“Is that a serious question?” Kingsley asked.
“Let’s say it is. Let’s say I would break my vows with you. Let’s say I’d even consider leaving the priesthood for you. Could you be faithful to me?”
“Just you and I?”
“You. Me. Eleanor. The three of us, like we dreamed of that day.”
“You aren’t serious.”
“Pretend that I am,” S?ren said with unbroken eye contact. And for a split second Kingsley almost believed him. “This will be the one time I make you this offer. You. Me. Eleanor. The three of us. Forever.”
“Forever?”
“Eleanor agreed to forever. Can you?”
Kingsley closed his eyes. He could have S?ren and the girl they dreamed of. And what? No one else? Ever? Forever was such a long time. And he’d been free of S?ren for eleven years now. Only S?ren? Only this girl he’d never met?
“I take it back,” Kingsley said. “You’re still a wolf.”
S?ren grabbed a towel off the stack by the steps. He took a corner of it and dried Kingsley’s face. If Kingsley could fall asleep right here, right now, when S?ren was taking care of him, he could fall asleep and never wake up. If he died now, maybe he could die almost happy.
“Can you remember…” S?ren began as he squeezed water from Kingsley’s hair. “Was there ever a time when you felt like you were doing what God put you on this earth to do?”
“Once.”
“When?”
“When we were lovers.”
“Kingsley, be serious.”
“I mean it. You were so alone,” Kingsley said. “I’ve never met anyone more alone than you were back then. Everyone was afraid of you. No one ever talked to you. They treated you like a leper. You wanted them to.”
“You didn’t.”
“I was scared. But I loved you more than I feared you. I had to know you. And that night in the hallway when you said you wondered why God had made you the way you are, you wondered what the reason was…”
“Je suis la raison,” S?ren repeated. “That’s what you said to me.”
“I am the reason,” Kingsley whispered.
S?ren nodded.
“That was it,” Kingsley said. “That night I felt like God put me on earth to show you why he created you like He did. You needed me as much as I needed you.”
“I did. Until you, I thought I was the only one who wanted the things I wanted.”
“You never hurt me. Do you know that? Even when you hurt me you never hurt me. I loved it. It wasn’t until you stopped that I felt the pain.”
“It hurt me, too.” S?ren ran his fingers through Kingsley’s hair. Eleven years since their last night together, and yet S?ren still knew exactly how to touch him in the way he most needed. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have married Marie-Laure. I thought I was solving all our problems. It was arrogant and foolish, and I realize that now.”
“It was fucking stupid is what it was,” Kingsley said. “Your Virgin Queen was right. You are an idiot.”
S?ren dropped his hand into the water and splashed Kingsley in the face in punishment.
“Good to know you’re still as much a bastard as always,” Kingsley said, grabbing the towel and swiping his face with it.
Kingsley tossed the towel on the f loor and looked up again.
“I don’t know what to do,” Kingsley said, watching the light dance once more on the ceiling. It danced faster now as he and S?ren set the water moving.
“Now? Tomorrow? Forever?”
“With my life. I don’t have to work. You saw to that. I don’t know what to do with myself. I make enemies as a hobby. I drink to kill time. I fuck to forget.”
“I can’t tell you what to do with your life,” S?ren said. “That’s between you and God. But first you have to know that you do want to live. Once you’re certain you want to live, you’ll find your reason for living.”