Sunday Sins

She left the house at 4:12 p.m.

No bag. No note. Just keys, boots, and the silence that settled behind her like a closing door.

It wasn’t a sleepover. It was a breach.

The road was long enough to change her mind, short enough to convince her it wouldn’t matter. Three hours, give or take—a highway, a back road, then something thinner. Gravel by the time the trees thickened and the cell signal disappeared, like even satellites refused to witness whatever this was. She always came on Sundays. Saturday was his Sabbath. Sunday was for sin.

The radio stayed off.

She preferred the hum of the old truck—the soft rattle in the dashboard, the uneven growl when she braked too hard. It kept her tethered. Kept her present. If she let her thoughts stray, they wandered into places she wasn’t willing to visit: her stomach, her mother’s voice, the church youth group that promised Jesus loved her but not enough to let her have sovereignty over her own body.

She adjusted the rearview mirror—not to look behind her, but to check she was still there.

Still here.

He came out here to be saved. No one else was going to do it. The compound was Steve’s ark. The rules were scripture, even when they weren’t. Especially when they weren’t.

Before all this, he’d woken on sidewalks and bathroom floors—wrists swollen, mouth dry. Sometimes cuffed. Sometimes just cold. Sometimes the needle was still in his arm. He’d been baptized in his own vomit more than once.

He’d clawed his way out of a life that had nearly ended him. And this place—quiet, buried, rigid—was the only thing that had ever held.

Claire hit the first turnoff, a sharp right past the rusted cow-shaped mailbox. No name on it. Never had been. Probably never would be.

By the time she reached the final stretch—the gravel path that curled like a dare through the trees—she felt it.

That stillness.

The kind that told her he already knew.

She didn’t slow. Didn’t speed up. Just let the truck glide forward, half in the drive, half on the edge. Like it didn’t want to fully arrive.

The gate was already open by the time she pulled into view. Not because he’d seen her. Just because he knew. The silence gave her away. The wind held its breath. The animals went quiet. The world paused for Claire.

He was standing just past the gate, like he’d grown there. Like the trees had made room.

She once asked why he moved out here. He said, “Because it’s quiet, and no one knew my name.”

She parked in her usual spot—off to the right, near the pine with the forked branches. The one he should’ve cut down months ago. He never would.

Steve stood a few feet back, arms loose at his sides—long and quiet, like they used to be when he played guitar. Before the noise turned dangerous. Before the songs became something sharp.

He didn’t smile.

But he looked at her—like he always did.

"Hey," he said.

She nodded. Kept walking.

"You're not supposed to be here," he added.

He didn't mean it like judgment. He meant it like confession. Like asking a question he didn't want answered.

Because every time she came back, it reminded him he hadn't changed as much as he told himself he had.

"You opened the gate," she said.

He closed it behind her. The latch caught with a sound that felt louder than it should have. Like guilt being locked in again.

The house was as she remembered it. Always clean. Always too clean. No clutter. No comfort. The walls lined with framed scripture and practical shelving. The pantry door stood open—rows of canned goods stacked with surgical precision. Peaches. Beans. Tomatoes. Lentils. Emergency rations made with love and fear in equal parts.

It was obsessive, but not cruel. A monk's kind of discipline. The food, the shelves, the order—it was the closest thing to safety he knew how to build.

He'd learned to count calories the way others counted sins. Every label was a verse. Every shelf, a sermon. This was control, and control was the only way he knew to stay clean.

It wasn't the Bible that saved him. It was the structure. The predictability. The math of survival. If he knew how many lentils he had, maybe he wouldn't spiral when the dark came back.

He moved around the kitchen like a ritual—pouring hot water, setting a single cup down in front of her. Mint tea. No caffeine. Nothing stimulating. The rules.

He pulled two jars from the pantry—one peaches, one green beans. He placed the peaches between them, like an offering.

"They're still good," he said.

She opened the lid and breathed in the syrup like it held memory.

"You want to ask if I watched it," she said.

He did. He always did. This time it had been a video about Daniel's prophecy, the rise of the beasts, the threat of global food regulation, and what that meant for souls like hers. Claire let the video play while she washed dishes last Thursday. Didn’t look at the screen. Didn’t hear most of it. But she let it run, volume just low enough to avoid understanding, just loud enough to feel like he was in the room.

"I didn't. Sorry," she said.

He nodded, jaw tightening like it wanted to argue but had been taught not to. Like he'd been taught a lot of things he didn't fully believe but followed anyway.

He didn't always buy the theology. Not really. But he clung to the rituals like driftwood—because rituals didn't overdose, or cheat, or scream at 4 a.m.

"It matters to me," he said quietly.

"I know."

She took a peach from the jar, let it rest on her tongue like something sacred. He looked away.

They hadn't always been like this.

It started three years ago in Denver. Before the compound. Before the bunker. Before the rules hardened and the fences closed in.

He asked if she liked hiking.

She said yes, even though she didn’t. Not really.

They met in the parking lot of a trail outside the city. He was all hoodie and awkward silence, still scraped raw from whatever he'd barely survived.

He’d told her, eventually, that he’d OD’d in a Circle K bathroom two months before. That his heart stopped once, maybe twice. That someone prayed over him while he seized. She never asked who. He never said.

They walked. They talked. They sat on rocks and pretended they weren't unraveling people pretending to be interesting.

At the end, just before the parking lot came into view, he touched her hand. Just the back of it. Just enough.

She didn’t pull away.

Didn’t say anything.

Just let it happen.

Now, it was a Sunday morning, years later. She stood on the deck out back, wearing his flannel, holding a chipped mug of mint tea—the steam curling into the air like an offering to a god she didn’t believe in.

He brought her food—rice and lentils, flavorless and warm.

“You need protein,” he said.

She made a face. “I need flavor.”

“There’s cumin behind the tomato paste. Hidden stash.”

“Cumin is a vice now?”

“Spicy foods lead to sin.”

She raised an eyebrow. “So does bad cooking.”

He smirked.

They sat in silence, legs stretched out, bowls in their laps, watching the wind move through the pine trees like it was being careful not to wake anything holy.

“I could live here,” she said, almost to herself.

“You’d go crazy.”

“Maybe.” She kept coming back—not because the compound was safe, but because he was. Because he didn’t need her to perform healing, or explain the ache. He just let her exist. And sometimes, that was enough.

He didn’t look at her. Just kept eating.

She didn’t know the whole story. Not really. How long it had taken to get sober. How many detox beds he’d ruined. How many friends were still using. How many were dead.

Later, he worked on the water filtration system with his uncle. Claire stayed inside, flipping through an outdated medical textbook she’d pulled from the bunker library.

Allan wiped sweat from his face with a faded bandana, glanced toward the house.

“That truck’s here again,” he said, casual but not.

Steve didn’t look up. “Yeah.”

A pause.

“You know how people talk.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Allan scratched the back of his neck. “Doesn’t bother you?”

“Not enough.”

The pipe gave a low groan as water pushed through.

Allan didn’t push either. Just nodded once and kept working.

After a while, he said, “Is she staying?”

Steve tightened a bolt with more force than necessary. “I won’t ask her to.”

It was night before Steve touched her. It always was.

She sat on the edge of his bed like she belonged there. Like she’d never stopped belonging there. Her jacket tossed on the floor. Her shirt off one shoulder. Barefoot. Waiting.

He stood in the doorway longer than he meant to.

“You’re gonna leave again tomorrow,” he said.

She looked at him, eyes steady. “I always do.”

And still, he crossed the room. His hands trembled when they met her skin.

They made love slowly, reverently. Like sin trying to remember what tenderness feels like. Like forgiveness being rewritten without permission.

But then it deepened, as it always did. Her wrists in his hands. His breath against her ear. Her body twisted into shapes he would never speak aloud in daylight.

“Fuck,” she gasped.

And she knew it shattered something. Not just the silence. Not just the rules. But the myth he’d built—that he was someone who no longer needed this. Needed her. Needed want.

Because needing meant failing. And he couldn’t fail—not after everything he’d crawled out of. Not after building walls with his bare hands just to keep the old version of himself outside.

Sometimes she laced it in, sharp and filthy, just to feel the edge of what he could tolerate. "Oh fucking shit, Jesus Christ, Goddamn"—all of it spilling out into his bunker like heresy in motion. She did it because she could. Because no one had ever told her she was allowed to make noise, and now she had him—and there wasn’t a single verse that could keep her quiet anymore.

He never said anything about it. Or asked her not to. Not once.

It wasn’t to get under his skin. Not really. Not cruelty. Not a joke. Just rebellion dressed up as release.

Because in that place, in that moment, she would curse Yahweh or Allah or Loki, for God’s sake, because she would not be restrained. Not by religion. Not by shame. Not by someone else’s god.

And he knew it, too. Because when he really got her there—when her back arched and her breath broke—she stopped saying words entirely.

No curses. No thoughts. Just sound. Just screaming.

And he liked it.

He liked being the one who could undo her like that. She could feel it in his hands. In his breath. In the desperate way his name never quite made it to his lips but trembled behind his teeth.

He would never go as far as her. Not ever. But when he came, it always escaped anyway—soft, gritted, helpless, “Oh fuck, babe.”

Quiet. Like a confession. Like even now, he couldn’t stop sinning without her.

He tied her wrists once, months ago. With his belt. She’d said nothing after. Just came back again the next weekend.

He knew what he did to her. He knew it was different. He knew it was more. But he never named it. Never called it a need. Never gave it a label.

Because if he did, he would have to see it, and if he saw it, he might never stop.

He couldn’t afford names. Names had weight. And he was already carrying more than one man should.

He kissed her like he was drowning and she was the last breath before the surface. Not love. Not lust. Something older than either. Memory dressed in skin.

He whispered scripture into her mouth between kisses. Said things she wouldn’t remember but he would never forget.

Verses he didn’t fully believe. Rituals he clung to not out of faith, but out of need—because prayer was quieter than craving, and sometimes that was enough.

Afterward, she curled into his side, silent.

Her fingers traced the scar across his ribs.

“They don’t know, do they?”

He shook his head. “They don’t ask.”

“And if they did?”

He didn’t answer. Didn’t know how. There wasn’t a verse for that.

He laughed, suddenly. Quietly. More breath than sound.

“You keep coming out here and letting me rail you like I’m not supposed to be reverent. You know I’m supposed to be celibate, right?”

Claire didn’t even blink.

“Celibate, sad, dead, Republican. We all carry burdens.”

He laughed again. Louder this time.

She kissed his jaw, then his throat, then went still again against his chest.

“You know I’m never going to join this place, right?” she said into the dark.

“I know.”

“Even if I loved you. Even then.”

He didn’t flinch. Didn’t argue. Just ran his thumb down her spine like a habit he couldn’t break.

“Even if I loved you back,” he said—and it was the closest thing to a confession he’d ever give her.

He didn’t have the language for love anymore. All the words in his mouth were survival. And love didn’t survive here—not for long.

They didn’t say anything else.

Because love had already failed to save them. And they both knew it.

She slept on her side, knees tucked, his shirt slipping off one shoulder.

He moved around her like ritual—gathered her clothes, folded them tight. Neat lines. Sharp corners. A gesture of control in a moment he couldn’t manage.

Then he turned off the light and climbed back into bed.

This time, he reached for her.

Slid his arm around her waist, pressed his chest to her back, let his hand rest flat against her stomach.

She shifted slightly but didn’t pull away.

He didn’t care if he woke her.

He needed this—needed to feel her under his hand, beside him, real.

He closed his eyes and stayed there, holding on like it could undo something.

Maybe it would.

When he woke, she was gone.

Her cup sat rinsed in the sink. Her chair pushed back under the table. The jar of peaches half full.

He didn’t touch any of it. Just sat for a long time in the quiet, watching steam curl from tea he’d poured for himself but couldn’t drink.

The compound wasn’t built to keep her out.

It was built to keep himself in.