Page 80 of Penny for Your Saints

There's a long stretch of silence that expands between us as I find the courage to ask the question.

“Did you know them?”

“Did I know who?” Quentin blinks, his gaze fixed far away on the dark horizon.

“Frank's fated mate. I mean… our fated mate,” I correct myself.

I hear Quentin struggle to swallow down more tears before he answers.

“Not very well. He was quite handsome, a bit more of a rogue than Francis, the Boy Scout; always second guessing authority as soon as he was out of the line of sight of his superiors—ever challenging and pushing Frank to look at the bigger picture, not just to follow orders.”

I don’t know what I expected—what I wanted to hear about this person that we were cosmically bonded to—whom I will never know.

“The two of them doted on that protégé of theirs—it’s so tragic in retrospect how everything turned out. It’s almost comical,” Quentin laughs coldly.

My heart skips a beat.

“You mean Dennis?”

“The strawberry blond meat head?” Quentin arches a brow.

I can't help but snort a laugh.

“Yes, I suppose Dennis could be remembered that way.”

There's an ache deep in my chest when I think of Dennis, of what Tenant said as he lay dying in my arms.

He didn’t believe it—didn’t believe you were dead—said he would have been able to feel it, said you wouldn’t?—

Is it because of the bond of a fated mate? That same magical thread that connects me to the rest of the Saints, to Frank’s long-lost lover? No, it couldn’t be. The idea that we’ve lost one of our sacred circle of partnership—too early departed from this life—is already too much for me to hold in this moment.

Thinking that Dennis might be part of that broken ring of destiny might very well send me into a tailspin.

“Quentin,” I murmur, nuzzling my face against his chest, the cold ocean wind whipping through us as we shiver together in the night. “I'm exhausted. Why don't we go to bed?”

I can tell that he'd rather stay out here a little longer, but I really am exhausted and I don't know how much longer my legs will carry me. As if Quentin senses this, he makes a sound of affirmation deep in his chest, purring as he presses a kiss down into the part of my hair.

“Alright, Louie. Let's go to bed,” he agrees, steering us both back inside the cottage.

When I wake in the early morning, my body pressed between Quentin and Caz—Seb’s hand still twined in my hair on the pillow above Caz’s buzzed blond head; there's a sense of cognitive dissonance.

I never expected to see this place again. Much less to be here with the Saints; my fated mates.

Frank looks like a black rain cloud encroaching on the pale pink morning sky as he sleeps in one of the wooden chairs—his chin against his chest, his neck raked at a painful angle.

No doubt he'll be sore when he wakes.

I crawl from my place in the blankets and make my way over to Sébastien's abandoned leather jacket, slipping myself inside of it and allowing my hand to dip into one of the satin lined pockets, a half-empty pack of cigarettes and plastic lighter inside.

The heavy wooden door makes little sound as I ease it closed behind me and I step into the gray morning light.

I find my favorite rock, the one I sat on for hours and hours with a fishing pole or a book or a notepad and pen writing to my friends back home pretending that we were pen pals across not just oceans—but time and space rather than a mere group of kids on summer vacation.

Touching the rough stone, I allow myself a few moments to fall apart. I allow myself to be weak—to stop pretending that I'm so damn strong all the time.

I tuck my knees up inside of Seb’s jacket and look out at the mainland in the distance. The beach is empty, just like you'd expect it to be this time of winter—only a tiny aluminum fishing boat braves the frigid morning water; a marine sportsman in a dark hat and coat cutting across the calm waters.

It's only one man in a tiny boat, but still, I start to feel the pressure of eyes on me. So, I pick up and round the back of thehouse. Nothing but the open ocean and the whistle of the wind through the wooden slats around the composting toilet.

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