I press the heels of my hands into my eyes, replacing Thornchapel and the trees with bright, staticky sparks.
“But it was a lie,” I say. “There were no roses. No flowers. Not for me.”
I feel Becket’s hand on my back. Not on my shoulder, but right in the middle, right in the place where you’d stroke a bird between its wings. Without meaning to, I relax into his touch, a small shaft of warmth sinking into my chest.
“I won’t say anything until you’re ready to talk about it,” Becket murmurs, “but I will say this: you should find Poe. She’s worried about you. And nothing about your love for her has to change.”
I think of Poe’s fist pumping like a heart. The three of us share one love, one bleeding, prickling snarl of it, and there’s no untangling it, any more than there’s untangling the brambles clinging to the chapel walls in the woods below.
But he’s not wrong about finding Poe. I’ve been a coward enough for one day, and besides, cowardice is lonely work. I miss her. She misses me. It should be that simple, and I’ll make it so.
Even if it means the beginning of the end: the start of us unbrambling and rending each other ragged.
Becket stands up and stretches. Against the Dartmoor sunset, he looks like a commercial for running clothes, a magazine cover for outdoor living. There’s no longer any trace of that unknowable thing lurking inside him, no trace of the Essene, the anchorite, the priest who trades in blood and flesh. He’s just a boy from Virginia who grew up tall and blond and moneyed.
He holds out his hand to me and I take it, letting him help me to my feet. Our shadows are long enough that I know it will be almost full dark by the time I’m across the river.
“Are you parked close?” I ask. There’s a B road only half a mile away, winding between tors, and Thorncombe is only about two miles from here. Honestly, there’s hardly anything dangerous on the moors—the occasional adder and maybe some grumpy cows, depending on where you are—but the weather can turn quickly, and the darkness of night is near total, meaning it’s very easy to sprain an ankle or twist a knee, and then find yourself drenched and shivering with no cell service.
“I’m on the road,” he says, pointing. “And I’ve got my flashlight if I need it. The path is good and well-marked.”
“I could always walk with you to the village and then drive you back to your car.”
Becket’s already leaping down off our rock, landing with the stable poise of a professional athlete. I follow, as easily as he does, if not as springily—more lynx than deer—and then he pulls me into a quick hug. Too quick for me to slouch out of it.
“It’s going to be okay,” he tells me. “And St. Petroc’s will be unlocked. Tonight and every other night. You know you’re always welcome.”
I nod, my throat tight, and he bounds down the hill, bending back toward the path that snakes along the bottom of the reaves. And then I take a deep breath and walk the other way, down Reavy Hill to the River Thorne and then on to Thornchapel.
The house is quiet when I let myself inside, the quiet of a tomb or museum, with a stillness that creeps along my skin.
You’re not him, I can imagine the house saying. You’re not him.
But the creeping silence is broken when Sir James Frazer hears the south door click closed, and he comes tearing into the mudroom, back legs scrabbling on the flags as he careens around the corner, howling balefully until he sees it’s just me.
Instantly, the howls change to whines as he nudges my hand and then prances near the wellies lined up against the wall. He nudges my hand again, with a meaningful sort of look, and then I ask him, “Outside?”
He answers me with another prance and a lick on my hand. I open the door again. He streaks off into the gloaming, barking at nothing and seeming like the happiest dog in the world. I prop open the door and go find Poe.
The library is barely lit when I get there—just a reading light on a table and the glow of her scanning equipment—like dusk has crept up on her without her noticing. And indeed she doesn’t even seem to notice me as I slip through the doors, her head down and earbuds in her ears as she hums happily to herself. At some point she’s pinned her hair up with some pens, but several strands have since fallen to hang around her face and neck, and she’s kicked off her shoes, wearing a pair of fuzzy socks instead. It makes her shorter than usual, more rumpled, and more adorable for all that. For a few minutes, I just lean in the doorway and watch her work. Watch the way the shadows catch on her dark eyelashes and around her hauntingly plump mouth. Watch as she competently pages through books older than the country she was born in, as she fingers colorful lithographs, quirky typefaces, rich end papers—the minutiae book lovers live for.
I drift closer, half dreading her seeing me, half unable to resist. She’s tweedy and pretty and lush, and I’m getting hard just by looking at her, but I don’t know if she’ll want me now, I don’t know if I’m allowed to touch her, taste her, feel her—
She finally turns all the way around, reaching for a pen that’s rolled to the edge of the table, and then she sees me, her eyes lighting up as she tears her earbuds free. “Saint! Thank God!” She’s over to me in a few skirt-bouncing steps, flinging her arms around my waist and burying her face into my chest. “I was so worried,” she mumbles into me, her fingers bunching in the thin fabric of my T-shirt. “I wanted to come find you, but Becket said that would stress you out more, so I’ve been trying to be understanding, but I was almost out of patience. I was considering walking down to your house and just banging on the door until you let me in.”
I slide my hands around her, exhaling a long, jagged breath. Her back is warm under my hands, and her hair smells like summer—like reading a book under the shade of a big tree. Paper and wildflowers and sunshine. I fill my lungs with her, with Proserpina; I breathe her in so she’ll be in my body, in my blood, bonded to my cells. I want my body to be made of her, built from her, layers and layers of Proserpina inside St. Sebastian.
I kiss her hair, and it’s so silky and soft that I kiss it again. “I wasn’t home,” I finally say. “I had to work and then I took a walk after to clear my head.”
“Saint,” she whispers, finally tilting her head up to me. Even in the dim light of the library, her eyes are greener than a cat’s. “Auden told me, and I—I don’t even know what to say. I’m so sorry that asshole was your father, and I’m so sorry that Auden hid it from you. I’ll kill him if you want, you know.”
Impossibly, I feel the corner of my mouth turn up.
“Just a little murder. Not a lot.” She smiles, but the smile doesn’t last long. “Are you okay? Are you doing okay?”
I nod, my throat going tight again. I’m not planning on saying anything else about it at all—because I don’t want to, I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to feel about it—I just want to stand here and breathe in the girl I love and never have to think about this again.
But then Poe pulls harder on my shirt, as if I’m not close enough, and I breathe in another lungful of drowsy summer flowers and somehow I am talking, without planning to. Somehow the words are coming out, and I can’t stop them.
“I don’t know if I can forgive him,” I say. “I hate that he lied. I hate that it’s true. I hate that I was so happy, and I hate that I feel so foolish. Like it was transparently, pathologically stupid to have believed I could have . . . that. But the thing that makes me sadder—angrier even—is knowing Ralph could have told me at any time. He could have called, written, pulled me aside that summer or any summer after, and just fucking told me.”
St. Sebastian Perth Martinez, yes. I know who you are.
“And then Mamá—” The words have tied themselves into knots deep in my throat; I have to hide my face in Poe’s hair in order to force them out. “She lied to me too, you know? And maybe that’s worse? Because she lied my entire life—every single day—and then she left me, she went and died and now I can’t yell at her, I can’t scream at her, I can’t m
ake her fix it. I can’t even ask her for the whole story, I can’t even learn the entire truth. All the things you’re supposed to know about where you come from and about why you’re here—I don’t know any of that, and I never will. It’s just this question. This unknowable thing I’ll have to live with my entire life, and on top of everything—losing Auden, reckoning with the sins I’ve made with him, knowing everyone has lied—it’s somehow the not knowing that bothers me the most. There will always be a curtain between me and the entire truth. And every person who could possibly draw it back—Ralph, Richard, my mother—has died.”
I finish with a short suck of air, having run myself clean out of breath, and then every part of me flushes hot with embarrassment. This is why I hate talking about feelings. It’s like feeding stray cats—you do it once or twice, even just a few scraps of food, and then one day you have a back garden full of the little beasts licking their paws and mewling at you.
I’m about to apologize to Poe for all the emotional vomit when she looks up at me again. And there’s no aversion on her face, no pity. There’s a cute little line between her eyebrows as she studies my face like it’s one of the library’s leather tomes.
“There’s got to be someone who knows,” she says. “I know you said your mother didn’t have very many friends in the village other than those in the Historical Society—do you think she would have confided in them? Or perhaps—you’re not going to like this—but perhaps Augie knew? If he was close with your father—your real father, I mean, not your biological one—then he might know?”
“My uncle doesn’t know,” I say sharply. “He never would have accepted me if he hadn’t thought I was Dad’s—Richard’s, I mean.”
As soon as I say it, it feels a little unfair. Truthfully, Augie’s never really set me at a distance. When I came back from Texas, he was eager to have me work for him and has been begging me to consider taking over the day-to-day of the company. He’s always had faith in me and my work . . . But how much of that faith is because he thinks I’m Richard’s son?
Poe rubs a hand along my back, soothing me. “And the Historical Society?”
I think of the superannuated crones and gaffers at the few society meetings Mamá managed to drag me to. “Too old to be confidantes, I think, and she wouldn’t have confided family business in them anyway.” And as soon as I say it, as soon as I say family business, I know.
“Ana María,” I say with a sigh.
“Who’s Ana María?”
“A cousin. My mother’s cousin, actually. They were best friends growing up, studied abroad together in college. Mamá talked to her almost every day. She might know.”
I’m too far past hope to think I’ll find real answers, but there is relief in realizing there’s something I can do, any kind of door to knock on. I let out a long breath and pull Poe in tight. “Thank you.”
“You can thank me by going to the gala in a couple of weeks,” she says promptly, and I stiffen in her arms, pulling away.
“No,” I say.
“Please?”
“Poe.”
“I know Auden’s going to be there, but come for me,” she says. She reaches for my hand and tugs me over to one of the long tables in the middle of the room, where she turns and hops up on the edge. She pulls me by the belt loops between her spread legs.
I nearly shudder with how good it feels to be pulled and led and made, and the brush of her thighs around my hips makes my erection hard enough to hurt. Sitting with her legs apart like this has her skirt rucked all the way up, and I can see the black cotton of her panties. Another sign Auden isn’t home—otherwise she’d be bare under her skirt, available for his use any time he needed it.
“He’s still going to be there too,” I finally say, distractedly. Her exposed thighs are so fucking sexy, those cotton panties so tempting. Her cunt is at the perfect height; I could yank her knickers to the side, unzip my jeans, and be inside her in seconds.
With a coy little hum, she trails her own fingers up her leg, ghosting them across her pussy. “He’ll be busy mingling.”
“He said he wanted to show us off,” I say. “He’ll want you on his arm.”
“He wants you on his arm too.” She’s teasing herself now, tracing the seam of her cunt, showing me where I could fuck.
“I’m not going, Poe,” I say, my eyes on her fingers.
“Everyone’s coming. Even Becket. I don’t want you to be the only one not there.” Her finger slides under the elastic edge of her panties and then slowly draws them back. Shadows hang like a second dress around her, but I can still see the unmistakeable glisten of her sex. I can see the small, wet place where I need so badly to be.
“I won’t feel left out,” I promise on a rasp, running my own hands up her thighs now. I have to touch her, I have to feel her wetness for myself. And she lets me, moving her hand so that I can push a thumb inside her.
We both inhale at the same time—her from the invasion, and me from the pure, tight feel of her. There’s nothing softer than her pussy. I remember thinking that the night I lost my virginity to her, I remember thinking that if I’d known how good it felt to fuck, I never would have been able to wait so long.
“Let me,” I say. Beg. “Let me inside you.”
“Come to the gala.”
“Poe,” I groan.
“I’m not going back to how things were before,” she says, rocking into my hand. I slide my thumb free, meaning to stop touching her altogether, but then she lets out the saddest, sexiest whimper, and I can’t bear it. I push two fingers back inside, my entire body humming as she arches to me, my skin aching, my balls drawing tight.
“I’m not going back to all of us leading separate lives,” Poe says. “I won’t do it.”
“You and Auden won’t have to change anything. And if you want to—I mean, I still want to be with you.”
“I know,” she says. “I know you do. I want to be with you too—I love you. And I love him. But we didn’t want two or three separate relationships, Saint. We wanted one.”
“Yeah,” I say. Bitterly. “We did.”
“Auden was wrong to lie, but surely—”
I keep stroking her with firm, steady fucks of my hand, but now I meet her gaze, lifting my eyebrows. “Surely what, Poe? You can’t be okay with—”
“I am,” she interrupts. “I am okay with it. I’m pissed Auden lied to you, but you sharing a father doesn’t bother me.”
“Because you’re not the one committing a sin.”
“You don’t believe in sin,” she says.
And I don’t answer. I no longer know if I believe in sin or not. I don’t know what I believe in.
It used to be Thornchapel.
It was supposed to be Auden.
I don’t know what I believe because I barely even know how I feel.
No. No, that’s not true. I do know.
I feel like someone’s come in with embroidery scissors and started snipping around my heart.
But the feeling eases when Poe puts her hand over my chest. I drop my head to the top of hers, and we breathe together for a moment—her palm against my bleeding heart and my fingers touching her in her sweetest place. Wordlessly, she reaches for the fly of my jeans, and I let her. I let her pop open the button on the waistband, I let her unzip me. I let her tug my pants around my hips and free my shaft.
My breath hitches as she gives me a light, barely there caress.
“Do you have a condom?” Poe whispers.
I do. I pull my fingers free and fumble in my back pocket to give it to her, and she makes a total mess of trying to open it, and I try to help, but my fingers are slick and the inside of the condom packet is slick, and we’re both suddenly giggling with how stupid it is, until finally she’s rolling the latex over me and I’m not giggling anymore, I’m not giggling at all. The pressure of her hands, the slippery insides of the sheath—I’m exhaling in short, rough breaths, barely able to hang on.
“Can’t wa
it,” I grunt. “Need to now.”
Poe doesn’t stop me; there’s no talk of the gala or Auden or anything else. She slides her hands around my hips and squeezes, digging her fingers into the top of my ass, and it’s just the kick of objectification and ownership I need to be truly lost. I shove inside her and groan, unable to bear how tight and warm she is, unable to bear being without it even for as long as it takes to pull out and stroke back in again.
She doesn’t seem to be able to bear it either, because whenever I separate my hips from her thighs, she grips me harder, urging me closer, so the mating is close and urgent. I band an arm around her waist and fill my free hand with her curvy, plush bottom, and then I hold her tight to me as we move.
“More,” she says into my ear. “Use me.”
Except it’s the two of us using each other, it’s the both of us ordering, taking, seeking. A circle of selfishness creating a circle of submission. She commands me to fuck her dirty, she spurs me on with greedy hands and so I’m the one being used, cheapened, enjoyed solely for the thick cock to be ridden. And it’s freedom. Because inside Poe’s body, with her teeth on my neck and her eyes fluttering, the pain of the last two days eases somewhat.
The embroidery scissors around my heart stop snipping. There isn’t the raw, angry despair coiling in my stomach. There isn’t the cold, whispering voice that now I’ll be alone, that I’ve always been alone, that I’ll die alone.
There isn’t the dull, bruising pulse of Auden’s name in the back of my mind, thudding in time with my heart.
With her, I remember how I felt just a couple days ago, crashing through the trees and wildly in love. With her, it’s always summer.
Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel Book 3) Page 13
