Page 91 of Penny for Your Saints

Even though Frank and I do not yet share the connection that I have made with the other Saints—the closeness and the intensity of the moment with him buried inside me—I could feel just how far away he was.

I won't do that to my pack. I won't let him do it to himself.

In time once we've all had a little while to make more sense of things and I'm a bit more secure in the bond that I have made with the others—if Frank comes around to understand that this is what he really wants, then we can revisit the subject and not a moment sooner.

Right now, our priority is survival, and I am prepared to do anything to protect my pack.… even if that means protecting it from another of our fated mates.

The very idea sends a pang of longing through me. If one could be homesick for a person—I would be homesick for both Dennis and Frank; both so close and yet so far.

I look out of the large plate-glass windows at the bow of the ship where Frank leans against a rail, looking at the gulls and the rays of sun on the surface of the water; his elbows propped on the railing—hands dangling from his relaxed wrists—the wind in his coal black hair.

The duality of it is so strange; at once being so compelled to go to him—to bring him inside the circle and yet at the same time to keep him at an arm’s distance—to protect the others from him.

To protect myself.

Beside me, Quentin rolls over, his yellow-green eyes slitted lazily in the morning light like a cat. He follows my gaze out the window, then reaches up to touch my arm.

“He'll be alright.” Quentin assures me. I nod and turn away from Frank.

“Yeah, he'll survive.” I wriggle back beneath the covers, Sébastien and Caz still indulging in their nap after our exertions.

“We should get going soon, make the run for supplies,” Quentin yawns, giving his long limbs a good stretch before turning on to his side and pulling me toward him, making me the small spoon as he curves around my back like the moon.

“What if I don't want to go? What if I just want to stay here? Like this?” I pout like a spoiled child.

“Well, isn't it good that you can stay? That you should stay, actually. Until we do something about this.” Quentin pinches a lock of my bright red hair between his fingers, pulling it back from my face and tucking it behind my ear. He places a kiss on the angle of my jaw before dropping his head back on his own pillow.

“After that wig I wore in our escape from Liberty City, are you thinking that you like me better as a brunette?” I tease.

But Quentin doesn't laugh.

“I love your hair just the way it is. Like a sunset or the changing of the leaves or fire—with your brown eyes and alabaster skin, it makes you look like a painting.”

I feel the tip of his nose brush against my ear; hear the little pained sigh he releases as he thinks of it going away.

“Where we're going, you'll draw the least attention as a blonde,” he laughs unkindly. “Lucky for you, Sébastien's actually a whiz with the pair of barber’s shears, and I've never seen Caz without a perfect bleach job.

This sets us both into a fit of giggles that rouse Seb and Caz from their slumber.

“Fuck, what time is it?” Caz hisses as he sits bolt upright in bed, Seb hurrying after him.

“It's alright, we've got time.” Quentin assures them lazily, lifting himself from bed while I refuse, only coiling myself tighter and tighter in sheets and blankets.

Even though I'd only been making fun about staying back at the yacht, I'm surprised by how quickly I fall asleep. One moment I'm listening to the boys discuss logistics about going to the market, picking up our uniforms, making the cash drop—and the next, I'm in dead asleep.

My dreams are fraught with curious images; Caz and Sébastien dressed in robes of grey and white, bathe my bleeding feet In the bowl of water hewn of pure hammered gold.

I try to speak to them but my words do not reach their ears. Once I understand that they cannot hear me, I cover my eyes.

The tears I cry fall like tiny red gemstones. Like blood, no—like the seeds of a pomegranate into the damp black earth.

Quentin bursts forth like a plant stretching its limbs forth toward the sun; a tree, cracked bark and shining green leaves shooting skyward—fingers grasping.

I reach for him, for his outstretched hands, but the unfurling boughs of the tree, growing ever taller, only seem to extend further from my reach.

The fruit, shining and red; its blossom end like the pointed spires of a crown, finds itself in the palm of my hand.

Knowing I shouldn't, I press my thumbs into the skin and tear my harvest in two. The flesh, like clusters of red gems, twinkle back at me as I hold one ragged half of the fruit out to Dennis; his lips already shadowed with the stain of their juice.

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