Escape from Bondage (3 page)

“
Ah…” He was just thinking
of them, the two of them.

He was thinking of her. But clearly he
had screwed up.

“
Okay.” It was time to
start over.

On that thought, he began to try and
salvage the situation.

“
It’s time to start
over.”

She stared at him, willing him to make
sense of it.

“
What?”

“
For us, I
mean.”

“
What in the hell are you
talking about?” She glared in fury at Braden. “I have to answer to
my Mother Superior. I can hardly be absent all weekend without
someone noticing.”

He sighed, deeply.

“
I’m not so sure about
that—” Again she stepped in.

“
I am.”

He took a breath.

“
Look…I know what I did
was wrong. But…but.” He faltered.

This was all turning out so badly. The
plan had seemed utterly foolproof in his estimation.

She saw it otherwise.

“
What if someone knocks on
my door and I don’t answer? What if my absence from Mass is
noticed? Surely you must have thought of that?”

“
Tell them you went for a
walk. Tell them you were sick.” It sounded terribly lame now, yet
that had been pretty much his entire line of thinking.

It was true that he didn’t understand
her world or its obligations. Her time was their time.

His feelings sank. He really hadn’t
thought it through, in his excitement at finally having Heather
right in town.

In one last desperate bid, he pulled
the little box out of his pocket. She was staring off into a
corner, so she didn’t see it at first as he got up and then knelt
in front of her. Her head swung in disbelief, and the look of
disgust on her face cut him to the quick.

Her eyes popped a little and her mouth
opened.

He opened up the box and unstuck the
ring from its slot in the velveteen blanket it nestled
in.

“
Heather, would you marry
me?”

He bit his lip, lowered his head and
half turned away, fearful of her answer and the likelihood that he
had blown it beyond all retrieval.

#

She didn’t give her answer straight
away, making him wait and suffer for his sins.

The sound of traffic going up and down
the street, the voices of children playing in the yard next door,
put a poignant underline to every word spoken. They were heated at
times, and subdued by turns.

She learned as much about Braden in
that half hour as she had in all of their previous
encounters.

He was deadly serious about the pair
of them marrying, and didn’t perceive the difficulty she faced. To
him it was a no-brainer. She was unhappy in the bosom of the
Church. Therefore she must leave and marry him. Heather had never
seen it that way at all. It was completely alien to her thinking.
It went against everything that she had ever thought and
believed.

It’s not that she wasn’t touched by
the depth of his feelings for her, and her anger eventually abated
after he had sensibly agreed to let her think on it. The one thing
she wouldn’t tolerate was pushing for a decision. If he had any
sense—or any respect for her at all, he would give her some
space.

The ghost of a smile crossed his face
when she said that, and she wondered what was going on inside of
that head of his.

Heather, after some back and forth
discussion, left the ring on the table and finished her coffee,
lukewarm now, in a couple of gulps. Wordlessly, at an impasse in
the conversation, nearly a debate by the raised voices and the tone
at times, she got up and took the cup into the kitchen. Sticking
her head out, she told a miserable Braden that she was going to
have a shower.

He nodded, with his eyes downcast, and
almost on autopilot as his hand reached for the remote.

#

The shower enclosure was big and
luxurious. It had glass panels and took up an entire corner of a
fairly large bathroom, done in a pleasant combination of blue and
yellow glazed cubes, with a floor of creamy, veined marble tiles.
The window, up high, was frosted but un-curtained.

Heather soaped up and
scrubbed herself thoroughly, analyzing her feelings and tying to
come to some manageable outcome. The thought of losing Braden was
almost unbearable, yet the man had treated her badly, and
thoughtlessly, no doubt filled with
enthusiasm,
risking her exposure and
embarrassment.

He kept talking about how a
relationship was about more than just good sex, and she agreed with
him. The trouble was, she’d never seriously considered it. Not
really—she saw that now. It was all escape, all fantasy. Braden was
offering more, so much more. He wanted more.

It wasn’t about sex after
all for Heather. This was a new revelation. It was about her fears.
It was about the habits, or rather, habit, of a lifetime. It was
about her
self.
Her personhood, and did she or didn’t she have the
right?

It was a question of who she wanted to
be.

Heather thought her life in the Church
was important. She didn’t know if she could let it go, as she
finished rinsing the shampoo out of her hair and put in some
conditioner.

As a qualified teacher, she didn’t
necessarily have to be a nun to teach kids. That tidbit of
information was true enough.

Turning, she saw a form outside the
foggy glass. With a rueful grin, she saw Braden standing naked with
a forlorn look on his face. She shook her head in
resignation.

He lifted a hand and knocked on the
door, and she tried not to smile.

She opened it a few inches.

“
Yes?”

“
Special Delivery for
Sister Heather.”

“
Oh. You brat.” She
stepped back, out of the way, and shook some of the water out of
her hair.

Braden stepped into the steamy
enclave, wearing a lean and hungry look on his face.

She snuggled up tight. His penis rose
rock hard in two seconds flat as she fondled it.

Braden held her in close, kissing the
top of her head and just trying to be very gentle and loving with
her. He was perfectly aware of the choice he had presented her, and
with no prior warning.

He prayed for luck. He prayed he had
done the right thing.

“
I really am sorry. But
you have to admit, it’s a good gag.”

“
Did you really carry me
out in a sack, Braden?”

A strange grin went across his face as
she looked up.

“
Something like that.” He
kissed her forehead tenderly. “I thought my heart would explode
right out of my chest, about halfway down them God-damned
stairs.”

“
Jesus, Murphy. Oh, Lordy.
When a nice man like you is that determined, how can a girl
resist?”

“
Then don’t resist.” He
kissed her deeply, and to his relief, she returned it. “Just go
with the flow.”

She offered no further resistance as
he began to make love to her in the shower, and after a time, she
began to respond with a few measured little touches of her own. As
for her decision, that could wait. As for going back to the
convent, with a little luck she might sneak back in there late
Sunday night and no one would be the wiser.

But she didn’t think so. It was too
much to expect. She could expect trouble sooner rather than later.
She was a new girl there, and sooner or later someone in the place
would make some opening move, some gesture of friendship or even
just polite interest. Sooner or later, someone would want to talk
to her outside of the dinner table or the lounge.

Braden had dumped her into a steaming
heap of dog-poop, and while it was all very sweet, it was the sort
of thing that made a person wonder about his sanity or even his
intelligence.

Scene Two

Much to her surprise, Braden stopped
abruptly. He gave her a peck on the cheek, a quick slap on the bum,
and then stepped out of the shower. With his back turned, he
quickly toweled off and left. When the bathroom door opened, the
temperature went down in the bathroom and internally for Heather as
well.

Heather turned off the shower water
and reached for a dry towel. Braden was giving her a choice, which
was just what she had always thought she didn’t have. There was
some sort of message in the behaviour…his and hers. While she liked
surprises, and making love this weekend was now definitely in the
cards, Heather was torn both ways.

Now that she was there, she might as
well stay there, rather than try to sneak back during daylight
hours.

Her stomach rumbled, and she realized
that she had always found breakfast on the table when she went down
in the mornings. She had led a sheltered life, with its limited
perspective.

#

When she came into the kitchen, Braden
was pulling items from the fridge. He had a carton of eggs and a
pound of bacon. He sliced open the package and began separating
strips into the pan.

“
I hope you’re
hungry.”

“
Oh, I don’t know. I
usually just have toast and jam first thing in the
morning.”

He looked up.

“
Please don’t go to any
extra trouble for me.”

He grinned ruefully.

“
The perfect woman. Look,
why don’t you trust me on this one?”

She looked at the meat, the eggs, the
tomato, the onions, the diced potatoes all ready to go in when the
fat was hot. He was going all out.

She bit her lip.

“
Listen. You can’t fuck on
bread and jam—”

She hooted with laughter.

“
My old man used to say
that.”

She nodded. Why struggle? He had some
kind of a plan. There was some kind of message here in all of this
and given enough time it would all come out. As for the matter of
marrying Braden, all of her emotions were in a spin and maybe she
really should just sit back and let someone else take the reins of
responsibility for a while. On that thought she patted him on the
shoulder and left him alone to get on with the cooking.

A few minutes later he came into the
living room with a fresh cup of coffee for her, even going to the
extent of wearing a frilly white apron that she presumed was a
relic from the past, either the ex-spouse or even his mother. He
looked ridiculous, of course. She shook her head at the sight of
it.

“
Thank you.” She watched
him bob and turn back into the kitchen.

Braden was up to something. She could
just sense it. There was the usual stirring in her abdomen as
Heather contemplated just what form his plans for the rest of the
day might take. The promise of the shower would be fulfilled sooner
or later.

His little game of not talking to her
had interesting psychological insights. He had her wondering what a
life with Braden Mitchell would be like.

In a word, it might be
interesting.

If only she wasn’t a Bride of
Christ.

#

It occurred to Heather how little she
had in common with other people. She didn’t know what to think, how
to act or what to say as they ate breakfast, plates on the coffee
table and a sports magazine show on the TV. She didn’t think she’d
eaten off a coffee table in her entire life.

It was all right.

Braden seemed intent on the show, and
it was obviously a part of his Saturday morning routine. Talking
about the weather wasn’t all that compelling when you were already
lovers.

Husband and wife would have things to
talk about.

Heather crunched bacon and dipped her
toast in the slightly-runny egg yolk. He’d done a good job on it,
but then she suspected Braden would do a good job on anything he
tried his hand at and gave an honest effort.

She choked up for a second. Tears
threatened and she was tempted to just let them come, to drop her
fork and just cry. Maybe he would talk to her then.

He turned on random impulse and looked
at her, and then turned back to the commentators as basketball
players spun and fell past the lens of the camera. Shots flashed
across the screen and it meant nothing to her, words were spoken
and it was like gibberish. She tried to understand.

If she wanted to be a part of his
life, then she would have to get over herself. That thought came
very clearly, stark in its simplicity. Plenty of women, and men
too, had left the Church. She’d always assumed it was in disgrace.
Now she saw there could be other reasons, more important reasons
than she had ever believed. She’d never looked at it from the
secular point of view.

Her own family thought her vocation
mad, simply mad. They didn’t understand it.