Page 103 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
It was just another burn, another kind of heat to add to the glow of the library fire and the warmth of Poe’s kisses.
Dizzying, maybe. Forbidden, definitely.
But translucent. You could hold it up to the light and say, see? I’ve only had this much sin tonight.
Or perhaps it was like scotch. Drinking it would cost me more than I could afford, but then what else would burn as good going down?
I tried not to care that we couldn’t seem to resist these little sips of each other. I tried to write it off the same way I wrote off an extra drink or two at the end of the night. Who did it hurt if sometimes he made me sit on the floor by his feet or if sometimes he held my hand while we walked down to the river? What did it really matter if we trembled when we hugged each other good night, if sometimes he let his lips ghost over the shell of my ear as we did?
It didn’t matter, of course it didn’t. And it hurt nothing and no one for him to treat us both to those small acts of dominance, for me to pine after him the same way I’ve done for years.
Except I was wrong, it did hurt someone.
It hurt us.
After we come back from Kansas, something changes. Something I can’t define. Perhaps it was the time we shared Poe at Emily’s club, or maybe it was hearing the full story of what Ralph had done in the thorn chapel. Or maybe it was the ring, a confirmation and a kindness and a taunt, all in one. Or maybe it has nothing to do with any of those things—maybe it’s simply spring passing into real summer, when everything goes hot and lush anyway.
Whatever it is, it’s no longer a sweet, sipping burn. It no longer pours itself into the cracks and empty spaces left behind by everything else, it’s no longer light and mutable and easily contained.
It thickens. It pervades. Instead of a burn, it’s a crush, and instead of a sin, it becomes the fabric of my days.
What do I breathe? Wanting him.
What do I drink? What do I eat? Wanting him, wanting him.
Every element is him now, every act is suffused with the memory of his touch and his voice, and it’s as if the pain feeds itself, as if it feeds me, because it only grows stronger, and me along with it. Poets write about growing weak with heartbreak, about wasting away, but I solidify, I grow in the face of my own starvation. Summer means long hours for Augie, it means my hands grow rougher and my body grows bigger. And every fiber of muscle, every lock of hair, is grown with the sear of wanting a man I can never have.
Thornchapel knows it too.
Storms threaten but never break. The air grows so sultry and oppressive that even our shady stone manor is nearly unbearable inside. I take to swimming in the river whenever I can because the indoor pool is too cloying. Poe starts wearing bikini tops and skirts while she works—tops that are so easy to untie and peel away from her skin . . .
The trees are full now, the hills are green. The gorse flowers golden and the heather purple, and the ponies and the sheep and the cattle are high up on the slopes, grazing the upper pastures and occasionally congregating on roads already clogged with summer tourists.
July is in its full promise, plump and ripe and ready. Everything has glutted itself so thoroughly on sun and water that there is nothing left to do but doze, hot and sated and a tiny bit miserable.
Our moods worsen. Auden stalks through the house like a wolf, scowling at everything that isn’t Proserpina or scotch. The heat makes Poe sleepier and that makes her crankier, and to make up for it, she works in the library every minute she’s awake.
And I feel like I am sixteen again, like there is a fist in my heart and no amount of working, wandering, or jerking off will make it go away. I work from dawn til dusk between the library and Augie, I bury myself in Proserpina every chance I get, any free moment is out ranging the woods and swimming in the river, and still.
Still.
Proserpina was right earlier this year. Whatever the three of us share can’t be segmented or portioned out, there is no cutting or slicing sections of it away. It is a cage of brambles around all of us, inside all of us—the thorns have grown straight through our flesh and bitten into our hearts and there is no chance at extrication now.
All the parts of love save for one?
Did we really believe that could work? As if I could excise one share of my love from the other? As if I could chip away at one facet and expect the rest of the gem to remain intact?
No.
It was a lie, and no one wanted it to be truer than me. But we are miserable inside of it, hungry and rough, biting at each other with words and dark glances, prowling after each other, stalking the other’s steps only to snap and snarl when we finally catch our quarry.
Nothing helps. Nothing will ever help the torment of needing my father’s son like this.
And still the storms will not break.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Delphine
