Zach could tell she wasn’t enjoying the music, but to her credit, she never asked to leave, and at least a few times he felt her body brush his as she tried to move to the stomping beat. Most of the time, however, she was utterly still beside him, her face a mix of fascination and fear and distaste. When the heavyset shithead to her right knocked into her for the sixth time, Zach took her arm, moving her to his seat, and gave the guy a swift elbow to the side. The fat fuck took a swing at Zach, but Zach ducked, and the guy was so wasted, he fell backward into his companion from the momentum of his own punch.

Zach turned to find Violet watching the scene with horror, staring at the man sprawled half on his seat and half on the floor.

“IT’S VERY, VERY ANGRY HERE!” she yelled. He couldn’t make out her voice over the loud music, but he was adept at reading lips.

He nodded, taking her hand and squeezing it. “IT’S ALL PART OF IT!”

“WHAT?”

“IT’S OKAY!”

She nodded nervously, looking again at the guy passed out on the floor. Zach caught her eyes. “HE’S FINE!”

Violet bit her bottom lip and turned her attention back to the stage, her face stony and unsettled at once. She was not having a good time, and Zach started to wonder if this was a very, very bad idea.

***

Violet had never felt as relieved as she did when Stone Cold played only two encores and then left the stage for good. The “music” didn’t sound anything like music. Even Zach’s song, which she had tried to listen to subjectively, was awful. The other concertgoers were menacing. Her toes were bruised, and she was sure her hip was black-and-blue from the guy who’d been standing next to her. And as much as she appreciated Zach eventually swapping seats with her, she was troubled by seeing the man slumped over his seat in a stupor.

But it wasn’t just the volume, or the patrons, or even the music itself, which was furious and uncomfortably dark. What bothered Violet most of all was how much Zach seemed to love it all. He hadn’t noticed her watching him for a large share of the concert, but it was easy because he’d been so enthralled with the band, so focused on them, beating his hands against his thighs, his fist in the air and headbanging with the rest of the rowdy crowd. Zach loved this. Loved it.

How? For the life of her, she didn’t understand what there was to love. How had this been a part of his life for so long? These people? This noise? Who was he that this appealed to him? It frightened and bewildered her. How could he love this dark, angry music and still be the person who wrote love songs with her and made her body sing under his fingers? How could he love this and still have room in his life for her?

The lights came on, and as the people around them funneled out into the aisles, Zach turned to her, his face sweaty and his eyes bright.

“What’d you think? You want to go backstage?”

No, she did not want to go backstage. She wanted to leave this theater, get in the car, and put some distance between this experience and the safe bubble of Deep Haven.

“Oh,” she started, “I’m so tired, and we still have that long dri—”

“Come on, Vile!” he said. “You used to be game for anything. Just come meet the guys. Then we’ll go. We won’t stay long. I just want to tell them they rocked it.”

He had endured a seven-course, two-and-a-half-hour tasting dinner at Léonard’s. She owed it to him to keep her mind open, didn’t she?

“Sure. We can go say hello.”

He took her hand and started pulling her toward the back of the auditorium with the rest of the crowd. “I thought you said we were going backstage!”

“Oh, yeah. We still say that, but we’ll catch them at the bus. Nobody really goes backstage anymore.”

They slipped out a side door marked Emergency Exit and found themselves in the parking lot. The rain had picked up during the concert, and Violet hurried to keep up with Zach on the slippery asphalt. She felt rushed and forgotten as he pulled her along behind him.

“Are we in a rush?”

“Just want to say hi before they go.”

They reached a cordoned-off area of the parking lot, where two imposing coach buses sat side by side with the engines humming. Zach flashed the pass around his neck, and a beefy security guard nodded him through. As Zach stepped over to the bus, the backstage door opened, and a man, whom Violet recognized as one of the musicians, stepped out and lit a cigarette.

“Gabe!”

The guitarist looked up, his eye makeup running down his sweaty face. His black hair was long and tangled, hanging wet and limp around his shoulders, but his eyes brightened as he took in Zach. “Fucking Zachariah! Shit! Were you out there tonight?”

Zach let go of Violet’s hand to slap his friend on the back. “You shredded it, man.”

“Fuck, yeah. You heard ‘Puppetmaster’? That’s some good shit, Z.”

“Who changed the bridge? Weasel?”

“Fucking Weasel,” commiserated Gabe, running a hand through his sweat-soaked hair. “What the fuck are you doing in Maine?”

Violet had been watching the exchange from a few steps back, uncomfortable and uncertain about her place. Zach looked around and found her, putting his hand out to her and pulling her up beside him.

“Who’s this?” asked Gabe, raking his eyes up and down her body.

“Violet,” said Zach, and she noted his jaw tightening. “She’s—”

“An old friend,” Violet finished for him, hoping to spare him the awkwardness of trying to describe their relationship.

His eyes darted to hers like lightning, whip fast and angry.

They were all distracted by the door swinging open again, and another man exited the building, flanked by two women, one under each arm. He stopped in his tracks when he saw Zach.

“Z!”

“Hey, Weasel,” said Zach, his voice terse and annoyed. “Good show.”

“What did you think of the new bridge, man?”

“Maybe I think you’re a talentless dick.”

“Fuck you, Z.” Weasel’s eyes narrowed and he spat on the ground. “Creative license, fucker.”

Violet was distracted from their head-butting by one of the two women who shrugged out from under Weasel’s arm and approached Zach with a confident smile.

“Zachariah, you hot piece of shit.”

To Violet’s shock, she reached forward, grabbed Zach’s crotch with one hand, the back of his neck with the other, and pressed her lips against his.

Zach dropped Violet’s hand and pushed hard on the woman’s upper arms, making her stumble back a step. “Jesus, Flick, I’m with someone.”

Flick turned her glance to Violet, scoffed in derision, then trained her eyes back on Zach. She hooked a thumb at Violet. “Who? Your mother?”

“Don’t be a bitch.”

Flick turned to Violet, a mocking smile hanging on the edges of her black lips. “Mind if I borrow Z for a quick fuck, Mom? I miss him.”

Violet’s eyes opened so wide, they burned, and she could hear her heartbeat in her ears. She had an overwhelming urge to step forward, haul back her fist, and slam it into Flick’s face. But she didn’t. She took a ragged breath, staring at the woman in front of her with confusion and anger.

“You’re out of line,” snarled Zach at Flick, reaching out for Violet’s hand.

But suddenly it was all too much. The awful concert, her bruised ribs and toes, and now this dreadful woman who’d obviously slept with Zach. Probably more than once.

Before he could lace his fingers through hers, Violet wrenched her hand away and turned swiftly, the heels of her boots click-clacking angrily across the parking lot.

***

Two and a half hours is a long time to drive in stony silence.

But after trying to get Violet to talk to him several times on the way out of Portland, Zach gave up. For two hours she hadn’t even shifted her body from its position facing the window with her arms tightly crossed over her chest. She was stubborn like that, and he knew it. She’d not broken down once at Yale and come to find him after he’d left her. He knew how strong she was, and if she wanted to be furious and hurt, nothing he said was going to coax her out of it until she was ready.

And fuck it, because frankly, he didn’t have the energy. He hadn’t exactly had the greatest night either. First that pretentious fucking restaurant: rabbit salad? grilled tamago? Local pheasant with a turnip polenta? Good food was one thing, but between that showy, self-important display and a burger? Give me a burger any day. And fine, she hadn’t liked the show, but could she have possibly been stiffer and less fun? And how about that cute little number when she told Gabe they were just old friends? Fuck “old friends”—they were a lot more than that. And damn it, he hadn’t come on to Flick. She had come on to him. She ’d always been fast and forward. Anyway, why was he even feeling guilty about her? He’d only slept with her a handful of times—it’s not like they’d ever been involved. Violet was going to get in a snit about Flick? Mad about him having casual, occasional sex with a groupie? For chrissake, she’d fucked Shep Smalley for a decade and Zach had barely said a word about it, even though it burned his insides like acid whenever he thought about it.

Not to mention, aside from the shit with Violet, Weasel had exchanged his bridge for a shitty-sounding riff that didn’t mesh well with the rest of the song and made Zach embarrassed to have his name on it. Nothing made Zach angrier than subpar musicians who fucked up his music.

He watched the windshield wipers whip back and forth through the increasingly heavy rain, wishing they’d never gone out tonight.

When he turned onto Route 1 at Ellsworth, heading south toward Winter Harbor, Violet finally said, “I don’t get it,” in that taupe Mid-Atlantic accent she’d used that first night they ran into each other at Deep Haven.

“What don’t you get?” he asked in an equally clipped tone.

“It’s like you’re two separate people.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t even know where to begin. You’re totally different now from who you were at Yale. And the person you are at Deep Haven is totally different from the person you were tonight.”

“Well, fuck, Violet,” he started with a sarcastic bite in his voice. “You’re just exactly the same as you were at Yale. You always spoke in a pretentious French accent and loved eating grilled squid with roasted kale in your dorm room every night.” He glanced over at her before turning back to the road. “Do you know what I remember about you? You weren’t judgmental. You were wide-open. You liked everyone. You had room in your life for everyone.”

“Well. You certainly have room in your life for everyone, Zach, including that . . . that—”
“Who, Flick? I banged her twice. It wasn’t even that good.”

“Oh, that makes it all better.”

“Says the one who banged Shep Smalley for a decade.”

“Eight years. I banged him for eight years, and it wasn’t even that—”

She stopped abruptly, and he glanced at her in the dim light of the car. She looked down at her lap with her lips tightly pursed. Zach had assumed her sex life with Shep was conservative, but after this morning he wondered if it was downright measly, with Shep selfishly getting off and Violet merely a vessel for his pleasure. Her almost admission still surprised him, though, since she seemed to hold on to some residual loyalty to her old boyfriend. Surprised him, but made him feel a little bit awesome, too, since it made sex with him the best of her life.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” he said softly.

“How can you like that music? How can you even call it music? It’s vitriol and anger and hatefulness! It’s just noise and fury! There’s nothing beautiful about it.”

“Except amazing beats and intricate chording and awesome, gut-wrenching sound.”

“You’re better than that.”

“Which is why I’m not writing for Cornerstone anymore—a decision I only reversed out of consideration for you!”

She huffed. “Don’t do me any favors.”

His face contorted like she’d smacked him. “You were pretty happy to accept my favors yesterday. But then, you stand to make a lot of money out of our arrangement. Twenty grand pays for a lot of tony dinners and ski vacations.”
“Fuck you, Zach,” she snarled. “That’s not what I’m about, and you know it.”

“Do I? Because it sure seemed like you were in your element tonight.”

“This is ridiculous,” she snapped. “This whole thing is a mistake.”

She was making him fucking furious.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She threw up her hands. “It means we’re too different. You hated that restaurant tonight, and I hated that concert. You probably thought Jacques and Léonard were pretentious, and I thought Gabe, Weasel, and Flick were dreadful. I’m not just going to mesh into your life, and vice versa. It’s not going to work.”

“Well, let me pull over in Bar Harbor so you can find a rich frat boy to run to. That worked for you last time.”

She pulled back and punched his arm. Hard. It made him swerve momentarily on the dark, empty road. “Fuck, Vile! I’m driving.”

She gasped in the semidarkness. She swiped the back of her hand across her eyes, and when she lowered it, her face was wet. She was crying. Shit. Shit. He’d made her cry when he’d promised himself he’d never hurt her again.

“Listen, it wasn’t a good night,” he said a few minutes later, as they turned into the driveway at Deep Haven. He cut the engine, and they sat in silence for a few more minutes.

“It’s not just tonight. I meant what I said.” She’d stopped crying and was using that Greenwich Violet voice that he fucking hated—that artificial, plastic voice that was about as far from her fiery poet soul as she could possibly get. “We’re too different, Zach. We’ve changed too much. This can’t work.” She put her hand on the door handle. “I’m going to the White Swan tomorrow.”

“You’re running away. Just like I did.”

“I’m being rational,” she said, a slight waver in her voice betraying her emotion. It was all he needed to push her.

“You’re being a coward. Being with me makes you feel more than you’ve felt in years, and it’s scaring you and it’s complicated, so you’re running away. What we have? It’s beautiful and it’s real and it’s truth, and yes, it’s fucking terrifying, Vile, but we can make it work. I want to make it work because two months with you was worth the nine years of emptiness that came after. Two months with you showed me there was something really fucking good that this life has to offer. And I’ve never seen anything as good since. I want to make this work, Violet. I’ve never wanted anything this bad in my entire wasted fucking life.” He rubbed his wrist and tried to make his voice gentler. “All I asked for was two weeks, and you can’t even give that to me.”

“Nothing’s going to change in two weeks. And the longer this goes on, the more it’s going to hurt to say good-bye.”

He turned to her, seizing her eyes in the dim light. “Tell me how you see this.”

“See this? What do you mean?”

“See us. What’s happening between us.”

“Zach, I . . .” She took a deep breath, shaking her head, getting her thoughts together. “I don’t know . . . We loved each other in college. We reconnected after a long time, and old feelings flooded back. We acted on them. But we aren’t kids anymore. Our lives are too different to build anything real together. We say good-bye. We move on.”

His heart jumped twice during her speech: once when she said “we loved” because it was the first time she’d ever admitted that she believed he had loved her, and again when she said “we say good-bye” because everything in him revolted against those words.

They sat in silence for several strained minutes, rain beating on the windshield, before Zach replied, “I don’t.”

“You don’t what?”

“I don’t move on from you. Ever. I couldn’t before. I definitely can’t now. I’d give it all up, Vile. The touring, the songwriting…”

She reached for the door handle, and he grabbed the hand closer to him, holding it forcefully, like he’d die if he lost contact with her, and honestly maybe he would. When she didn’t pull away, his grip gentled, and he ran his thumb in soft circles on the sweaty skin of her palm.

It was time for him to say what he’d never been able to tell her in college, what he’d been trying to prove to her since the moment she walked back into his life. It was time for her to know the stakes and that nothing else mattered to him but them.

“Look at me.”

She didn’t.

“Look at me, Violet.”

She did.

“I’m in love with you.” He searched her face, watching as she winced and her eyes filled with tears. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. And I’ll go on loving you until I don’t anymore.”

“Zach—” she sobbed softly as tears spilled down her cheeks.

“I don’t care how different we are. I’ll do anything to make this work because nothing else matters to me as much as you. Everything else in my life is expendable except for you. Just so we’re clear, that’s how I see this.”

Then he released her hand and let himself out of the car.

***

She sat, stunned and speechless, on her own as he unlocked the front door and entered the house.

What she’d seen in his eyes made her want to stay, made her want to go, made her sex clench and her heart twist. What she saw made her want to die because if she walked away from Zach, she doubted if she’d ever, ever see it again. When he’d demanded that she look at him, she’d braced herself for the words. To finally hear them. To be strong in spite of them. She sensed he’d never uttered those words to another human being in his entire life. His gray eyes were unflinching—desperate and certain in the shadowed light of the car. He was telling her the truth. He loved her.

But she still didn’t see how they were possible. She still ached from what had happened between them at Yale, she didn’t know how to trust him, and seeing him tonight—at that god-awful concert—just confirmed the sharp differences between them. Could she give up things she’d enjoyed about her lifestyle with Shep? Could she trust that he wouldn’t give in to the temptations of women like Flick?

But then, there was the way he looked at her, like the axis of the earth had moved just to place her like a gift before him. The way he touched her, skillfully, with reverence and awe, drawing emotions from her heart as he stroked the heat of her skin. How it felt when he possessed her, moving his body inside hers and clutching her against him like he’d die if he couldn’t have her. How she felt as they wrote music together—the crazy, heartbreaking beauty of the two songs they’d already written. That he’d read her book and loved her poetry and loved her. Loved her as she’d never felt loved in her life.

Her eyes shuttered closed as her own heart swelled. He’d used her words from long ago to tell her, and it made her own feelings precariously close to bursting forth all over again, the love she’d been carrying for him for so many years bubbling back up to the surface of her consciousness after surviving the darkness of the deepest reaches of her heart.

She exited the car on wobbly legs and walked into the house, shutting the door behind her. He was nowhere to be seen, so she walked quietly up the stairs to her room, where she fell on the bed in exhaustion and cried herself to sleep.

***

Zach sat on his own bed downstairs, trembling from what he’d just said to her. In his entire life, no one but Violet had ever uttered the words “I love you” to Zach, and in his entire life, he’d said the words only once. Just now. To her.

There had been no affection in his childhood, or if there was, it was long before his memories. There were no soft “I love yous” and tender embraces. There was pride and drive and ambition, but Zach Aubrey had never known love, felt it, ached with the power of it, until Violet Smith. And time had not dulled it, and distance had not dissolved it. A crappy dinner and a forward groupie didn’t threaten it for him. Their reunion just served to make it brighter and more vibrant than it had been before. So what if they had different interests? As far as he was concerned, it didn’t matter. Now that he was near her again, losing her was unthinkable.

He lay back on the bed, lifting his palm to his chest and placing it flat over his T-shirt as he had that fateful Sunday night so long ago. At the time, his chest had hurt so sharply, so painfully, he could barely take a deep breath. Do you love me? The third time she asked him, he’d almost lost his mind from the pounding of his heartbeat in his head, so overwhelmed by his intense feelings. Leaving her had pained him, but until he got a grip on how he felt and how to express it, staying felt impossible too.

He heard her bedroom door close above him, and despite the way his body ached to hold her, to touch her—hell, just to see her—he decided to leave her alone for a while. He knew she was confused about everything happening between them, and he had to admit, for all that they had started out in a similar place, their lives were pretty different now. The biggest difference between him and Violet, however, was that no matter how dissimilar their lives seemed, he didn’t care. He meant it when he said he’d do anything to be with her.

He rubbed his lip with his thumb, wondering how serious she was about leaving in the morning, and what he would need to do to get her to reconsider and stay.

Don’t be stupid, Zach. If telling her you love her doesn’t work, nothing will work. You’ll just have to let her go.

His stomach flipped over at the thought, his muscles flexing as they would if he pinned her down physically, forcing her to stay. Growling, he sat up and grabbed the remote, turning on the TV to distract himself from the bleakness of his thoughts, from the sharpness of his yearning for her. As he kicked off his boots, he was surprised by the banner looping over and over again on the bottom of the screen: “TROPICAL STORM WARNING ON THE MAINE COAST FROM PORTLAND TO HALIFAX. MAY BE UPGRADED TO HURRICANE STATUS. STAY TUNED.”

He’d noticed the rain tonight, of course, but he hadn’t realized that it was an indicator of a storm making its way up the coast. He looked out the window. The rain had picked up even in the last half hour, and if the branches whipping by the window were any indication, the wind had picked up too.

He headed for the kitchen to look out at the harbor. A bolt of lightning split the sky and lit up the bay, illuminating the skeletons of sailboats being tossed like toys on the rough waves, followed by a loud crack of thunder that rattled the house.

He opened one of the two french doors, and it swung out of his hand, banging against the house as the wind pushed his hair back from his face. Her laptop still sat, plugged in and soaked, on one of the chairs, where she’d left it this morning. He dashed out to retrieve it, putting it on the kitchen counter before going back for the two porch chairs she’d been using, and pulled them, sopping, into the kitchen. The amount of strength it took for him to close the door again surprised him.

As he locked the doors, leaning back against them, his eyes closed with relief. Never in his life had he been so glad to have a natural disaster bearing down on him, trapping him inside for an unknown amount of time. Because if it trapped him, it trapped her, which he took as another sign of fate, another firm indication that the universe wouldn’t let them lose each other again.