The Crossing
by @belfastbapIn the bomb-scarred streets of Belfast, a Protestant boy and a Catholic girl meet in secret beneath a graffitied peace wall. Their love survives his loyalist brother's threats and her priest's condemnation, until a single bullet fired from a passing car forces them to choose between their families and each other.
MEET THE CHARACTERS
EXPLORE CHAPTERS
The Neutral Ground
The bell above the door jingles and Siobhan steps into the sawdust and blood-smell. Declan is already there, leaning against the counter like he belongs. Her pulse is in her throat. He doesn't smile—just watches her cross the room, and she feels every inch of the distance like a wire pulled tight. 'You came,' he says, and it's not a question. Her breath catches. 'I shouldn't have.' But she's already closer than safe. His fingers brush her wrist—barely a touch, but her skin remembers it like a burn.
The Weight of Hands
He lays her back on the butcher's block, the cold wood against her spine a shock through her cardigan. His hands move slow — reverent, almost — tracing the curve of her hip, the dip of her waist, like he's learning a psalm by touch. She feels the sawdust on his palms catching on her stockings, and the roughness of it, the *realness* of him, makes her breath hitch. He doesn't look at her body — he looks at her face, and what she sees in his gray eyes is a hunger so deep it terrifies her. 'Tell me to stop,' he says, but his thumb is already pressing into the soft skin above her knee, and she knows he's asking her to save them both. She doesn't. She can't.
The Reckoning
He stands over me, the lamplight carving shadows across his face, and I see something shift behind his gray eyes—a decision made. His hands find my hips, and he pulls me to the edge of the butcher's block, the wood cold and rough against my bare thighs. I feel him—hard, ready—and the weight of what we're about to do crashes through me. This isn't just touching anymore. This is crossing a line we can't uncross, and we both know it. When he enters me, slow and deliberate, I feel the sawdust on his palms gripping my waist, and I think: this is what it costs to love someone in a city that would kill us for it. The pain and the pleasure blur together, and I hold his gaze because if I close my eyes, I'll see the street outside, the soldiers, the walls between us. He moves deeper, and I let myself break.
Shared Prayer
He moves inside me, but his hand finds my wrist, and he lifts it—the rosary beads still wrapped there, the silver crucifix catching the lamplight. He stops moving, and I feel the stillness like a held breath. 'Teach me,' he says. 'What do you say when you pray with these?' I don't know how to answer. I've never taught a Protestant to pray the rosary. But I start, my voice shaking, 'Hail Mary, full of grace...' and he picks up the rhythm of my hips with the words, each thrust a bead, each breath a prayer. I feel him hardening again as I speak, feel the way the sacred and the profane blur together until I can't tell where one ends and the other begins. When I finish, he says, 'Amen,' and then he shows me how he prays—with his body, with his mouth, with the way he holds me like I'm the only holy thing he's ever touched.
The Wake
I stand in the cold hallway, the words hitting me like a fist to the chest. The man's hand is on my shoulder, heavy and unwanted, but I can't move. I think of Siobhan, of her body warm against mine, of the rosary beads between my fingers. I think of my father's hands, the same hands that taught me to hold a hammer, now still forever. I need to see her. I need to touch her. But I'm already walking toward the hospital, toward my mother's tears, toward the wake that will stretch for three days in a house full of men who'd kill us both if they knew. Thursday feels like a lifetime away.