“How you’ve lived this long without getting murdered is beyond my powers of imagination.”

“Your powers of imagination disappeared when your writer disappeared. Perhaps you should go fetch her from her new rich young lover.”

“I have an excellent imagination.” Søren stood face-to-face with Kingsley, who knew he did so simply to emphasize the four-inch difference in their heights. The man was an ass—an utterly, insufferably arrogant ass. “I’m currently imagining a few creative ways of causing you extraordinary amounts of pain.”

Kingsley raised his chin. Mere inches separated their faces.

“Stop flirting. You know we don’t have time for that.”

“I wasn’t flirting. The pain I’d inflict on your right now…only one of us would enjoy it.”

“Only one of us ever did.”

“Don’t make me laugh. You begged for it. Night after night, you begged for it.”

“Of course I did. Pain is the only way you know how to show love.”

“It’s not the only way I know how to show love. It’s the only way I chose to with you. You showed up at Saint Ignatius and decided to become king of the school. Someone had to turn you into the little prince you actually were.”

“Not so little. I think we’re rather well-matched in one certain area.”

“Your arrogance, Kingsley, was beyond and is beyond anything I’d ever seen in my life.”

“Anything you’ve ever seen outside your own reflection, you mean.”

“You’re trying to pick a fight with me. It won’t work.”

“It already has. You’ve already threatened to cause me bodily harm. I’m already hard. I think it’s safe to call this one of our typical arguments.”

“I’m leaving now.”

“Good night, sir.”

Søren opened the door to Kingsley’s bedroom and stood on the threshold. Kingsley watched and waited. His hands trembled for reasons he didn’t understand, so he shoved them in the back pockets of his trousers, raised his chin and stared at Søren.

“Forgetting something?”

With his hand on the doorknob, Søren turned to him. “Did you mean it…back then…that God wanted nothing to do with us?”

Kingsley laughed softly. “A foolish offhand remark. Had I known it would hurt you so much…I would still have said it.”

Now Søren laughed and shook his head. “I needed to believe then that God brought us together.”

Kingsley exhaled heavily. “He did, perhaps. It did have the scent of destiny on it—you and I. God did bring us together. Only when we were together…like that, I think He tried not to watch.”

Søren nodded.

“I can’t blame Him for that.”

Smiling, Kingsley took his hands out of his back pockets and walked to Søren. He took Søren by the wrist and opened his hand. In his palm he laid a tiny cross on a broken silver chain.

Søren stared at the cross in his hand, the cross Kingsley had torn from his neck the night they’d first made love. Time stopped. The world ended. No one noticed except Kingsley.

Reaching up to his neck, Søren pulled off his Roman collar. He stepped back into Kingsley’s bedroom and locked the door behind him.

God closed His eyes.

SOUTH

Wesley took one deep breath and in that one deep breath let himself freak out that the moment he’d been waiting for and praying for and lusting for and dreaming of was happening.

Right now.

He released both the breath and his fears. A deep and abiding calm settled into his being. This was Nora, his Nora. The woman he loved, yes. But more than that, she was his best friend. He trusted her even though he couldn’t say why. And no one in the world made him feel more comfortable with himself. He’d waited long enough. They both had.

Wesley dropped his mouth to hers, and she lifted her lips to his. Warm…her mouth was so warm... He loved the heat of her body. Once, she’d claimed to be a medical anomaly. Her natural body temperature even when healthy was ninety-nine-point-five, not the typical ninety-eight-point-six. She’d said this was proof she was hotter than other women—literally. But it was no joke. Her skin burned to the touch. And tonight, he wanted to be consumed by the fire of her.

Her tongue pushed into his mouth, but Wesley pushed back, not wanting to rush the moment. He’d loved Nora for three years now, lived for her. And now he was going to lose his virginity to her. No, not lose…give.

“Are you sure?” she whispered into his ear as he backed her into the table at the center of the gazebo, candles still burning all around them.

“More sure than I’ve ever been in my life.”

Nora wrapped her arms around his back and held him close. Yes, that’s what he needed more than anything. The reassurance of her arms.

“Good. I’m here, Wes. I’m not going anywhere.”

He nodded, bereft of the words he needed to tell her how her words made him feel. He wished he had her talent for words. When he’d have papers due in class, he’d always go to her for help. “I want to say this but don’t know how…” he’d say to her, and she’d take his fumbling attempts at coherence and spin them into beautiful sentences, brief and powerful. Right now he needed her to help him tell her how much he wanted her, but not just in a sexual way. And how he loved her, but not just in some stupid greeting-card way. And he wanted to tell her he didn’t ever want to hurt her—not the way Søren did. Not the way anyone did.