For the first time since they started speaking, he broke eye contact with her. He glanced away into the corner of the room. His face wore the strangest expression. Whoever this powerful person was, Søren didn’t seem all that excited about asking him. In fact, if she had to guess, she’d say he was dreading it.
“You’re going to go through all this trouble for me, why?”
Søren looked back at her and gave her a smile that stripped her soul naked and put it on its knees.
“Because there is nothing I wouldn’t do to protect you, Eleanor. Nothing I wouldn’t do to help you and nothing I wouldn’t do to save you. Nothing.”
The way he spoke the final “nothing” sent a chill through her body. It scared her instead of comforting her. He meant it. That was why it scared her.
“That’s not an answer. You’re saying you’re helping me because you’re helping me.”
“I am.”
“There’s no other reason?”
“There is, but I can’t tell what it is yet.”
“But you will?”
“In time. But first, Eleanor, there is something you should know.”
Eleanor sat up straight in her chair and gave him her full attention.
“What?”
“There is a price you will have to pay.”
“Oh, goodie,” she said, and gave him a wide smile. “Now we get back to my first question about the fucking of the kids at church. Well, if you insist.”
“Do you value your worth as a child of God so little that you presume I would only help in exchange for sex?”
He asked the question calmly and with only curiosity in his tone, but the words still hit as hard as a fist in her stomach.
“So that’s a no?”
Søren raised an eyebrow at her and Eleanor was overcome with a fit of laughter. She was beginning to like this guy. She’d fallen in love with him the moment she first saw him, and she would love him now until the end of world. But she’d never dreamed she’d like him so much.
“That would be a no,” he said. “I will, however, require something from you.”
“Do you always talk like this?”
“You mean articulately?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Weird. So what am I paying you for your help? I hope it’s not my firstborn child or anything. Don’t want kids.” She wasn’t sure about that last part but it sounded kind of tough.
“My price is simply this—in exchange for my assistance, I ask that you do what I tell you to do from now on.”
“Do what you tell me to do?”
“Yes. I want you to obey me.”
“From now on?” She couldn’t believe she’d heard him right. “Like, for how long?”
Søren looked at her again, looked at her without smiling, without blinking, without jesting, without joking. He looked at her like the next word he said would be the most important word he ever spoke and the most important word she ever heard.
“Forever.”
The word hung in the air between them before falling into her lap and seeping into her skin.
“Forever,” she repeated. “You want me to obey your every order forever?”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to order me to do?”
“As soon as you agree to my terms, you will learn your first order.”
“You know forever is a really long time. It’s the longest time, actually. You don’t get longer than forever.”
“I am aware of this.”
“I could be in juvie until I’m twenty-one. Forever’s longer than six years.”
“It is.”
“I’ll take juvie, then.” A foolish boast, but one she meant.
“You would rather go to prison than obey me?” Søren sounded horrified. Maybe even scared. His fear made her afraid. But not so afraid she would give in, not yet.
“If I’m going to give you forever,” she said, raising her chin higher, “I want something in return.”
“I already offered to help you out of your mess. What else do you want?”
Eleanor considered her demands. He sounded open to suggestion, which was good because she had a suggestion.
“Everything.”
“Everything?” he repeated. “As in …?”
“Every. Thing.” She stared at him across the desk, and this time it was her turn not to blink. “I give you forever, the least you can give me is everything.”
“I believe I know what you’re asking, and you should know that’s problematic where I’m concerned.”
“Because you’re a Catholic priest, and you’re older than I am?”
“That would be two of the three reasons.”
“What’s the third?”
“I will tell you the third reason at the same time I tell you the second reason I’m offering to help you.”
“Jesus H. Christ, so many questions. Do I need to write this shit down?”
Søren reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his battered leather-bound Bible, the one that had his real name in it.
He flipped through the pages and glanced at the scraps of paper inside. They all appeared to have writing on them but not in English. Finally he flipped to the very back, ripped out a blank end page and slid it across the table to her. From inside his coat he produced a pen, a heavy black one.
“Write.”
Eleanor eyed the pen and paper. She looked at Søren.
“I will answer your questions,” he said. “Eventually. In the meantime I wouldn’t want either of us to forget any of them.”
On the end page she wrote What’s the third reason that being with me is problematic? and What’s the second reason you’re helping me? She furrowed her brow as she studied the paper.
“Something wrong?” Søren asked.
“I think I misspelled problematic.” She held up the note and Søren narrowed his eyes at it.
“One m.”
“Can I answer your two objections?” she asked, rewriting the word problematic with only one m this time. “I don’t care if you’re a Catholic priest. Forcing priests to be celibate is the stupidest rule ever. Why would God invent sex and then tell people not to have it? And second, so what? You’re older than I am. I’ll be sixteen in a couple days.”
“I can’t believe I’m even discussing this with you, Eleanor,” Søren said.
She smiled at him.
“I can.”
Søren turned his head and stared at nothing for a moment. He smiled a little and turned back to her.
“Very well, then.”
“Very well what?”
He held out his hand, waiting for her to