Saint kicks his toe against the pale stone of the terrace. “I don’t know, sorry,” he says. “I’ve been gone for a while.”
“I see,” Becket says kindly.
“You’ve missed quite a bit while you’ve been away. Are you done being punished or whatever?”
“Completely done.”
Done with all of it.
Saint squints out into the woods. “I wonder if they’re at the chapel. That’s the only place I can think of where Sir James wouldn’t hear us.” He walks back into the mudroom, and then returns with a flashlight. “Here, take this. I’m going to bring in my bag and then I’ll be right behind you.”
“I don’t mind waiting,” Becket volunteers, although for a man who tries not to lie, it’s very close to lying. He doesn’t want to wait. He wants to be with the others. He wants to have his face in Proserpina’s hair as he holds her close.
The austere weeks in Plymouth and the retreat in Argyll had been bearable because of course there would be distance, there was supposed to be distance. He was supposed to be alone and atoning for the right to be alone for the rest of his life. But now that he’s chosen another way, now that he’s back, even the distance between the house and the chapel is agonizing. Even the twenty or so minutes it will take to reach Proserpina is a torment.
Saint’s already going back inside, giving a sort of dismissive flap with his hand as he goes. “I’m not scared of the dark, Becket,” he answers. “I’ll be fine.”
Becket decides to take him at his word and strikes for the woods. But when he gets there, he finds no fire, no fun, no cozy gathering of blankets and wine. Instead he sees something he never thought he’d see again: the door, open.
For an instant, he’s fourteen again, shivering under a Samhain sky, thoughts tangled with zeal and tears running down his face. For an instant, he’s fourteen again, seeing Adelina Markham being buried behind the altar.
The door had been gone then. Closed with her death.
And the time between those two moments—well, there is his reason for hating lies now. Because he’s been lying about what happened that day for years.
Becket forces himself into the present, into the chapel filled with roses, and into the strange little scene in front of him. There’s Auden, looking haggard and grim, and Rebecca, looking equally grim . . . and also wearing her clothes inside out. Delphine stands in front of them, her head tilted slightly to the side like a bird’s.
And then there’s Proserpina.
Becket’s feet move before he gives them permission to, and then he’s next to her, sweeping her into his arms and forgetting how to breathe when she hugs him back.
“I missed you,” he murmurs into her hair. His hands run over the seams of her cardigan where they line her shoulders and arms—she too is in inside-out clothes—and she nods into his neck, giving him a little kiss there.
“I missed you too,” she whispers.
He pulls back before he says or does anything else. His body is aching with weeks of pent-up need, and despite the eerie roses and the cold power of the door nearby, he is very close to begging to fuck Proserpina.
There will be time, he promises himself. He has nothing but time now.
“What have you been doing?” Becket asks, keeping Proserpina’s fingers laced with his. He catches Auden’s eye and Auden gives a subtle dip of his chin, a yes, you may. “And is that a sledgehammer?”
Auden
St. Sebastian arrives not long after Becket, his piercing glinting in the dark along with his insufferably pretty eyes. Rebecca is explaining to Becket and Delphine that they were trying to close the door and how—which is a lucky thing, because Auden wouldn’t be able to speak even if he had to right now. The sight of St. Sebastian here, at Thornchapel, is a knife plunged right into a lung. Brutal and breathless.
What is he doing here?
But then again, what is Becket doing here? And Delphine?
Auden looks from his half-brother to the door. It can’t be a coincidence that tonight is the night he chose to destroy it, and it’s also the night everyone is coming back. But to what end? And what is drawing them back? The door? Thornchapel? Can the two even be separated?
A memory comes, unbidden, of him wishing for his friends, for his priest and his ex-fiancée and his St. Sebastian. Wishing so fiercely his bones ached. Wanting them here, here, here.
But no. That’s not how things work. That can’t be. Not even when Thornchapel is involved.
Even though it’s only been a few weeks since Poe has seen Saint, she pulls her hand free of Becket’s and runs to him, giving him a swift, eager kiss. Becket doesn’t seem upset by Poe’s defection—his expression is generous and gentle as he watches the woman he loves run to the man she loves—but Auden hurts for the priest anyway. At least for Auden, the jealousy is part of the fun, woven tightly into his kinks and his possessiveness. At least he chose this. Auden isn’t sure where Becket draws his comfort from.
From God, he supposes.
“I thought you wouldn’t be done in Argyll for another two weeks,” Auden says as he and Becket watch Saint kiss Poe back and then pull away to goggle at her inside-out clothes.
“I’ll explain everything tomorrow,” says Becket.
“That sounds dire.”
Becket gives him a beatific smile—a saint’s smile—and even in the dark, his eyes are a vivid blue. “It’s entirely the opposite, Auden. It’s wonderful. Now, what were you all doing to the door?”
Delphine, who’s been running her torch over the door to inventory the yarn and chains and rowan berry corpses, seconds Becket’s question. “What indeed? It’s a dreadful mess out here, Audey. Just ghastly.”
“We were trying to close it,” Rebecca answers, stepping forward as Delphine moves closer to the door, as if to intercept her. “Nothing worked.”
“Nothing worked,” Auden echoes, turning back to look at the door, and then turning to look at his friends. Standing there in the dark, surrounded by roses and encroaching fog, with only their torches and their equally worried expressions, they are the most beautiful and terrifying thing Auden has ever seen.
Beautiful because he loves them.
Terrifying because he could lose them.
The door yawns at his back like a cold, unsatisfied mouth, and the only thing natural about the door right now is that Auden is standing between his people and it.
“Inside,” he says finally. “I think we’ve done enough for one night.”
“We need to do more,” Rebecca says in a low voice. Her eyes are on Delphine. “We shouldn’t rest until it’s closed.”
“We need to rest in order to close it,” Auden counters tiredly. “Come on, Bex. No one’s getting hurt by the door tonight. We’ll deal with it tomorrow.”
“Then everyone needs to promise,” Rebecca says in a firm voice, “that no one comes out here alone. Not until it’s closed.”
“Why?” Delphine asks, tilting her head.
“It’s not safe, Delly,” Auden answers her. “We’ll explain once we’re inside and warm again.”
“Oh, all right,” Delphine concedes, dropping her torch and stepping back. She gives a big, adorable yawn, a yawn so sweet and so cute that Auden’s heart gives an extra beat. It wasn’t for nothing that they were engaged once.
“Perhaps,” Becket observes, “we should discuss all this tomorrow, when we’ve had a chance to rest. I for one have traveled a long way today, and I suspect Delphine and Saint have as well.”
“I guess”—Delphine yawns again—“that would be fine.”
“Any objections to having a meeting tomorrow about this?” Auden asks.
There are none. With a nod, he indicates they should start filing down the rose-lined aisle to the chapel’s entrance and the stone row beyond, but once they spill out into the clearing, Auden catches up to St. Sebastian.
“I want you in my room tonight,” he says.
St. Sebastian swallows. “For what?”
/> Auden’s never been good at dismissing his fantasies of muffled groans and sweat-slick skin—he’s rarely tried, if he’s honest—but he dismisses them now, fixing Saint with a serious look. “To talk, St. Sebastian. About why you’re back.”
“Proserpina,” Auden says, snagging her hand as she’s about to split towards the kitchen. “I want you upstairs with Saint and me.”
She looks up at him, brows pulled together. “I thought you two might want space to talk.” He’d told her everything that had happened in his townhouse that day, and so she knows the most recent pain between them.
Auden shakes his head. “I’m tired of space. And it doesn’t help anyway, remember? All I did was blow him, and all he did was make me cry.”
Proserpina rolls her cat eyes. “You two are a mess.”
“I know.” He pulls their joined hands up to his mouth and kisses her knuckles. “It’s because we’re supposed to be a three. Please.” He squeezes her hand once, twice. The slow beat of a joined heart.
She softens a little and nods. “I’ll bring up some tea?”
“Or something stronger,” Auden suggests and then releases her hand with a final squeeze. “Don’t tarry.”
“Yes, Sir,” Proserpina salutes, which earns her a couple quick swats before she manages to escape to the kitchen.
Upstairs, Auden finds St. Sebastian sitting on his bed, rubbing his hands on his thighs and looking uncomfortable. Auden takes a moment to remember that for one wonderful night, this was St. Sebastian’s bed too. For one night, the three of them were well and truly together, well and truly whole.
But never mind. He’s learned since then. He’s learned that whole isn’t whole just because he wills it so.
He takes a seat opposite St. Sebastian in his desk chair, bracing one elbow on his desk and leaning his head against his hand.
Saint says nothing. Only stares at him with that tragic, onyx stare that’s captured both Auden’s heart and his cock since they were teenagers.
“You’ll be staying?” Auden inquires after the silence begins to gnaw at them. “In the area, I mean?”
Saint gives a jerky nod. “I—um. Yeah. I think for a bit. I decided I really needed to list the semi, but I can’t until I deal with Mamá’s things and fix a few things up.”
“Wherever you were . . . you can leave there that easily?”
Saint lets out a breath. “I was in Bristol. Doing work for Augie still, but remotely, you know, the accounting and ordering and things. I was—well, it’s so dumb at this point, I feel like an idiot even saying this—but I had decided to go back to school. I’ve been accepted at the University of Bristol. They’ve worked out a thing for me to transfer my other credits, and if I go full-time, I’d have my degree by next summer.”
Auden only stares at him. His brave, bashful Saint. He wants to hold him so much right now that his body is shivering from the strain of staying still.
“I don’t think that’s dumb at all,” Auden says. “I think it’s wonderful.” And then Saint’s words fully catch up with him. “What do you mean, you had decided? Are you saying you’re no longer going to do it?”
Saints rubs at his thighs again, the ring on his thumb catching the light as he does. “I’m saying I’m not sure,” he responds after a moment. “The semester doesn’t start until October, so I still have a few weeks to consider it, but I just . . . well, the library still hasn’t filled my position and said they’d take me back in a heartbeat. And mostly—it felt wrong being there, in Bristol. Being far away from Thornchapel. And you.”
Their eyes meet across the room, and Auden draws in a deep breath.
“St. Sebastian—” he starts, and then Proserpina enters the room with a tea tray. There’re also three lowballs and a bottle of Macallan on it too.
Auden falls silent. He’s not sure what he was going to say anyway. Stop talking like that, maybe. Or maybe, please talk like that some more, please tell me how much you need me, because I need you so much I’m forever bled dry with it.
Proserpina serves them, and then sinks into a graceful lounging position against his leg, her head against his knee while she traces her finger around the edge of her teacup. And with her there, her silky hair just at the perfect height for him to caress, her bottom tucked lush and warm against the side of his foot, everything feels so deeply and legibly good. Like they are a garment that’s finally been stitched together or a chain that’s finally been linked or a keystone set into an arch made of wounds and purposes instead of stones.
This is how it should be. And so he can be as he should be.
“Why are you here, St. Sebastian?” he asks. “It cannot be only that you’re doubting school, can it? There is another reason.”
St. Sebastian fiddles with his thumb ring. “I have something to tell you. Both of you, both of you should know. I hadn’t said anything yet, because I’m still not sure—I mean, I still don’t know for sure.”
“Know what?” Poe prompts gently.
Saint takes a breath like he’s about to step off a cliff. “Freddie Dansey thinks he may be my father.”
“What?” she whispers.
Auden says nothing. He doesn’t think he can.
“This means Ralph wouldn’t be my father,” Saint adds, as if to clarify. As if he thinks Auden isn’t grasping the implications of it. “Freddie would be my father, which would make Delphine my half-sister, but you wouldn’t be my brother. We wouldn’t be related at all.”
“Why does Freddie think this?” Auden asks, as calmly as he can. His mind is racing. His pulse is racing. He doesn’t need to look outside to know the forest is stirring for him too.
Saint explains about the Guests and the children of the manor, and how Ralph wanted to carry on the tradition. Of how Freddie had learned of him, and how their conversation at the gala had prompted him to tell Saint the truth. “So you see,” he finishes all in a rush, his hands fluttering above his knees. “Maybe Ralph isn’t my father at all. Maybe everything can be—we can be—Auden, will you look at me?”
Auden’s been looking not at St. Sebastian’s face, but at his hands. At the silver ring around his thumb, the one with the worn crest of Auden’s family stamped into the middle. A strange loneliness folds itself into Auden’s chest, and he tries to ignore it, because he’s not sure what it means.
Auden hasn’t met Saint’s gaze quickly enough, it appears, because Saint moves from the bed and lowers himself to his knees in front of Auden. He puts his hands on Auden’s thighs.
“Don’t you see?” Saint asks urgently. “This means—this changes everything, Auden, absolutely everything. All the reasons we couldn’t—the reason—it’s gone now!”
“And that’s why you came,” Auden says. He shouldn’t touch St. Sebastian right now; it’s not safe. It’s not safe because for the first time in so long, Saint is kneeling at his feet. Saint is kneeling at his feet and offering . . . offering everything. And it’s not just relief or joy that Auden feels coursing through his veins now, but possession and power, and if he touches Saint, he might never stop.
He touches him anyway. He presses his thumb to Saint’s lip piercing. He remembers how that piercing felt on his cock all those months ago, when Saint caught him in the tower. When Saint crawled to him and licked him clean.
He’s hard. His cock has lengthened down the leg of his trousers, pushing against the fabric, aching for him to notice that his two subs are right here at his feet. It’s mirrored by the ache in his chest—the ache from having both halves of his heart here again.
God is cruel to give him this. God is cruel to wave this miracle before him, to offer him cool water to finally, finally quench his thirst.
Auden drags in a breath and forces himself to remember. He must remember what he’s learned. He must not forget now when it matters the most.
“This changes nothing, sweet martyr,” he tells St. Sebastian. He manages to lift his thumb from Saint’s lip, and the lifting hurts, like he’s plunged his han
d into a bed of coals. But still he holds strong. “This changes nothing.”
Saint’s mouth opens. His pupils are blown so big now, and Auden realizes he’s having the same physical reaction to kneeling in front of Auden as Auden has to him doing it.
“Why?” Saint whispers. “Why does it change nothing?”
Anger arcs through Auden so fast that he nearly catches fire with it. He is so tired of being the strong one, the wise one. He is so tired of being this new version of himself, when the old version would already have Saint and Poe on his bed in a sprawl of skin and sex.
He is angry enough that he does what he’s wanted to do since the moment he saw St. Sebastian in the chapel, and he threads his fingers through Saint’s dark hair and drags his mouth to where Auden’s erection pushes against his trousers.
“If you put me in your mouth right now,” Auden says in a low, furious voice, “if I told you to bend over this desk and allow me to use you—if we spend the next few days doing every depraved thing that we think we’re owed—and then it turns out not to be true, then what? Then what, St. Sebastian? If you get those results back from the lab and Freddie isn’t your father after all, how do you think you will feel?”
Poe’s hand curls around Auden’s ankle. A subtle reprimand.
With an unhappy hiss, Auden releases Saint, who has shock and hurt written all over his face.
Ignoring the stiff throb of his erection, Auden leans forward. “Even if you get the answer you want from the test, what happens if the lab comes back in two years and says there’s been a processing error? That they’ve gotten your results mixed up and you really are Ralph’s son? What if that happens in five years? Ten years? What if we’re married by then? What then, St. Sebastian? Will you leave me then? Will I always be afraid that you’ll be yanked away from me?”
Saint’s lips are trembling. “That’s not—that’s not going to happen.”
“That the lab could make a mistake or that you would leave me if it turned out they did? Tell me what you want, St. Sebastian. You know what I want. You know everything I’d be willing to do to have it. But all you seem to know is what you don’t want.”
Door of Bruises (Thornchapel Book 4) Page 15
