Saint

by Adrienne Young

Anyone could throw a drowning man a line. Finding someone who would catch hold of you before you fell overboard in the first place was harder, if not impossible.

It had begun with gems, I thought, my knuckles throbbing the tighter my fingers curled. And it didn’t matter how far from my mother I sailed. It would end with them too.

But there was something about the helmsman that reminded me of gemstone. Like even when he wasn’t speaking, I could still hear, or feel, something in the center of my chest.

I looked at her one more time, tracing the shape of her face, her jaw, the curve of her throat. I etched it into my mind to keep for no other reason than I felt like I had to. And then I turned and walked away.

“You’ll come back?” he asked. “If you still want me.” He moved so close that when he looked down into my face, the tip of his nose was inches from mine. “I’ve wanted you since the minute I saw you. That’s the problem, Isolde.”

I wanted him. But it was more than that. “I want to build something that’s not theirs.” “All right,” he said. “Then we will.”

I stood, coming around the desk to stand in front of her. She was beginning to feel like a permanent fixture in my surroundings. A part of the landscape that made up my life. And I couldn’t help feeling like it was rarer than that gemstone in my pocket. “Besides, I don’t want to sail a ship you’re not on.”

That stone was the answer to too many problems. It had the ability to wipe the world clean before it destroyed it again. I wasn’t the kind of man who could weigh that cost or wield that power. I’d given up a ship for this girl without thinking twice. I’d give a sea of midnights, if I had to.

“A sea of midnights” I’m—

“I wanted you too. The minute I saw you.” She whispered my own words against my lips—words I’d once thought could be the end of me. Now, I was certain they were.