The vestry was colder than the nave, stone walls holding onto the damp like a memory that refused to fade. Evening light filtered through the narrow window, staining the floor in muted amber, dust motes drifting slowly as if even they hesitated to move.

The church had emptied hours ago, parishioners returning to warm kitchens and familiar lives, leaving behind the quiet that always settled too deep around Father Jud's shoulders. Silence had become his companion; useful, obedient, dangerous.

You stood near the doorway, not quite inside, not quite gone. It had been that way for months now: conversations that lingered too long, glances that held just a second more than propriety allowed, pauses heavy with things neither of you dared to name. Jud had noticed every one of them. He noticed everything where you were concerned. That was the problem.

He busied himself with folding his stole, movements careful, deliberate, ritual as armor. His hands knew these motions better than they knew rest. Prayer had taught him discipline, restraint, the art of wanting and refusing all at once. But discipline did nothing to quiet the ache that settled in his chest whenever you were near, that soft, treacherous pull that whispered of a life he would never choose, no matter how often it crept into his thoughts uninvited.

You were a temptation he hadn’t asked for, and yet somehow one he felt responsible for resisting; for both of you.

Jud’s gaze lifted despite himself, it always did. There was something in the way you stood there, patient and uncertain, as though you sensed the boundary between you and respected it even as it wounded you both. He told himself it was pastoral concern, that whatever twisted in his stomach was only care, only duty. The lie had grown thin with repetition.

Faith had never felt fragile to him before.

It had been ironclad, a calling as clear as breath. But now it bent under the weight of longing he could not confess, not even in the privacy of prayer. He wanted to reach for you; to ease whatever had brought you here tonight, to close the distance and let the truth spill out between you like a broken sacrament. Instead, he stayed where he was, rooted in the role he had chosen and would choose again.

Because wanting you did not outweigh the vows he’d made. Because love, to him, had always meant sacrifice.

His voice, when it finally came, was low and carefully steady.

“I should ask you to leave, for both our sakes,” Jud said, eyes flicking away from you as if they might betray him if he looked too long. “But if you’ve come here carrying something heavy, you don’t have to do it alone.”