Chapter Text
It had been six weeks since his arrival – maybe seven, though the days had been melting together the way they always did come July. Long, syrup-thick afternoons that made the horizon quiver and the air taste of dust and honeysuckle. A season that made everything seem just a little faded, a little tired, like the town itself had exhaled and decided not to take another breath until September.
The old priest had died that spring. Eighty-something, always had been old as far as Eve could remember, and she hadn’t gone to his funeral. The only one, people said, though she didn’t ask and didn’t care. There were reasons for that kind of thing, and they belonged to her alone.
For a while, she thought she’d never set foot near the church again. It wasn’t like she’d been going before, not unless she had to, and even then she’d sat in the back and counted the seconds until she could leave. Religion had always been a house she walked past, not one she entered.
And then he came.
Joel Miller. The new priest.
The first week, she kept her head down, cut across the square, ignored the sound of his hammering from inside the rectory and the smell of fresh paint drifting out the windows. The second week, she took the long way around entirely, because she wasn’t ready to deal with some stranger taking up space where –
She didn’t finish that thought. She never did.
But one afternoon, the heat so thick it curled the edges of her vision, she’d walked past without thinking, basket of peaches on her arm, and there he was.
Bent over by the gate out front, forearms tanned and roped with muscle as he wrestled a hinge loose. His black shirt caught the sunlight like a sheet of coal, sleeves shoved up to the elbow, white collar still fastened snug at his throat. The little white square at his neck was like a flare – bright, clean, impossible to miss. His hair was dark, peppered with gray at the edges, head bent just enough for her to see the sharp line of his jaw, the sweat darkening the curl at his temple.
He looked up only once, when the hinge gave with a metallic groan. Brown eyes under heavy brows, expression unreadable. She couldn’t tell if he’d actually seen her or if she was just one more shape in the heat haze. But she saw him.
And God help her, he wasn’t what she’d expected. The old priest had been bent and brittle as dried corn stalks. Joel Miller was… younger. Not young, still a decade or so on her, maybe more – but solid. Broad shoulders, hands that looked more like they belonged on a mechanic than on someone who spent his life turning pages in a bible. He moved like a man used to work.
Something tilted inside her then, though she hadn’t admitted it at the time. That night she thought about him without meaning to, thought about the way his shirt had clung at the shoulder blades, about the line of sweat trailing from his hairline to his jaw.
The next time she saw him, she slowed her steps. And the time after that, she stopped outright.
She wanted another look. Closer this time.
And most of all, she wanted him to look back.