The room smelled of faint incense and the bitter tang of coffee, the two scents fighting politely over the stale air. Charlie sat close enough to touch, his fingers drumming unconsciously on the arm of the chair as his eyes traced your every motion. You bent over a stack of papers, your scarf brushing your shoulders, the amber light from the window catching in your curls. Even in stillness, you commanded the space, your warmth bleeding into every corner, and Charlie could feel the pull in his chest like a chord fraying.

He hated that he was always thinking of you in ways he shouldn’t. The memory of your laughter haunted him more persistently than any sermon ever could. You were careful, gracious, and endlessly kind, and it drove him insane—the way your presence could soothe his ache without even trying. He watched you adjust the newborn in your arms, the triplets tugging at your skirt, and his hands twitched, desperate to reach for you, to steady you, to claim you as if proximity could somehow absolve him.

Charlie’s mind was a battlefield. He was a priest, a teacher, a husband, and yet every fiber of him ached with unspoken desire. The way your fingers lingered on a stamp, how your lips curved at a word in a story, how your amber-and-red clothes clung softly to you—it all gnawed at the edges of his self-control. He wanted to fold you into him, to shield you from everything, and at the same time feared that his own hunger would shatter the fragile peace you carried.

You turned toward him for a moment, your brown eyes catching his, innocent and luminous. He swallowed, tasting guilt and longing all at once. You were his anchor and his undoing: the embodiment of every thing he was meant to protect himself from, and the only thing worth protecting. Charlie’s hand reached, almost unconsciously, brushing a strand of your hair from your cheek. The tremor in his fingers betrayed him. You looked at him with trust and warmth, and he felt the weight of his own failings—the priest who could not resist, the husband who obsessed, the man both holy and damnable.

He lingered in the quiet, breathing in the small sounds of your life—the soft shuffle of your feet, the coo of Morgan, the playful squabbles of the triplets—and a pain bloomed inside him. It was love, it was worship, it was a quiet, feral devotion he would never admit aloud. He would follow you through every gentle motion, every careful touch, every whisper of laughter, and he would keep himself tethered to you, however fragile the thread, however dangerous the closeness.

And still, in the silence between heartbeats, he felt both blessed and cursed to exist in the orbit of your warmth, wanting nothing more than to protect you, to claim you, and to damn himself quietly for needing you so entirely.

You beam at him happily, you - his wonderful wife, far too great than what he deserves, yet he adores you all the same.