Potter Springs Read Online Free

tone.
    “Yeah, me too.”
    “It’s not what I expected of you. At all.” The anger rose in degrees.
    Mark took it like a tackle, impassive.
    “I’ll have to talk to the board.” James flipped open his calendar.
    “Would you?” Hope descended like the dove in the painting, breaking through the clouds of gray with specks of holy light.
     Mark spoke in a rush. “I’ll go before them, tell them what happened, and that we’re getting married. Before the church if
     I have to, like a testimony, tell them how even people in leadership, in the church, can make mistakes and that we’re not
     perfect, just forgiven-”
    “Mark,” James said, gentle and sad. “It’s over.”
    “Over?” The specks disappeared, the shadows covered the flight, as if it never happened. Turning what had been hope to an
     overwhelming gray.
    “We have to let you go. Surely you can see that. Being on staff here-doing what you’ve been doing-we can’t keep you on.”
    “Wait. Sure, the timing’s off-that was a mistake. But we’re in
love.
We’re getting
married.
It’s not like this is a totally awful thing.”
    “All that will help you, and I’m glad for it. No, it’s not totally awful, but it doesn’t fit with your purposes, our plans
     for you here. I’ll call the board chairman, we’ll work something out. To help with the wedding. And the baby.” James picked
     up the phone, the sad smile lingering still.
    “James, it’s not like I’m the only one. Half the congregation, more than half, I bet-”
    “You’d have made a fine pastor, Mark. Maybe somewhere down the line, you still will. But it won’t be here.”
    *   *   *
    PROGRESSION.
STOPPED IN traffic on the way home, Mark thought about progression.
    He’d met Amanda at some forgettable social. A single’s mixer in downtown Houston, a friend of a friend. She teased him, called
     him a preacher boy. Flirting. Her head tilted up to his-her figure, full-blown curves on a petite frame. Completely unselfconscious
     and confident, the room dazzled where she saw fit to land, circling with this group and then that. A woman amidst silly girls.
     He couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
    I’ll catch you if I can,
he thought. She awakened the wolf in him, and he decided to chase.
    Progression.
He took her dancing on their second date. To a run-down bar on Houston’s east side, where no Pleasant Valley Baptists would
     ever go. Because he wanted to hold her tight, too tight for propriety. They slid across sawdust floors, denim rubbed friction
     as he spun her fast, then slow, feeling the heat between their bellies while Patsy Cline poured her silken croons around them.
    He’d kissed her full on the mouth for the first time, tasting beer and salt and her own sweet flavor, and it tasted so good
     he went back again and again.
    Progression.
After months of the chase, she invited him to her family’s lake house for a weekend with Ben and Katy Thompson, her parents.
     He put on his shiny face. Ready to make the important introductions. To meet great expectations and surpass them. Except her
     parents didn’t show because Katy had a “thing” to go to and Ben wanted to tinker in his garage.
    “You don’t mind, do you?” Amanda had asked, innocent. “Want to stay the weekend anyway?”
    His conscience whispered no, but he ignored it and chose the path. Enjoyed the ramble down the highway where love and lust
     tangled so firmly, he couldn’t see the light of day for the fire all around.
    The two of them, alone with the waves and the water. He’d kissed her, her arms around him and the crickets singing. Love and
     lust, ancient and stronger than his own will reared like a warrior and laid him down. Lying down with her on a blanket, the
     moon high and round and the crickets screaming. He dipped into her, sweet and slow, and was damned by it in his own heart.
     But he didn’t stop. He entered his lust and broke his trust, dying down with her. Painted himself a hypocrite while