In the last installment of The Confessional
In the first installment of The Confessional
The first gray light of dawn slipped under the rectory curtains, a reluctant witness, pale and accusing. I slipped from Lorenzoās bed, skin still flushed and damp, thighs sticky with the dried remnants of communion wine and his cum, cassock yanked on in haste over the bruises that throbbed with every careful step. My hair was a wreck, the faint purple marks from his stole burning under my cuffs.
I moved quietly, heart slamming against my ribs, already aching for the warmth of his body I was leaving behind.
Lorenzo stirred once as I reached the door, his arm reaching out instinctively across the empty sheets, then settled back into sleep, his face softened in a way Iād only ever seen in these past few stolen hours.
I paused, throat tight, memorizing the rise and fall of his chest, the faint stubble along his jaw, the way the crucifix above the bed caught the weak light, as if it were watching us both.
Then I turned the knob with trembling fingers and stepped into the narrow hallway. The creak of the floorboards under my boots sounded deafening in the stillness.
I froze.
Mrs. Callahan stood at the bottom of the stairs, broom gripped in both hands, apron tied tight over her cardigan. She wasnāt supposed to be here today. Her schedule was sacred, pinned to the parish bulletin board like one of the Commandments, but there she was, early, eyes narrowing as they raked up my disheveled frame: cassock wrinkled and askew, hair mussed.
āMatteo?ā Her voice cut sharp, maternal suspicion honing every syllable. āWhat in Godās name are you doing coming out of Father Lorenzoās room at this hour?ā
Heat roared into my face. My mind blanked, then scrambled for the first lie that surfaced.
āIāI was helping Father with ā¦ with the Missal revisions. Late night. Fell asleep on the chair in his room.ā I gestured vaguely back toward the bedroom door, the motion weak and unconvincing, even to my own ears. āDidnāt want to wake him. I left before he woke.ā
Mrs. Callahanās lips thinned into a line. She glanced past me at the closed door at the top of the stairs, then back to the dark, wine-stained hem of my cassock.
āRevisions,ā she repeated slowly, each syllable dripping doubt. āIn his bedroom.ā
I swallowed hard. āYes, maāam. Iāll ā¦ Iāll go now.ā
She didnāt move. The broom stayed clenched in her fists like a weapon.
āYou look like youāve been wrestling with the devil himself, boy. And you smell like the sacristy after someone knocked over a cruet.ā
I forced a laugh that came out more like a choke. āJust ā¦ spilled some wine during cleanup last night. Clumsy. Sorry.ā
Her gaze flicked once more to Lorenzoās door, then dropped to my wrists, where the faint red lines from the stole mustāve peeked out when my sleeves shifted.
She said nothing else, but the silence pressed heavier than any accusation.
I ducked my head, thundered down the stairs on legs that felt borrowed, and hurried past her, pulse roaring in my ears, the weight of her stare burning into my back all the way to the back door.
I didnāt breathe properly until I was outside in the cold morning air, rain starting to fall again in soft, relentless sheets, washing the streets but doing nothing to cleanse me.
Behind me, the rectory door clicked shut.
We wouldnāt touch each other again for weeks.
My body and soul were in agony, torn from the man who had claimed every inch of me. Lorenzo had imprinted himself on my thoughts, my skin, my breathāhis touch a brand I carried beneath my cassock like a secret stigmata.
I ached for him constantly, the weight of his body pinning me, the stretch of him inside me, the way he surrounded me when I served him on my knees. Without him, the world felt hollowed out, colorless, every breath a reminder of what Iād lost.
The church this morning was a shell. Mass no longer stirred anything sacred in me. I went through the motions, lighting candles, folding linens, kneeling at the right moments, but my heart and body no longer answered to the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit.
They answered only to him.
I sat at the edge of the sanctuary, hands folded in my lap, while Lorenzo delivered his sermon from the pulpit. For the third Sunday in a row, his voice cracked like thunder over sins of the flesh.
Sexual impurity.
Sensuality as violence against oneās own body.
Homosexuality named outright, a wound that kills the believer if not excised.
Each word landed like a lash across my back, yet I felt no repentanceāonly a dark, defiant heat pooling low in my belly. Sin had not crept in to replace the joy Iād known when he used me.
That joyāpurpose, destiny, still burned brighter than any flame of guilt.
When he stepped down from the pulpit, his gaze found mine. For one heartbeat, the mask slipped. Sadness, raw and unguarded, carved into the lines around his eyes.
Our separation was torturing him too.
He was lashing out in the only way he knew howāthrough sermon.
Mrs. Callahan had stopped posting her schedule on the bulletin board, likely hoping to keep us apart. My clumsy excuse that dawn hadnāt fooled her. The way she looked at me nowālike I was the corruption, the one dragging a priest, my stepbrother, toward damnation cut deep.
She didnāt understand we were equally guilty. That we craved the sins we committed together.
That my body answered only to his command.
I looked down at my folded hands as the congregation rose for the Nicene Creed and the Universal Prayer. The words fell around me, meaningless, sliding off my tongue.
Then it was time to carry the cruet and paten to the altar. The small vessel of wine felt impossibly heavy in my hands, as though the consecrated Blood itself had thickened with the weight of what Lorenzo had done to meāpoured it down my crease in slow, deliberate streams, fucked it deeper inside until every thrust turned sacrament into sin.
The memory surged so violently I nearly stumbled across the sanctuary, knees buckling under the sudden heat that flooded my groin.
I set the cruet and paten before him, my fingers shaking. Lorenzo began the sacrament of Communion, voice steady and resonant for the congregation, every word measured, every gesture precise. But I saw the faint tremor in his hand when he lifted the chaliceāthe same hand that had gripped my hip and guided himself inside me, the same fingers that had smeared wine across my hole like anointing oil before he claimed me completely.
I knelt at the rail with the others; head bowed in practiced reverence. When the wafer touched my tongue, it was dry, tasteless ashānothing like the heavenly heat of his cock.
The wine followed, sliding down my throat in a thin, bitter trickle, tasting only of memory: the cool flood of it soaking my balls, dripping down my thighs, mixing with his release as he fucked me open and filled me until I was drenched in what he had used me for.
I swallowed hard, throat working convulsively, grateful the elements knew they no longer belonged inside me.
They passed through like strangers in a house that had long since been claimed by another. I was no longer a vessel of grace.
I was his.
Mass ended. In the sacristy, the altar boys chattered and laughed as they changed, their voices bright and innocent. I hung back, folding vestments with mechanical care, until the room emptied.
Lorenzoās hand caught my sleeveāfirm, desperate.
Iād never seen him look so broken.
āMeet me in the confessional,ā he whispered, voice cracked and strained, nothing like the commanding timbre that had preached fire and brimstone minutes earlier.
I nodded once. He left. I finished changing, pulse roaring, then waited until he disappeared into the priestās side of the booth. I stepped into the shadowed penitentās side.
Before I could even kneel, the grate slid open with a sharp rasp.
āI have a confession to make,ā he said.
I frowned. āFather?ā
He leaned close to the lattice, breath drifting through the screen. āI have engaged in homosexuality. And Iām not sorry. It brought me peace and a deeper understanding of Godās many gifts.ā His voice dropped to a ragged whisper. "I miss you and long desperately for you."
I clutched the lattice, forehead pressed to the wood, panting. āIāve missed you, too.ā The words cracked open something inside meāa seed that had been growing for years, fed by childhood adoration and watered by sin until it bloomed into this desperate, unholy need.
āMeet me tonight,ā he said. āOut by the water fountain in the garden. At midnight.ā
My cock thickened instantly, straining against my jeans in the shadowed booth. Out there, no eyes, no schedule, no Mrs. Callahan. Just us.
A chance to serve him again, to kneel in the wet grass and take him into my mouth, to feel him claim me under the open sky where even God might look away.
I whispered back, voice trembling with hunger.
āYes, Father. Tonight.ā
Another Sunday dinner I couldnāt stomach. Mom had outdone herself again. Roast lamb, fragrant with rosemary; golden potatoes whipped and fluffy; green snap beans, but every bite sat like lead in my gut.
My stomach was knotted tight, not from hunger, but from the deeper, more insistent ache lower down: the hollow craving for Lorenzo to fill me, to stretch me open until there was no room left for anything else.
Not food.
Not guilt.
Not even God.
āYou havenāt been eating,ā Mom said softly, reaching across the table to cover my hand with hers. Her thumb brushed my knuckles in that familiar, worried way. āAnd youāve looked so distracted during Mass lately. Maybe you should seek counsel from Father Lorenzo.ā
I lifted my eyes to hers, the words catching in my throat. āI have sought counsel from him,ā I managed. āMany times.ā My voice came out quieter than I intended, frayed at the edges. āItās only left me with more questions than answers, to be honest.ā
She tilted her head, concern deepening the lines around her mouth, but she didnāt press. I folded my napkin with careful, deliberate movementsāonce, twice, then laid it beside my barely touched plate, the food cooling untouched.
āIām going back to the church tonight,ā I said. āTo meet with him.ā
āI hope that helps. Iāll pray for you tonight.ā
āThank you.ā The words tasted stale like a lie. There were no prayers that could save me. I pushed my chair back, the scrape loud in the quiet kitchen, and carried my plate to the sink.
After depositing it, I paused at the doorway, one hand on the frame, feeling the pull of him like gravity. Not just the memory of his body inside mine, or the taste of him on my tongue, or the way his voice had cracked when he whispered my name in the dark.
Something else was shifting beneath all of itāsomething warmer, more terrifying, that hadnāt yet found its name. A tenderness that scared me more than the sin ever had.
I wanted to crawl back into his bed and stay there, not just to be fucked, but to be held. To hear his heartbeat steady against my ear and believe, for one selfish moment, that this wasnāt damnation but something closer to grace.
I didnāt let the thought finish.
Not yet.
After spending time in my room, waiting for the hour we had agreed on, I finally slipped out the back door into the cool night air, the ache in my chest sharper than any hunger as I drove to the churchātoward himāalready half-lost and not sure I wanted to be found.
I didnāt dare switch on my phoneās light. The garden paths were etched into me from years of walking them in penanceāslow circuits while I whispered rosaries under the stars, begging God to uproot the longing that had taken root in my chest. Tonight, those same paths felt different: shadowed, secret, alive with the promise of sin rather than salvation.
When I reached the fountain, the stone basin gleamed faintly under the full moon. Water trickled softly, the only sound besides my ragged breathing.
I stood alone in the dark, chest tightening with sudden panic.
He hadnāt come. Heād changed his mind.
The sermon, Mrs. Callahanās suspicion, the weeks of enforced distance had finally convinced him this was too dangerous, too wrong.
Then a warm hand settled on my shoulder.
I turned.
Lorenzo stood there, in the faint moonlight, black shirt open at the throat, collar discarded somewhere, eyes shadowed but burning. He cupped my face with both hands, thumbs stroking the hollows beneath my cheekbones as though memorizing me by touch.
One arm slid around my waist, pulling me flush against him. His cock was already hard, thick, and insistent against my thigh through our clothes, and when his mouth found mine, the kiss was long, desperate, almost violent in its need.
I wondered, even as our tongues met and tangled, whether the sadness had left his eyes or if this reunion had only deepened it. The taste of himāsalt, bergamot, the faint metallic edge of restrained hungerāflooded me.
Our lips moved together in adoration and ruin, slow at first, then frantic, as though we could pour every lost moment of the past weeks into this single point of contact. He wrung emotions from me I hadnāt known I still possessed: relief so sharp it hurt, longing so deep it felt like drowning, a tenderness so fierce it terrified me.
He broke the kiss first, forehead resting against mine, breath hot across my swollen lips.
āHow have you been?ā he whispered.
āMiserable.ā My fingers dug into his bicep, anchoring myself against the wave of want that threatened to buckle my knees. āI need you.ā
Lorenzo exhaled shakily against my skin, lips brushing my chin, then tracing the line of my jaw up to the sensitive shell of my ear.
I inhaled himāsin and cedar and something softer, something that made my chest ache in a new, dangerous way.
āYouāre all I think about,ā he murmured, voice rough and low. āEvery hour. Every prayer. Every time I stand at the altar and speak words, I no longer believe apply to me.ā
āThen command me,ā I breathed.
He chuckled, dark and quiet, right against my ear, the sound vibrating through me like a blessing I didnāt deserve.
āKneel, Matteo.ā His hand slid to the back of my neck, thumb pressing gently but unyieldingly. āKneel for me here, under the open sky, where even the stars can see what weāve become.ā
I sank to my knees without hesitation, the cool grass damp against my shins, the fountainās murmur blending with the thud of my pulse.
He stepped closer, fingers threading through my hair, tilting my head back so I looked up at him, silhouetted against the night, beautiful and broken.
I was his.