry.” She raised her hands in surrender. “I had to get that out.”
    “I think you keep as many secrets from him as he keeps from you.”
    “Yeah, but I only keep the secrets that would…”
    “Hurt his little feelings?” Stuart finished her thought for her.
    “Damn, you are a good priest.”
    He blew on his nails and brushed them on his cassock. That got another laugh at her.
    “Father, I love Søren and Nico. I’m in love with them. I don’t want to feel this way about someone else. What do I do?”
    “First you have to see your feelings for what they are, not what you think they are. What happened that week with Zach that sticks with you? And not the…you know.”
    “The sex,” she said.
    “That. You said that week with this Zach gentleman left you with ‘a dream of what could have been.’ What’s that dream?”
    “That week is the week I met Nico. It was right after we found out about Fionn. That week with