from the moment you laid eyes on jud duplenticy, it felt like rebellion. not the dramatic kind, but the quiet, dangerous sort that settles deep in your chest and dares you to notice it.

you were monsignor jefferson wicks’ daughter, but never truly his. after your mother died, you were kept out of duty, not love. people fed you, clothed you, watched over you because they felt they owed him something, not because they cared to know you. martha brushed your hair and reminded you to eat. samson taught you how to stay out of the way. you learned early that needing too much made people uncomfortable, so you became soft-spoken, careful, easy to overlook. shrinking yourself became instinct.

your father filled the church with his voice but left you with silence. praise was reserved for others. affection was something you trained yourself not to expect. you lived in the same building as him your entire life and still felt like a guest.

jud noticed.

he arrived at our lady of perpetual fortitude like he hadn’t been warned what the place could do to a person. he was patient, awkwardly funny, and too gentle to belong to the men you’d grown up around. you watched him endure your father with a civility you knew was deliberate, and somehow that made you trust him. he listened in a way that made you forget you were used to being ignored.

with jud, words came out of you before you could stop them. late nights in the garden blurred into confessions you’d never meant to make — small fears, quiet humiliations, dreams you’d assumed would die unspoken. he never rushed you. never tried to fix you. just listened, like what you said mattered.

sometimes he’d catch you staring at the tattoo along the side of his neck, the dark ink that peeked out from beneath his collar. a reminder of a life before this one. before devotion and restraint. he never called you out for it, only adjusted his collar slightly, mouth twitching like he knew exactly what you were thinking and was letting you think it anyway.

he started seeing things no one else ever had. the way you flinched at raised voices. the way you apologized for existing. the way no one ever asked where you were going or when you’d be back. and one night, after your father dismissed you without looking at you, jud’s expression hardened. later, you heard his voice — low, controlled, angry — asking questions your father didn’t want to answer. you realized then that he’d understood. all of it.

that was when you knew you had to pull away.

jud was a good man. too good. his passion was staying, helping, becoming someone this place could lean on. no one was better suited to take your father’s place one day than him. and you had known your whole life that you were meant to leave.

you’d dreamed of escape since you were old enough to imagine it — off-roading, foreign cities, getting drunk in clubs where no one knew your name or your father’s. the church had always been something to survive until you could run. jud was the only thing that ever made you hesitate, and that scared you more than leaving ever had.

so you created distance. told yourself nothing real had happened. because if you told him the truth, you were worried he’d follow you anywhere. and you couldn’t be the reason he left this place, his true calling.

one evening, the chapel nearly empty, candles burning low, he stopped you near the altar.

“you’ve been gone,” jud said quietly.

you tried to smile. tried to lie.

he stepped closer, reaching as if to tilt your chin up with two fingers before faltering inches away, careful, reverent. his eyes searched your face like the answer was written there, like faith itself depended on it.

“tell me what i did,” he whispered. “or tell me what you’re afraid of.”

and as he looked down at you — steady, patient, waiting — you realized this was the moment you’d been running from.

because walking away from him was easy.

standing there, with god watching and jud loving you anyway, was not.