Priest (A Standalone Bad Boy Romance Love Story) (66 page)

Paul led me to what looked like a gym, but
a really old one. The roof was flat and made of aluminum or sheet metal. The
building was wooden and painted a shade of red usually reserved for barns. The
front door had a big padlock and chain on it which Paul surprisingly had the
key to. He unlocked it and pushed in the double doors. I stepped into a
work-out room from the 1970’s. It was almost surreal.

“What is this place?”

“It used to be a gym. It’s been abandoned
for years…decades.”

“Why? Why are all of these buildings
empty?”

“The town used to be self-sufficient.
There was a furniture plant that employed most of the adults in town. Then in
the seventies it closed down and the people who had cars either moved or got
jobs in other towns. The ones who didn’t likely went on welfare…either way, the
town pretty much died. It came back to life a little in the nineties, but they
started re-building over there near the bus depot. They’ve never done anything
with this part of town. My Sensei owns this building.”

“Hey Uncle Paul! Did you bring food?”

Victor was racing towards us and Paul
grabbed him and pretended to throw him down on the old mat on the floor. They
wrestled for a while, it was really cute. When Marie came in the room though,
they stopped and both looked guilty. “Were you two wrestling again?” Neither of
them said anything but the guilty look on their faces said it all. She shook
her head at them and then she looked at me and smiled. “Hi Jessie. How are
you?”

“I’m good, Marie. How are you?”

“I’m doing well, thank you. If I could get
these two to settle down for five minutes. It’s like living with two five year
olds. Did you get the egg-foo-yung?”

“Man, I want to be a woman when I grow
up,” Victor said.

We all looked at him in shock and Paul
said, “Why would you say that?”

“Because when you’re a woman you get to
give all the orders and decide on the food and everything.” Marie gave him a
narrow eyed look and Paul laughed. I tried to keep a neutral expression but I
think the smile won out.

Marie set the food up for us on a table in
the back room. They had a little refrigerator and there were three air
mattresses. It looked like a pitiful place to have to live…especially with a
kid. They all seemed to be doing well with it though. Marie was pleasant and
Victor was funny and Paul seemed to still be riding some of his high from the
fight the night before. I’d like to think it was from me too.

After we ate and cleaned up, which pretty
much consisted of throwing the paper plates and chopsticks away, Paul took my
hand and said, “Come here, I want to show you something.” I followed him
through another small room and he stopped at a metal ladder attached to the wall.
“You’re not afraid of heights are you?”

“No,” I said, honestly. I wasn’t so sure
about a rusty old ladder connected to a wall though. I didn’t say that part out
loud though so he stepped back and waited for me to go up. I climbed the six or
seven rungs and rose up through an opening at the top. It was the roof and as I
suspected, it was aluminum. I stepped up onto it, hoping that it would hold up
and a few seconds later Paul stepped out next to me. Between us now we were
putting about three hundred pounds of pressure on it. It didn’t seem to be
sagging or anything, but I was still a little freaked out. He took my hand
again and led me over to a part that had a little partition from the rest.

We sat down and Paul looked up at the sky
and said, “It’s pretty, huh?”

He put his arm around me and I looked up
at the obsidian sky dotted here and there with the twinkling of the stars.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. When I was a little girl I used to think if I could
get up high enough, I could touch one. Tonight they looked really far away. I
looked to the right of us, out across the rooftops of the rest of the abandoned
buildings and saw the distant flash of a shooting star, or maybe it was just
the lights of a car reflected just right. I made a wish anyways, just to be
sure.

I felt Paul’s lips against the side of my
head and I was surprised when he said, “One of these days, Jessie…I’m not going
to have to live like this. I’m going to be a champion and I’ll have all kinds
of money and I’ll be able to pay people to watch my family around the clock and
keep them safe.”

I leaned my head back into his shoulder
and said, “I believe you will.”

“Good,”
he said, “Because when that future happens for me, I’d really like you to be a
part of it.” I didn’t say anything to that. I didn’t have to. I’m sure like me,
he could feel it. I would live with

him in this abandoned building if I had
to. I definitely wanted to be a part of his future, whatever that future might
hold.

CHAPTER
SIX

I woke up to the sound of rain. I forgot
where I had fallen asleep until my hearing wasn’t the only sense assaulted by
it. I suddenly realized that I could feel it as it dropped onto my face and
rolled off me, dripping onto the heavy aluminum roof that Paul and I had fallen
asleep on the night before. I opened my eyes, unable to really tell what time
it was because the cloud cover caused everything around us to remain dark. The
rain was only a light drizzle right now, but a large black cloud was looming nearby
and I knew we’d be drenched if we didn’t get back inside.

“Hey sleepyhead, wake up. We’re getting
rained on.”

Paul turned over onto his back and then
groaned when he felt the harsh metal underneath him.

Opening one eye he said, “It’s raining?”
Before I answered him a big drop landed right on his cheek. He sat up and
laughed. “Yeah, I guess it is. Come on, let’s go inside.”

I followed him back down the ladder into
the old gym. I could hear Victor’s voice as we dropped to the floor. “Uncle
Paul! Did you guys sleep on the roof?”

He looked towards the other room where his
sister was and put his finger to his lips. Marie must be one of those mother’s
with x-ray vision because she said, “It’s too late now, Paul. Now what are you
going to tell him next time he wants to sleep up there?” Paul rolled his eyes
and Victor snickered.

“You got me in trouble again you little
creep,” he said. He pushed Victor playfully and Victor pushed him back. I had
to step out of the way to keep from getting in the middle of their pretend
tussle.

“Boys!” Marie called again from the other
room.

“We weren’t doing anything,” Victor
hollered back.

“Yeah, it was Jessie,” Paul said with a
grin.

I popped him on the back of the head which
thoroughly amused Victor. Paul picked him back up and carried him upside down
into the other room. Marie sighed and shook her head, but I could tell she
wasn’t really mad at them. Paul was so good with him and Victor so obviously
loved him that she couldn’t be.

I was surprised to see eggs and bacon and
hash browns on the table. I hadn’t noticed the cook-stove top the night before
or the microwave. I wondered how you got electricity to an abandoned building.
I was going to ask but then I remembered the gentle humming I’d heard the night
before when we were on the roof. It must be run on a generator, probably
gas-powered.

Breakfast was surprisingly good and while
I watched Paul and Victor play and tease back and forth, I let myself
fleetingly fantasize about our future kids and what a great father he would be.
I smiled to myself when I thought about how good-looking they would be too.

“Are you staying today, Jessie?” Victor
asked me while we were cleaning up. “Mom and I are going for a walk down by the
old lake. It’s really cool down there. Nobody ever goes there so there are all
kinds of neat old junk to find.”

Marie smiled at him and said, “Yes, we
have boxes of it in the next room.”

“I’d like to, Victor but I have to work
this afternoon. Maybe another time?”

“Okay,” he said. He started to leave the
room and Paul grabbed his sister around the neck with his arm playfully and
said, “Quick Victor…get a box! I found some neat, old junk!”

Marie casually elbowed him in the ribs.
Paul doubled over and Victor laughed. It was cute how they all are with each
other. Being with them really made me wish I had a sibling or two.

“I’ll take you back to town today, if
that’s okay. I wanted to hit the gym for a while.”

“Sure, you think it’s safe?”

“I’ll be careful,” he said. Looking at
Marie he asked, “You don’t mind do you?”

“Nope. Me and the boy are going
junk-collecting. We’ll be fine.”

After I said good-bye to Marie and Victor
Paul and I started our walk back to the Chinese Restaurant. I was completely
shocked when we got there and his pick-up was gone and a small white two-door
Ford car was in its place. I could actually feel the panic in my chest before
he noticed the look on my face and said, “It’s okay. My Sensei trades my car
every few days. That way if Mitch does try following me, we’ve mixed it up a
little.”

“That’s really nice of him.”

“Yeah, I don’t know what we would have
done without him,” he said, unlocking the car and opening the door for me.
After I got in he went around to the other side.

When he got in and started up the car I
said, “Thank you for letting me come out. I had fun.”

He smiled and said, “I meant what I said
last night, it won’t always be like this.”

“I know,” I told him again. “I like seeing
you with Marie and Victor. I always wished I had a brother. You’re so good with
your nephew too. One of these days you’re going to be a really good father.”
Paul slammed on the brakes. If I hadn’t had my seatbelt on my head would have
gone right through the windshield. “What the hell was that?” I said.

He looked mad as he said, “Sorry, touchy
brakes. I’m not used to this car.” We drove on for a while in silence. He
seemed like he was brooding over something all of a sudden.

“Paul…did I say something to piss you off
or what?”

“No.”

We drove along again in silence for
another ten minutes before I said, “Obviously I did. Why not just tell me…”

He hit the brakes again, this time pulling
off the side of the road. He put the car in park and said, “It’s not your
fault, but I don’t like it when people tell me I’m going to be a good father.”

“Why?” I couldn’t fathom how that could be
anything but a compliment. He acted like he didn’t hear me at first. He put the
car back in gear and pulled back out onto the road. After a bit I said, “Paul?
Why?”

“Because I was a father. A horrible one.
The worst kind. My son died on my watch.” He said that all through gritted
teeth. I felt like I had walked into a nightmare. What the hell? He had a son?

“You were a father? When did this happen?
Where is his mother?”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Jessie.”

“But…”

“God damn it, Jessie! Are you fucking hard
of hearing? I don’t want to fucking talk about it!”

I wasn’t hard of hearing. I sat there
quietly in shock wondering if I had a sign carved into my forehead that said,
“Messed up guys wanted,” or “The more screwed up the better.” I was in a big
enough mess trying to have a relationship with a guy who followed his sister
around to keep her safe and lived in an abandoned gym. Now I find out he had a
son…who died? What the hell is wrong with me? How is it possible that I attract
nothing but men with demons and souls that need to be mended? I couldn’t fix
the last one…chances are that I can’t fix this one either.

When we got to my apartment, I got out of
the car thinking he was just going to leave. I was wrong. He followed me in,
neither one of us talking still. It was like déjà vu when I stepped in the
door. I knew something was wrong.

Paul was looking around at the walls as I
called out, “Mom?” I was met with nothing but silence.

“What happened to your walls?”

“My mother painted them,” I said, simply.
I was still mad at him for yelling at me. I think if he wants to talk about
having any kind of future with me, finding out what happened to his kid and the
kid’s mother were legitimate questions. I started going room to room, calling
out for her. It was ridiculous; the whole place was only twelve-hundred square
feet. If she was there, she would have answered me. The problem was my worst
nightmare since I’d been a teenager was finding her dead from an overdose…or
worse.

“You can get back to Marie and Victor,” I
told Paul. “I have to find my mother.”

“No, they’re okay. I’ll go with you. Do
you know where to look?”

“I left her at the Baptist Church on
Seventh Street last night before I came to see you. It doesn’t look like she’s
been home all night.”

“Okay, let’s start there.” I was grateful
to him for volunteering and I was really too panicked to drive right then. I
followed him back out to the car and we rode in silence again. I felt sick to
my stomach. What if something happened to her while she tried to make her way
home last night? I should have waited for her. Why was I so selfish?