Or maybe that was Danny’s conscience talking.
Hands wrapped around a mug of what was probably coffee, James watched him in the warm glow of the lamp and the fire. “You look cold.”
“Aye. I’m freezing.” Danny took off the heavy jacket.
James stiffened. “What in the…” He looked Danny up and down, and when their eyes met, James inclined his head, looking every inch Father Carroll just now. “Got a new job you didn’t mention?”
Danny looked down at the uniform he was wearing, and his cheeks burned. “I’ll tell you all about it next time I come to confession.”
James pursed his lips, but he didn’t push. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know the things Danny and his crew got up to, and it wasn’t as if Danny didn’t know James disapproved. Whether he approved or not, he kept his mouth shut most of the time; after all, it was no secret that if not for the money Danny and his boys stole—not to mention the work James did on the side—this cramped, ramshackle apartment would be a great deal colder and with far less bread in its kitchen.
“There’s coffee left.” James gestured toward the kitchen behind Danny. “Have some if you like.”
Danny considered it, then nodded. After he’d poured himself some, he took the chair opposite James in the sparse parlor. Once he was situated with the other quilt around his own shoulders, he took a sip. It didn’t help much. He had to wonder if anything would.
Across from him, gazing into the fire, James closed his right hand into a fist and gingerly flexed it forward, wincing when it pulled at the gnarled scar stretching from the back of his hand onto his forearm.
Danny grimaced. “Hand bothering you tonight?”
“Aye. Lately it’s been…” James sighed, shaking his head, and he opened and closed his fingers a few times before tucking them back under the quilt. “Don’t think the cold is helping.”
“Does this cold help anything?” Danny asked dryly.
James huffed a quiet laugh. “Don’t seem to, does it?”
Neither spoke for a long time. They sipped their coffee in silence, and Danny stared into the fire as he tried to warm up. He smoked a cigarette, too, but that didn’t help, and all the while, he could feel James scrutinizing him. He knew the questions were coming, but he still cringed when his boyhood friend spoke again. “You all right tonight?”
Gaze down, Danny nodded. “Aye.” Had it always been this hard to lie to James? Or only since one of them had become a criminal and the other clergy? Didn’t matter. There were some things he couldn’t say aloud, whether it was at confession or just to his friend. Clearing his throat, he met James’s soft brown eyes. “It’s late. We should sleep.”
Nothing in James’s expression suggested he believed that Danny was all right, but it was late, and he didn’t argue. They retired for the night in the apartment’s single, cramped bedroom. In here, the small bed took up most of the room, its headboard, footboard, and the entire left side all pressed against walls. On the hotter nights come summer, Danny and James would have just enough space to sleep half an arm’s length apart, which was barely enough to stay cool. This time of year, though, when the days were freezing and the nights were brutal, the two of them huddled in the middle beneath thick quilts from both their mothers.
Secretly, Danny was glad it was winter because the colder nights meant he and James slept close together. The war didn’t seem to haunt James as much when the pair of them were wrapped up in each other, and Danny quietly loved the comfort that came from another man lying beside him like this. Some nights he wished they could be lovers—Lord knew he’d never have turned James away—but the man had made his vows to the church. This was all they could have, and Danny was thankful they had this much; more than once, both the Great War and the Spanish Influenza had nearly seen to it that they wouldn’t.
He wondered sometimes if the church would approve of them spending nights like this. James had told the others at the church that he preferred to stay with Danny instead of in his own room in the rectory most nights because Danny was still struggling with grief after losing two of his brothers last year. Danny didn’t mind the story; God knew and they knew that this was more for James than it was for him, but it did help Danny when that grief over Hugh and Robert caught up with him. There wasn’t another man in the city who’d hold Danny when tears came and who’d never speak a word to anyone about him being weak and unmanly, and Danny was more grateful for that than James could ever know.
Some of their neighbors gossiped about them, and the gossip had made it back to Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral a few times, but few people gave it any mind. After all, plenty of unmarried men lived together in this city, and besides, theirs was the only apartment in the building where amorous sounds couldn’t be heard sometimes in the day or night.
If what he and James did here was right or if it was wrong, Danny didn’t know, but he couldn’t imagine God or the Pope would condemn them for helping each other through the darkest and coldest nights. He’d never felt the need to ask forgiveness for grieving on James’s shoulder or for comforting James when demons from the war found him in the night.
Lord, if it’s what you want for us to sleep alone, he’d thought so many times, then give us enough peace to carry us till dawn.
Tonight, it was Danny who couldn’t sleep. James breathed slowly and quietly beside him, his chest rising and falling beneath Danny’s arm while Danny stared into the darkness.
And it wasn’t his brothers’ deaths haunting him this night.
Over and over, his mind showed him every moment from when he’d gone into that suite at the Plaza to when he’d taken off running through Central Park. Il Sacchi and the woman coming into the suite. The argument. Bernard trying to stop Danny. Danny hitting Ricky over the head. Ricky crumpling to the ground. The realization of what he’d done. Running.
“Listen to me,” the woman had said urgently. “That wasn’t just a gangster. That was Enrico il Sacchi.”
Danny squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed bile.
When the statue had cracked against il Sacchi’s head, the impact had reverberated up Danny’s hands and into his arms, and his skin still itched with that feeling now. As if his bones still vibrated from the killing blow. Eyes closed, he tightened his hands into fists, hoping that would still the phantom thrumming, but it didn’t help at all. Nothing did. Hours had passed and he was miles away from the Plaza now, but he could still feel that damned impact as if it had just happened, same as he could still feel the sting from where the radiator had burned his arm.
Danny sighed. He was never going to sleep tonight. He was probably never going to sleep again.
Lord, forgive me. I killed a man. I killed…
I can’t believe I killed a man.
“Danny.” James shifted, facing him in the darkness. “What’re you doing still awake?”
“Can’t sleep. Did I wake you?”
“Eh. Can’t sleep either, but when can I?” He touched Danny’s shoulder. “What’s keeping you up?”
Squeezing his eyes shut, Danny swallowed.
“Danny?” Concern laced James’s voice, and he pulled Danny closer. “What’s going on?”