Page 38 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
“Mmhmm,” Becket says, clearly still amused.
I sigh and look over at the man next to me, his classically handsome profile limned by the dipping sunlight. He’s got his legs crossed like a child at school, and his eyes are dancing with more mischief than kindness.
Right now, he’s not a priest. He’s just a hot guy in sweaty running clothes who happens to be my friend. And five months ago, I would have dodged even the idea of having friends, because I’ve only ever had one friend before, and that friendship died in a Methodist graveyard after a few weeks anyway. But something has changed, I guess, because I don’t run away. I don’t continue on in stony silence.
I say, “I’m going to tell you something, and I need you to promise not to say a word about it. Not just to other people, but like, right now. To me. I don’t think I can listen to it yet, not from someone whose job is knowing sanctity from sin.”
Becket nods, his expression open but also carefully neutral. His confession face, probably.
I still feel compelled to add, “And I’m probably going to need a real confession at some point.”
At that, Becket raises his eyebrows, a small smile on his lips. “Saint, I can’t even get you to take the host most Sundays. I’m not fussed if you don’t come to confession.”
“You haven’t heard what I’ve done yet,” I mutter.
Becket touches my knee, his hand warm over my jeans. “I’ll happily hear it, when you’re ready,” he says. “And as a priest, it’s my job to tell you that confession is essential to remitting your sins and restoring the sanctifying grace inside your soul. But as your friend, I’ll tell you that I don’t think God always plays by his own rules. Come when you’re ready, and don’t let your fear be stronger than your love.”
Mamá’s face flashes in my mind.
“That’s very wise,” I say, a bit impatiently. “But the problem is my fear should be stronger.”
Becket’s as patient as I am impatient, and he just gives me a slow nod, like of course I know better about fear and love than a fucking priest, and I’m scrubbing my face with my hands again, like I can scrub away everything that I am. Ralph’s son. Auden’s brother.
A man who still wants someone he shouldn’t.
“Sorry,” I say. “Okay. Here it is.”
I tell him. I tell him about finding the letter from Auden’s lawyer, I tell him about my middle name. With my eyes fixed on t
he house where it rises stony and stern from the trees, I tell him about Auden finding me. About what came after.
“I safeworded,” I finish. “I stopped him. But, fuck, I didn’t want to. I wanted him. I wanted it, even though I knew it was wrong.”
When I look over at Becket—expecting to see that neutral priest face again—his brows are drawn together and his eyes cast down, but he doesn’t seem disgusted, only thoughtful. Although it’s strange—when he looks up at me, I can’t see any of what those thoughts might be, whether they’re good thoughts or bad thoughts or anything. His eyes are rather like staring into the bluest part of a fire or the ocean on a calm day, and for a fierce, fleeting moment, I’m struck by how unfathomable they are. How unfathomable he is.
The part of me that’s always hearkened to loneliness, to the wild bevels and peaks of this place, recognizes something in him, something almost the same as me but not quite.
Mamá joked once that I was like a druid, someone who absorbed lore and stories and safeguarded it for the next generation. It fit the teenage boy with stacks of fantasy novels in his room, and it fits the man who spends his days scanning RFID tags and helping pensioners with the internet.
But if I’m a druid, then Becket is something else, something baneful and holy and darkly recondite. It dances deep in his eyes, this nature, a part of Becket that’s beyond manners and cheer. A part of him that was born to walk in the desert with God and God alone.
But the moment leaves me as moments do, and I’m back to being miserable about myself, and Becket keeps his word, saying nothing. There’s only the breeze and the bleating sheep down by the reaves and the quiet rush of the river nearby.
“In every book I ever read,” I hear myself saying, “the bastard is always angry. He hates the heir, he resents the heir, and there’s no end to his despair or jealousy or bitterness—but what happens when he’s also in love with the heir? What happens when he doesn’t want what the heir has, but who the heir is? I always felt a certain way about this place, I always felt claimed by it, but I didn’t feel at home here until he claimed me. Until he marked my heart and my body, and said you’re mine. It was like everything made sense then: who I was and where I belonged and where I needed to be and everything just finally felt right for the first time since we were kids playing in the chapel. Like I’d had thorns around my heart for so long that I’d forgotten there were supposed to be roses too.”
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.
