Page 33 of Divine Temptations

Brother Turner, a slouching, weaselly man with too many teeth, grinned like he’d just seen me get pantsed in public. “This is a wonderful opportunity,” he chirped. “You’ll have solitude, space to recenter yourself. To come back stronger.”

I looked down, trying not to show the scream building behind my ribs.

This wasn’t a punishment, they said. It was a gift.

God, I wanted to walk out. I wanted to tell them all to go to hell, that their poison masquerading as piety had done more damage than anything I’d ever done with Jake.

But I didn’t.

Because the church was in my blood. It was my home, my history. My shame. My pride.

I wasn’t sure who I was without it.

And mercifully, none of them had said Jake’s name.

They didn’t know. Or at least, they couldn’t prove it.

Yet.

So I nodded, my voice a raw whisper. “Yes. Of course. I’ll go.”

And in my chest, something cracked.

Two weeks without Jake. Two weeks of pretending again. Two weeks of silence and sermons and empty prayers whispered to a sky that never seemed to answer.

Maybe, I told myself, maybe I could use the time to figure things out. To examine what I’d done.

Who I was becoming.

And how the hell I was supposed to live in a world where Jake wasn’t pressed up against me, telling me with every kiss that maybe—just maybe—I wasn’t damned after all.

The trailer felt even smaller than usual, like the walls were closing in on me. Sweat clung to the back of my neck, and the little box fan rattling in the window did nothing but push hot air around.

I tossed a pair of jeans into the duffel bag on my bed, then a handful of clean, well, clean-ish, T-shirts. Underwear. Socks. Toothbrush. Bible. I paused when my fingers brushed the leather cover. The pages were bent, the corners dog-eared fromtoo many nights spent flipping through it, looking for answers I never seemed to find.

“Two weeks,” I muttered, yanking open a drawer. “That’s all they said. Just two goddamn weeks.”

But I already knew it wasn’t about the camp. Not really.

It was exile dressed up as grace. A polite way to tell me I was straying too far from the path.

They didn’t want Ethan, the man. They wanted Ethan, the puppet. The mouthpiece. The good little preacher boy with the spine of a doormat and the sermons straight from Leviticus.

And I couldn’t stop thinking about Jake.

God help me, I loved him.

I hadn’t meant to. That wasn’t the plan. It never is, is it?

But there it was. Raw and aching inside my chest. Every look and touch. Every whispered “I need you” in the dark.

And now I had to go.

I zipped the bag with more force than necessary, the plastic teeth catching briefly before giving way. I lifted it off the bed and slung it over my shoulder, glaring at the sagging walls like they were somehow to blame.

“Whole damn place feels like a coffin,” I said under my breath. “Maybe that’s fitting.”

Outside, the sun beat down mercilessly. I opened the door to my car, tossed my bag in the passenger seat, and slid behind the wheel, wincing as the vinyl seat burned the backs of my thighs.