Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 120475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 482(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 482(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
My hands moved with practiced precision, setting the final piece in place. A perfect chain of black-and-white dominos stretched across the polished surface of my coffee table and floor, each one standing tall and precisely spaced. Order. Control. The simple, immutable laws of physics dictated that every piece had its place. That nothing could fall unless it was set into motion.
It was what I used to do as a child, back when I still lived under my father’s roof. Before I learned that control was only an illusion. I would spend hours setting up elaborate patterns, only to swipe them down in a single movement. The fall was inevitable. I thought I had grown past the need for this kind of ritual, but tonight, I desperately needed something to still my thoughts.
Something to wipe her from my mind.
Moira.
The name itself is a trespass. A disruption. A single out-of-place domino among my carefully arranged life.
My jaw clenched as I stared at the first domino. If I pushed it, the rest would collapse in a beautiful, fluid sequence—one after the other, a perfect, unstoppable chain. The way things had always worked. The way they’re supposed to work.
Except Moira hadn’t followed the rules. She had lodged herself into my thoughts, a piece of chaos in the symmetry of my world, and no matter how much I tried to ignore it, I could feel the balance shifting.
And now I’m here. Drawn back by the siren’s call, just like always.
The sound of heels against pavement cuts through the night. My breath catches.
There she is.
Moira.
Framed under the streetlight like something out of a dream. Her auburn curls glint like fire, tucked into adorable pigtails that catch the golden glow of the streetlamp. The leather jacket she wears is unzipped, revealing a sequined dress that clings to her body with maddening precision. She walks like she owns the night, and maybe she does.
My fists clench at my sides. I should leave. I should turn my back and return to the rectory where I belong.
But my feet stay planted, as immovable as the weight in my chest.
The door swings shut behind her, and she’s gone, swallowed by the darkness of the club. The night settles around me, thick and quiet, save for the distant hum of traffic.
And in the quiet, memories rise unbidden.
Because I know this world. Its pull. The smell of expensive perfume and the feel of the bass that thrums in your chest and drowns out everything else.
I lived it. Years ago, I’d have been the one striding into that club, hungry for the thrill and oblivion waiting on the other side of the door.
I can almost hear my father’s laughter, low and sharp. “If you’re going to sin, boy, do it right,” he’d said once, handing me a glass of bourbon far before I was old enough to legally drink.
That was his way—teaching me indulgence, not responsibility. I was hungry for any scrap of his attention, even when I hated him. But then, I hated everything. I was furious at the world and worked hard to be a destructive force everywhere I went. I fought everyone except my father. His hold over me was one I never allowed myself to look in the face until far too late.
So, at fourteen, I drank the bourbon. And the next. And the next.
For years, I let his world of indulgence after indulgence consume me until the night it all came crashing down. There’d been blood. Flashing lights. The cold bite of steel cuffs. And my father, sweeping in like the puppet master he was and handing over a check that erased the entire mess from the record.
“Boys will be boys,” he’d said, laughing and cuffing me on the back as he turned to head back to a party he’d come from. As if ruining lives was just part of growing up.
No one died that night, but they might have.
Then and there, I realized I hated myself as much as I hated him. It should’ve been the last straw, but I’ve always had a stubborn heart.
It took three more weeks for me to leave. It took discovering the full extent of my father’s monstrosity and all he’d stolen from me for me to find God and trade Bane for Father Blackwood.
And yet, here I stand. Teetering on the brink, staring at the same darkness I once embraced.
Watching her.
Hours later, the door opens, spilling a group of laughing strangers onto the sidewalk. Then I see her again.
Moira steps back into the night, radiant and alive. Her cheeks are flushed, her pigtails tousled, and she bounces from one foot to the other as if dancing.
She only pauses for a moment to pull out her phone. The light briefly illuminates her face, and for a moment, everything else falls away.
Relief washes over me, sharp and almost unbearable. My entire day zeroes down to this. Watching her go in that dark door and waiting for her to come back out again.