Excerpt from the Short Story - An Enlightening Evening

August 11, 2018

Excerpt from

An Enlightening Evening

“I owe you my life,” he said when they sat down next to each other by the fire.

She dismissed the thought with a wave of her hand. “I haven’t even paid you back for all the times you saved me,” she told him.

He raised his eyebrows. “So now it’s okay that I want to protect you?”

She winced, as if his statement had been a slap in her face. He immediately regretted it. He didn’t mean to cause her pain.

Why do I keep saying the wrong thing?

“I’m sorry,” she said sheepishly. “About that, I have a confession to make. Please don’t hate me. See, I know your weakness.”

His heart tightened. “What weakness?”

“That you worry about making sure everyone is safe.”

He relaxed slightly.

“You’re a world-on-your-shoulders kind of guy. It’s also your strength and one of my favorite things about you,” she assured him. “But I used it against you to force my way in and get you to train me.”

“What?” He wondered where she even got the idea. “No—”

“I did,” she interrupted him. “I even thought it through the night before and planned what I would say.”

“You seriously planned that out?” he asked.

He thought back to that day – when she had been waiting on the school steps with her list of questions.

“Since then, I felt awful about it,” she said. “And I went to confession and vowed never again to use any of your weaknesses against you.”

“Any of my weaknesses?” he repeated nervously.

“Point is, if I’m weak and I hold you back, after what I’ve done, I won’t be able to forgive myself.”

Now he understood. She thought she had to prove herself or compete to see which one of them was stronger.

It was ridiculous, in his mind. There was no competition. Their strengths may be different, but they were equal. She hadn’t been taking martial arts for years, but she had met her deva in a matter of weeks. All the spiritual training that was exhausting to him at first had seemed so easy – and even fun – to her. She had been the most inspiring exorcist partner. She had healed him countless times. And she had just saved his life, selflessly risking her own.

There was no way he could see her as weak.

He let out a breath that sounded like a sigh mixed with a laugh. “You don’t have to worry about that,” he told her. “As much I want to save you from everything, you’ve been saving me all along.”

“We’re stronger together, huh?” she said as she nudged his shoulder – a move that mere minutes ago would have flooded his body with pain.

He watched as she gathered her hair to one side and wrung out the water. The firelight danced on her face and her hair hung down in delicate, loose curls.

He couldn’t take his eyes away. She didn’t wear makeup and she rarely did anything with her hair except for the twist with the pen. Hers wasn’t a polished, painted beauty like Alicia’s. It was a natural, substantial beauty that shone from within, from her heart of pure gold.

He nearly chuckled at the thought of his old girlfriend. It had seemed so long ago that he had even liked Alicia.

Was there ever anyone but Chiara?

He remembered Rob saying something similar about Charlie – that looking back on his life without her didn’t make sense. That’s how he felt now. Being with Chiara seemed so right that his life without her seemed like a dream. A very wrong dream.

As he studied her, all he could think was that he never wanted to be separated from her.

“I can’t remember what I ever did without you,” he said before he could stop himself.

It was as if his body was rebelling against him. His mouth had moved on its own, his heart had started pounding, and now, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her.

“And you’ll never have to,” she said with cheerful certainty, still looking at the fire. Suddenly, her face became scared. “I mean, not like I’m saying that I expect you to put up with me forever. Or that I presume that we’ll be working together forever, if you don’t want that…”

She slowly looked at him with a worried expression. She must not have realized how close he was already. Their faces were now only a few inches apart. Peter lost all his breath. Her eyes sparkled with the light from the flames.

For a split second, he indulged in the thought of kissing her. He was pretty sure that she would have wanted it. And the thought of her kissing him back took him to another world.

Then he stopped himself.

His stomach twisted as he thought of the implications. Their relationship couldn’t be as simple as that. A relationship with him could very likely mean suffering and destruction.

A kiss would be almost like a kiss of death, dooming her. If she knew the danger she was in, she would probably run. She should run.

Either way, he knew there was a right way to tell her. If he told her that he liked her first, she might not listen completely to his warning. He suspected that her mind would be too clouded by her emotions. He had to tell her the truth first.

He rested his forehead against hers to stop himself from doing more. She had to know.

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