Page 18 of Intimately Faithful

Recreational drugs taken for fun that lasted for weeks instead of a night.

Until the day came he used drugs as part of his everyday life.

Like drinking water and taking a piss.

The heartbreak might have expedited the drug use, but the compulsion was already within Danny even when he was still with Aoife.

She’d hated him smoking weed.

They’d argued more than once when she’d found out he’d taken off with his pals to get stoned and off his face on ecstasy.

He had an addictive personality; his ma would tell him.

One thing he knew as he watched Aoife slowly sip her tea, and lick droplets from her lower lip.

One addiction was never quite cured.

He looked at her and as though someone had taken a flame to his addiction, it started to flicker and rage to life again.

He was a man of faith now.

It was a cliché to say God saved him.

But that was his truth.

Stumbling one night into what he thought was an NA meeting when he was low and close to taking a score, he’d been there for forty minutes listening to a man speak at the front, when it became clear it was a church group meeting held in the same building.

He’d stayed, feeling oddly at peace listening to the words of the bible about forgiving yourself and accepting mistakes for what they were, owning them but not allowing them to own you … and he’d come back the next night and four nights after that.

It hadn’t been an easy road from junkie to pastor.

It was still downright difficult at times and he continually attended his NA meetings weekly, sometimes more if those old ghosts tried to creep in.

But as he listened to a girl he once loved more than his own life, recount the story of the most gruesome night of her life and then the consequent rush across town. In the howling snow no less, to get to his church for sanctuary, he felt something stir in his chest.

An unlocked box sprang open.

It was more than obvious those buried feelings weren’t so much forgotten or dormant anymore.

Not with his heart screaming to him to pick Aoife up and never put her down again.

One look.

One girl.

And a fresh bout of trouble.

And he’d fallen all over again.

He wasn’t pastor Danny Murphy, respected man of the community within his Baptist church, while he came up with a strategic plan to keep Aoife safe.

He was Danny Murphy. Man and protector of the girl who would always own him.

And always break him.

Time would tell if she’d walk away this time and leave him in irreparable pieces.

But there was a snowball’s chance in hell of him not helping her.