The church was quiet again, the kind of quiet that carried every click of her heels across the stone floor.

Her pulse thudded in her ears as she reached the confessional, but the curtain was already pulled aside.

He was already waiting.

The dim light carved his face into shadow and heat, the same half-buttoned shirt, the same gaze that made her skin prickle.

“You came back,” he said but not as a question.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she admitted with her voice low. “I kept ...