Maren’s POV "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned." The words leave my mouth, and on the other side of the wooden screen, Father Elijah shifts in his seat. Three weeks ago, I was crying in my apartment over a man who cheated on me with a woman twenty years older than him. My best friend Tessa told me to try church. I told her I'd rather focus on a bottle of wine, but she dragged me to Sunday mass anyway. I walked into St. Augustine's expecting stale hymns and old men in robes. What I got was Father Elijah stepping up to the pulpit, and every thought of my ex evaporating from my brain like it never existed. He's young for a priest — early thirties, maybe thirty-two. Dark hair that's a little too long for the clergy, pushed back from a face that belongs in a romance movie, not behind

