And, convincing myself that this is the right thing, that this is the only thing to be done, the only way we can have most of everything and only a little nothing, I swallow and nod.
“Ready when you are.”
Part II
Midsummer
Midsummer
St. Sebastian
He doesn’t remember precisely how he came to be in a car with Auden and Poe driving down I-70, but he would never dream of complaining about it. The windows are down, the radio is blaring something loud and fun, and Poe’s hair is everywhere—a storm of hair, dark and silky—as she drives and sings and eventually goads Auden into singing too.
His voice is terrible, hers too, and St. Sebastian leans his head against the backseat window and smiles as he listens to them. Outside, stretches of Kansas flash by—green fields, greener pastures, broken by lines of stunted, prairie-hardy trees and shallow creeks with cows crowding the edges. This isn’t home—this isn’t sunlight glinting off glass and waving off asphalt, this isn’t a sidewalk ready to scald bare feet, paletas dripping onto your hands if you don’t eat them fast enough, the splash of a pool, the smell of chlorine, the hot sand of Burger’s Lake—all of that is Texas and Texas’s alone.
But it reminds him of home. The heat, the sun, the tar-ribboned interstate. The cows in their fields too, standing up to their bellies in muddy ponds or crowding under the shade of the one tree big enough to cast a shadow.
Prairie. It’s the prairie in summer, and even though St. Sebastian doesn’t think of the prairie as his home, even though his version of the prairie is made of mega highways and air conditioners humming like giant metal bees, he still feels himself breathe easier here.
It’s the Vitamin D, Poe will tell him later, once they’ve finished their drive from the airport and settled into her father’s living room with cold beers and panting dogs sprawled between them. No way are we getting enough at Thornchapel.
Maybe it is. Maybe he’s been craving the sun and the heat, the slow-rolling summer that bakes and bakes and bakes, doing its little chemistries inside his cells and making him stronger. Or maybe it’s the open sky, so far away and such a sweet blue that it’s impossible to believe in clouds and storms and wind, even when Poe points out trees snapped like sticks from a tornado last year. Or maybe it’s the open road, straight and wide and mostly empty, a runway to a horizon so distant that it feels like a movie set, a backdrop, a painting propped against the real horizon somewhere closer by.
Whatever it is, he’s still smiling as they roll into Lawrence—another car with Delphine, Rebecca, and Becket behind them—driving through a cozy downtown of brick storefronts and winding to the foot of a big hill.
Above them, there’s the University of Kansas, perched on the hilltop, glimpses of bright limestone and red roofs. Here at the base of the hill are narrow streets of old Italianate houses, fussy Victorian Baroques, low-slung Craftsmans, all jostling among mature oaks and maples and sweet gums, with dogwoods and crabapple trees squatting between. When they park and start spilling out of their cars, stretching and scratching themselves, Delphine twirls a slow circle in the middle of the shady street.
“I thought there’d be cowboys here,” she says.
“Just drunk college kids and hippies, mostly,” Poe says, popping open the trunk of the car. “Well, and the professors aren’t drunk or hippies. Usually. Daddy!” This last she directs to a tall, thin man who’s just emerged from the two-story house in front of them. She skips right into his arms and they hug for a long moment.
Saint looks over to see Auden staring at the fatherly embrace, an almost-puzzled knit to his brow, and he thinks that for all of Auden’s gifts—the money and the house and the education fit for a prince—Auden’s never felt the affectionate embrace of a father happy to see his son.
Even Saint had that, for a little while at least.
David Markham finally releases Poe, although he keeps her close as he greets the rest of them, his eyes lingering on each and every one of their faces—especially Rebecca’s. Rebecca notices and clears her throat.
“Ah, yes,” David says, blushing a little above his beard. He has light, brownish hair and blueish eyes behind trendy glasses, and there’s so little of him in Poe—except for those easily pinked cheeks and the button of his nose. And then in the way he talks, which is precise and somehow also tangential and meandering at the same time, as if his mind has so many rooms crammed full of so many thoughts that he has mentally sprint between them all in order to communicate. “Welcome to the house, come on in—let me show you where you’re staying, there’s plenty of room and I’m a deep sleeper as Poe can tell you, so no need to keep quiet when you’re coming in or out. I’m teaching a summer course, so I’ll be gone most of today and tomorrow, but the day of the funeral of course, I’ll be home, and the day after—it’s Intro to Religious Studies, I could teach it in my sleep, normally they give it to a lecturer, but I wanted to stay busy this summer, there’s never enough work it seems, with the house so quiet, although I could get another dog, I suppose. Are you thirsty?”
They all look at each other, then back to David.
“Very,” Auden says politely, and they go inside.
Rebecca and Delphine took a guest room, as did Becket. Saint opted for a couch in the attic, and Auden dropped his and Poe’s bags in Poe’s girlhood room. David frowned at that, but said nothing. Perhaps he felt comforted by the presence of only one twin-sized bed in the room, thinking someone would sleep in a sleeping bag or end up on a couch downstairs, which was rather foolish in Saint’s opinion. Auden Guest would sleep wherever he wanted to sleep, even if that meant using Proserpina as a warm, curvy blanket.
After dinner, they ended up at a bar a few blocks away, which is where they sat now. The three Brits perched on their stools, looking inordinately out of place in their pleats and presses and Italian leather belts, while Saint and Poe fought over the beer menu and Becket checked his phone.
“Trouble at the parish?” Saint asked.
Becket shook his head. “Everything’s fine. But I’ve never taken a vacation before and it’s unnerving not to be there. A deacon is leading the Chaplet and Rosary recitations, and they’re sending in a priest from Bristol to do the Mass I’m missing, but what if he can’t find something in the sacristy? Or someone forgets to lock up and teenagers get in—” He breaks off, blowing out a breath. He’s wearing a chambray button-up, white pants, and deck shoes. He looks like he left a yacht behind, not a tiny forest church.
“I need a drink,” he mutters, and then edges off his stool to walk up to the bar.
Meanwhile, Delphine is trying and failing to find a good selfie angle. The neon beer signs and giant televisions airing baseball games are fucking with her light.
“What would you like?” Rebecca asks.
“Bubbles,” Delphine says, still tilting her head this way and that as she holds out her phone in front of her. “And a cocktail too, the cutest one they have. Not to drink—just for me to take a picture of. Okay, well, maybe to drink too.”
Rebecca sighs, but she goes without protest. After a minute, Delphine hops off her stool too to go search for a better selfie spot in the room.
Auden is squinting at a sign behind the bar, and he finally pulls out his clear-framed glasses so he can read it. “Rock Chalk Jay . . . hawk?” he pronounces carefully. Then he looks at Poe, his face as expectant as a Latin pupil’s after a recitation.
Poe’s laughing and is presumably about to explain what a jayhawk is when a woman approaches the table. She’s olive-skinned and dark-haired, with kohl-rimmed eyes and a septum piercing. She’s dressed in black boots, a black miniskirt, with a red shirt that says Fire Walk with Me.
“Little doll,” the woman says warmly.
“Mistress Emily,” Poe says, and she ducks her head in a way that makes Saint think of kneeling.
“You didn’t say you were coming back,” Emily chastises, and Saint notices a faint note of disapproval
in her tone. He remembers that this is the ex-girlfriend, the ex-Mistress. The one who gave Proserpina stripes on her ass to wear across the ocean. He looks at her more closely, suddenly aware of his own boots, the glinting metal in his own face. Poe seems to have a type.
“It’s for my mother’s funeral,” Poe says. “We found her remains in England this spring, and now she’ll be laid to rest here.” She sounds matter-of-fact as she explains it. A librarian of her own tragedy. Far away from the sobbing girl he held in his arms the morning they found her mother.
Saint thinks about how people can be like this—impersonal and efficient, even when they are also capable of screaming into the fog. Even when they have to be beaten and fucked in order to use their heart properly again.
How can you ever know a person when they are ever changing, stronger on some days, softer on others? She is like the ritual landscape described in Dr. Davidson’s book, Saint thinks. Secrets upon secrets upon secrets, buried under flowers and thorns.
Emily’s demeanor changes at Poe’s explanation, softening a little. “Oh, sweet doll. I’m so sorry.”
Auden’s hand covers Poe’s on the table, offering comfort and staking claim all at once.
Emily doesn’t fail to notice this, and a small, tight smile pulls at her mouth. “I don’t think we’ve met before,” she says, extending a hand to Auden. “I’m Emily Genovese.”
“Auden Guest,” he says, returning her handshake. His expression is polite, his mouth shaped into amiability, but something burns in the air around him. “And this is St. Sebastian Martinez.”
Saint offers his hand too, and Emily nods. “It’s nice to meet you both. Are you . . . friends of Poe’s?”
Auden’s face doesn’t change, but there’s no hesitation when he answers. “She’s mine.”
Emily has the look of someone whose suspicions are being confirmed. “Ah,” she responds.
“And she’s dating St. Sebastian too,” Auden adds, always careful to include Saint.
They’re both careful, these days. The last five weeks have been nothing but care. Tiptoeing around the past. Dancing around the future.
“Ah,” Emily says. “I see.”
“It’s good to see you,” Poe says, clearly trying to break the tension. “Are you still going to Orthia’s these days? That’s our old kink club,” she says to Saint and Auden by way of explanation.
Emily nods, her eyes scanning over where Auden’s hand is still curled possessively over Poe’s. She seems to come to a decision. “I was actually going to go tonight,” she says. “Do you want to come? I could get your group in for free.”
The air around Auden burns brighter, hotter, and both Poe and Saint feel it. Poe turns and smiles at her king, who can’t hide his interest. Saint wishes he’d already ordered a drink so he could down it now.
“If all of us can go,” Poe says, “then we’d love to.”
Orthia’s is neither glamorous nor grimy. It’s in a converted warehouse next to the Kansas River, underlit, under-furnished, but meticulously clean. It’s laid out with all the composition and Feng shui of an exterior door expo—curtained stalls that can be either private or public run through the warehouse in two long corridors; there’re plastic totes crammed with assorted items stuffed into corners and behind tables; and someone sits in a folding chair at the front door and officially makes them members of what, for legal reasons, is considered a social club. In the remaining space, there is a makeshift bar, a low stage surrounded by leather benches and chairs, and then plenty of equipment scattered about, for people to play with in full view.
It’s where they’re at now, Poe and Delphine stripped to their underthings and cuffed side by side to St. Andrew’s crosses, while Rebecca and Auden peruse the impact play implements like children inside a toy store. Becket claimed jet lag and didn’t come, and Saint hovers at the edges of the scene, restless and annoyed with himself. He knew there’d be no place for him here, he knew that he wouldn’t be the one cuffed to a cross and made to endure Auden’s cruelty, and yet still he came. Why? Is he so masochistic that he’ll use anything to hurt himself, even watching Poe get something he’ll never, ever get again?
Apparently, yes.
Which would surprise nobody, he supposes.
The warehouse is dim, pounding with music that can only be described as music for people who wish they were vampires, and so Saint doesn’t bother to hide his expression as Auden finally selects a flogger and then steps up to Poe to whisper in her ear. He doesn’t bother to muffle the groan he makes when Auden bites Poe’s shoulder and then has to visibly adjust himself. He doesn’t conceal a single thing as Auden starts flogging the woman they both love—lightly at first, and then harder, and then faster, until Poe is shivering. Until Poe’s body has started twisting with delicious confusion, until she both shies away and chases the sensation, unsure of what she needs.
Auden’s sure though. He changes floggers, something heavier now with sharp, angled tips. It’s not the kind of flogger that will make you bleed, but it’s not too far away from that kind of flogger either. The first hit has Poe’s knees buckling, and her moan carries over all the heavy bass and snarling female vocals, hitting Saint right in the stomach.
She’d moaned like that this morning, but so softly it was barely audible, after Saint slipped into the airplane bathroom behind her and fingered her so slowly that by the time she orgasmed, a flight attendant had come by and straightened their seats. Later tonight, he’d come too. Even if it means fucking her on the twin bed while Auden watches.
No, he reminds himself. Brothers.
But it’s so hard, because he has no practice being a brother, and neither does Auden, and anyway, what happens when two brothers are in love with the same woman? Surely there’s some leeway then?
Watching, maybe? Helping? Maybe even being inside her together?
Which makes it sound like Poe is a toy to be shared, which that’s not it at all (except when that’s the game she’s playing with Auden). But she is the single unbrotherly ribbon tying them together, and so sometimes Saint finds himself trying to reach Auden’s body through hers. Searching out every small cruelty Auden’s marked her with and then kissing it, worshiping it, murmuring litanies of prayer into her skin.
These past five weeks living with Poe and Auden, he has been deliriously happy . . . and also tattooed with so much yearning on the inside of his skin that he wonders how no one else sees it.
Well, Poe had seen it. At least once.
That day had been a hot one, and they’d spent the morning in the laziest possible way, splashing in the indoor pool. He’d been watching the way the water slid and sluiced over the lean corrugations of Auden’s chest and stomach, he’d been marking the dark hair trailing from Auden’s navel down into the waistband of his trunks.
He was miserable. And then a laughing Auden had pounced on Poe and playfully guided her hand into his swimming shorts. There’d only been a glimpse, a flash really, of a hard cock, straight and proud and jutting up with male arrogance, but then Poe wrapped her hand around it.
Auden’s gaze had met Saint’s, his eyes loud with all the things they’d agreed not to say.
It should be you here too, those eyes said. It should be you both.
Saint abruptly couldn’t exist in that pool a single moment longer. He muttered an excuse and then fled up into the hills. He sat staring down into the trees wearing nothing but damp trunks and unlaced boots until Poe found him and sat down next to him. Her hair was still wet and her cheeks were flushed, and Saint had wondered if Auden had fucked her before he let her leave.
But she said nothing about Auden when she spoke. Instead, she asked, “Am I enough?”
Saint had looked at her then, feeling horror and guilt and panic, and she’d held up a hand. “I’m not trying to coax compliments out of you, or plea for proofs of love. I don’t want to be that girl, okay? I just need to know the truth. Because right now I have half of two men, and if it wasn’t hard en
ough watching you both suffer, it’s compounded by the fact that I can’t heal it for either of you. I’ll never be him, Saint. And I’ll never begrudge you loving him or missing that part of your love, but I also have to be enough on my own. I won’t settle for anything less.”
“Poe—”
“And before you ask, I’ve just had this same talk with Auden,” she said. “I don’t mind being in between, St. Sebastian. But I can’t be instead of.”
Her eyes had been a blazing green then, like an alchemist’s fire, and he’d pulled her into his lap, he’d kissed her, he’d told her the truth—that she was enough, that she was everything, she was an infinity of love and his infinity was sewn to hers. But that it was the same with Auden too, and even in this new life of brotherhood—sharing days, dinners, drinks by the fire, seeing each other in the hallway, reading in the garden with a bottle of wine passed between them—he still missed that last piece of their love. The piece they agreed to bury together.
Except it wouldn’t stay dead, and Saint didn’t know how to fix that. Maybe he never would.
Poe had nodded then, understanding. She, too, had a heart made for two people. Only her love was permitted, while theirs was a sin of blood.
He’d reached under her dress and found her naked underneath it. He’d freed his shaft and had her ride his lap under the golden May sun until they’d both felt like themselves again.
And so the three of them had managed to cope, managed to share a house and a life for the last month. Managed to share all the parts of love, save for one.
In five weeks, he’s learned this: with Poe he is complete, and without Auden he is not. He doesn’t know how both things can be true at once, but they are.
In the here and now, Auden gives Poe a break. He goes up to the cross to kiss her cheek, her sweat-misted forehead, he gives her a drink of water and murmurs things in her ear until she nods, her eyelids fluttering. And then he leaves her for a moment, coming up to St. Sebastian with the kind of direct steps that says Auden knew where he was all along.
Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel Book 3) Page 22