The Proviso by Moriah Jovan Page B

Sebastian
put the movie on pause. So. He wanted to actually . . . talk? And
he’d downed nearly a whole bottle of wine; he must have as much on
his mind as she had on hers.
    “You know as well as I do that cursing and killing
in self-defense wouldn’t keep me from being able to go to the
temple if I wanted to.”
    “I’m pretty sure threatening to kill a man in cold
blood would get you that excommunication you’ve been bucking for
for the last couple of years.”
    “Threatening and doing—two different things.”
    “That’s rich, coming from a woman who’s never made a
threat she hasn’t carried out.”
    “Okay, look. Say I go to the bishop and say, ‘Ready
to go to the temple now’ and he whips out the list of questions. I
can answer every single one honestly. I pay my tithing. I don’t
drink, don’t smoke, don’t do drugs. I’m honest, I believe in
Christ, I don’t batter my spouse—”
    Sebastian laughed.
    “—I support the prophet. I’m still a virgin and I’m
thirty-five. I’d say that’s a pretty decent track record and oh,
guess what? Instant temple recommend. And there I go, off to St.
Louis or Nauvoo or wherever and make my covenants with the Lord. My
mom would be so proud.”
    “You forgot that general and all-encompassing
unresolved issues question.”
    “I have no unresolved issues. Just because I’m not
exactly, you know, leadership material doesn’t mean I don’t qualify
as a Good Girl. And what do you mean, bucking for an
excommunication?”
    “You know exactly what I mean. Your opinions’ll get
you in trouble faster than murdering Fen will.”
    True. Giselle had always been different; she knew
it, everybody at church knew it. She garnered respect and
friendships across various social strata in the ward, but everyone
knew she’d eventually say or do something scandalous because she
managed to do it with amazing regularity—usually without meaning
to.
    “I don’t spout false doctrine.”
    Sebastian grunted. “No, I know you don’t. Your
problem is you’re as attracted to the profane as you are the
sacred. You can’t bring yourself to pick one and stick with it, so
you straddle the fence between them.” She fidgeted at his usual
perception. “As far as I can see, there’s no reward in sticking
with the sacred. So tell me something: Would you tell your bishop
why all the double-A batteries in this house disappear so
fast?”
    Heat rose in her cheeks. “Digital camera,
asshole.”
    Sebastian smirked. “So technically , you
aren’t. He’d laugh you out of his office with a ‘Stop doing that
and come back to see me again in six months.’ Speaking of that, buy
your own batteries or do it the old fashioned way ’cause I’m not
supporting your habit anymore. And oh, let’s not forget your pièce de résistance . Would you tell him about that ?”
    Something had changed inside Giselle once she’d
turned that corner into territory that few people would understand.
She had killed—and she felt absolutely no remorse.
    “No,” she admitted. “’Specially after what happened
to Knox.”
    “Well. That’s apples and oranges, but I see your
point. And do you actually plan on going to the temple?”
    “I would never go alone,” she murmured, looking down
into her glass at the pink concoction she drank by the quart. “If I
happened to find a dude I liked who could marry me in the temple,
I’d go then.”
    Sebastian snorted. “You aren’t going to find Hank
Rearden at church.” Hank Rearden, the fictional narrator of a
political fable by a fringe political philosopher.
Patheticpatheticpathetic.
    “I’m not holding out any hope, no. But I’m not
cluttering up my life with a string of almosts and maybes and
potentials, and I’m not interested in random fucking. If I can’t
have exactly what I want, I’ll go without.” She paused when she
caught his upraised eyebrow and slid down into the upholstery.
“Mostly,” she grumbled.
    “If your collection of erotica