I wake up alone in my bed. Daphne is asleep on hers with her back to me. I grab my phone, terrified that Garrett tried to call while I was high and I missed it, but there are no calls, only a message from Liza with a selfie of her and a friend from the school musical. They’re all made up, grinning like fools and sticking their tongues out. Happy. Good.

It’s nine in the morning and I still feel a little high. Either whatever I smoked with Rome was the highest grade pot ever or I am a major fucking lightweight. Probably a little of both.

My heart is heavy—actually, everything’s heavy right now, even the air. I feel terrible for Daphne, I’m still reeling from the anniversary of my mother’s death, and I can’t get Garrett out of my mind—his face before he walked away. I’ve been rejected because I’ve done something wrong, I know. And I want to undo whatever that wrong is, because his hands on me, his coolly delivered demands, that thing he does where he tears me apart and puts me back together…I don’t want it to stop. But he might already be finished with me—he has no reason to be attached to me, the way I do to him. To him, I’m just another girl.

I need to get my mind back on track. I need to practice, but my muscles are a weird combination of limp and jittery, and it feels like my organs are floating around in a lot of empty space. Running will help. I’ll work these jitters off, get my body back in order, and then I will practice and set my mind straight. I know exactly where to go.

A few minutes later I’m jogging past Garrett’s house, careful not to turn my gaze to the windows in case he’s looking out. I don’t want him to think I’m running by on purpose, even though this is the only way to the river. With the endurance I’ve gained from training, I can make it there in around forty minutes and be back before lunch. Plenty of time left to practice.

It’s invigorating, the sound of my feet hitting the earth as I fly over the branches and raised roots that block my way. My focus is on the path ahead—I let my breathing flow as it will, natural, no more trying to control the air as it comes and goes. My lungs burn, but it is a steady, sustainable burn, the kind that gives power rather than takes it away.

I understand there is nothing I can do about my grief, that it is as real and alive as I am, and making space for it is the only way to coexist with it. No more fighting. I must carry it with me. I want to carry it with me. As for cello, I’ll practice this afternoon and drill the notes into my fingers and brain. Maybe I’ll go downtown, earn some money, send it to Liza. Study, get ahead in my coursework. Make myself forget Garrett.

My lungs are stinging now, and my quadriceps are melting like butter. Almost…any minute now…and there it is. The river. My wasted legs come stuttering to a stop and holy shit, it’s him—it’s Garrett, right at the edge of where the earth drops away, and he’s got his eyes on me and his mouth is shaped in a self-satisfied little smile that says I knew you’d come here.

Is that why I came? Did I sense he would be waiting for me here, in this place?

We face each other as opposites: I, a jagged lightning bolt, sizzling with directionless energy and looking for a place to ground; and he, a tree, deep-rooted and wise, emanating a voluminous, shady quiet.

I catch my breath, and when I’ve almost recovered I stand up straight, trying to think of the right thing to say to slingshot myself out of his gravitational pull. But then I’m looking at his expressionless face and all my resolve is melting away and I’m slipping, slipping, slipping back into orbit again.

I’m pulling my clothes off.

He stays where he is.

I set my sweaty clothes and shoes on the bank and climb naked into the water where there are no manatees today. My eyes are on Garrett while he watches me with his arms crossed over his chest. He walked here—he’s wearing athletic clothes, but he is clean and dry and orderly, not sweat-stained and filthy and chaotic like me.

I submerge myself beneath the cool water and rinse the grime from my body, then reemerge, slicking my hair back as I come out. I love this feeling of offering myself to him, love the agony of the possibility that he might reject me and leave me standing here ankle-deep in the water, alone and naked and quivering with tragic hope. But he won’t. He’s coming down the bank as I come up, and his feet are bare now; he must have taken his shoes off while I was underwater.

Everything’s in slow motion. His feet make wet, slurping sounds as he steps into the water with me, and then his hands are on my hips, light but firm. He circles behind me, brushing his fingers along my abdomen, my side, my back, as he disappears from my field of view. But I remain where I am, facing the riverbank, again with the unfounded certainty that I am meant not to move. My lungs are still heaving from running, and my heart is thrumming hard in my ears, each beat a cloud of sound in my head that amplifies the sensation of Garrett’s fingertips teasing at the sensitive skin of my lower back.

Garrett wades backward into the water, coaxing me with feather touches on my hipbones until we’re in up to our knees. I’m still with my back to him, facing the bank, my arms stiff at my sides, the cool forest breeze on my wet skin making hard little pebbles of my nipples. His fingertips skate along my skin, tracing the curves of my hips, my waist, under my arms, the center of my back. I close my eyes.

Then his palms flatten against my back, solid and sure and possessive. I suck in a breath so fast that it makes a wheezing sound, and then he shoves me, hard, and my head whips back as I fly forward and catch myself with my hands on the muddy embankment.

Fuck. Is this bad? My heart launches into a sprint, and I hear a zipper, a crinkling—a condom—and he’s got his hands on my hips again, fingers digging hard into my skin, and he’s plunging violently into me—what is happening?—while I hold myself up on the riverbank. I bite my lip to hold back a scream. I wanted him, I did, but this makes no sense, this isn’t what I wanted, and it’s crazy the way he’s pounding into me, shoving me so hard that I lose my grip and now I’m on my elbows in the muck, and this…this is not for me, or maybe it is, but not in the sense that it’s a gift—is this a punishment? Or is he claiming me?

His hands are on my back, still shoving, and he’s bending over me and reaching his arms around me, pinching my nipples between strong, cruel fingers. My face is in the mud, skidding into the slimy earth, sludge filling my mouth and eyes. Not this, not like this. He is very strong, so fucking strong, but it doesn’t actually matter how strong he is if I don’t fight back, does it? My only protest is the shocked uh that comes out on my every exhale. But I know it would be no use to tell him this hurts, or to ask him to stop so I can spit the mud out of my mouth. I’m sputtering and trying to breathe, my forearms are scraping against grass and mangrove roots, and he is still slamming into me, his flesh smacking loud against mine with a disgusting slap slap slap, but I asked for this, I wanted him, I wanted him to claim me, didn’t I? Didn’t I want to provoke him? Didn’t I succeed?

And then suddenly, with no warning at all, I’m coming, how the fuck am I coming? This is wrong. There is dirt in my mouth, there is mud in my mouth and I’m coming, and what the fuck is wrong with me? But every nerve ending is shuddering and crashing as if in consort with the waves our commotion has stirred from the once-still water, and I’m spasming and shaking and the water is reddening with the blood of my forearms, and now he’s laughing at me, and now he’s coming too.

Fucker, this fucker, god, did I really want this? Did I enjoy this?

Something is very, very wrong with me.

---

Back at his house, he is gentle when he takes me again. We don’t speak. I want him to make me beg again, but I instinctively know that I need to wait and follow his commands. He showers me, washes the mud off and dresses me in one of his T-shirts. I sleep for much of the afternoon, only vaguely registering that I meant to go practice for a couple of hours, that the day is slipping away from me. But I am in his bed and I want to stay here smelling his sheets and lavishing in his generous touch. I’m drunk with submission and I just don’t fucking care.

I stay with him overnight, and the next morning I rush back to my dorm to change into fresh clothes for my lesson with Professor Yarvik. I stop at the bank on campus on the way and deposit the hundred for Liza, but now I will have to busk downtown later this afternoon—I lost the whole day yesterday with Garrett. Anxiety creeps in, pulling at my gut, but I promise myself I can handle this.

During my lesson, my heart skitters and pounds when I try to make my cello sing, and I know something is off, something is not right. It’s this thing with Garrett, I think, but I brush the warning away—I have him and I need to keep him. I’m staring down at my bow, watching it slide over the strings, when I realize that Yarvik is talking to me.

“—going on with you?”

I raise my eyes to hers. “What?”

“You’re very distant today, Malory. Are you okay?”

“I think I’m…I don’t know. Last time I performed I felt…weird.” I can’t explain it to her, how I zoned out playing the Popper during last studio class. Can’t explain about my dead mom. Can’t explain about Garrett. She’d probably think I was crazy.

“I thought something was off with you last time you played. What can we do to bring you back around? Do you want to perform through the feeling, or would you like to talk it out?”

“I don’t think talking will help.” I take a deep breath. That Aspen fellowship, Jesus, I’m going to fuck it up. I have to pull myself together. “I’ll try harder to focus. I might just be having a little trouble adjusting to life at school.”

“Let’s run the Elgar,” she says, her voice flat and disappointed.

The Elgar is better this time, cleaner and more precise, but I am less connected to it. It feels like it’s playing itself. Like I have nothing to do with it at all.

---

Downtown is different. I’m angry again, ripping at my strings, moving with my crazy music and crawling my left hand fingers up and down the fingerboard like insects scurrying from light. I play for hours like that, with my eyes closed, switching off my surroundings so that all that’s left is me and my cello and the percussive, frenetic music we create together. It’s like drowning, except music is breathable.

After I don’t know how many minutes of slipping down that musical rabbit hole, I finally open my eyes, and there’s Garrett, leaning against a tree with his arms crossed, just like yesterday in the woods. He is staring at me with that same knowing look, and my heart expands in my chest, violent with desire. Or…not outright desire—more like desire for him to desire me, and that naked want is far more erotic than ordinary one-directional lust. I’m pulsing between my legs already, imagining him grabbing me and throwing me down, hurting me. My forearms throb a little at the thought, but the scrapes on my arms were not so bad as I had feared. They’re scabbed over already.

I look down at my cello case. Holy shit. It’s filled with cash.

Garrett comes to me, relaxed but purposeful, his expression indeterminate. “Meet me at my house, okay?” It is not really a question.

I bite my lip at him, and the self-satisfied smile he gives me tells me he knows I mean yes.

---

At his house, this time prepared with a change of clothes for tomorrow, I eat another incredible meal—salmon, roasted peppers, quinoa with parsley and tomatoes and some other flavors I can’t name. I know feeding me well is his way of showing he cares.

When we’ve almost finished with dinner, he puts his fork down and says, “Your playing today…”

I look up from my food, wipe my mouth with my napkin. I’m shivering, as always, despite the cardigan I’m wearing over my dress.

“Why so savage?” he asks.

My chest flushes. “Was it savage?” Of course it was. “I mean, I don’t know. I just play whatever comes out, I think.”

“Is it because of me?”

My pulse is whomping so loud in my head I can barely hear him. “I…think it might’ve been, yes.”

He is quiet for a minute, contemplating me. “I like very much that it’s for me,” he says.

My flush deepens, my ears burning to the point of pain. I’m glad he liked it. “I…I didn’t know you were there,” I say. “I’m embarrassed you heard.”

“I want you to play like that only for me.”

I lick my lips and swallow over the knot that has risen to my throat. “You mean—”

“I mean, do not let other people hear you play that way. I want it to be just for me.” He’s sitting stock-still, his hand resting on the table next to his fork.

“But…I made a lot of money tonight playing like that.” I think of Liza, of how much I could help her. How much I could help myself. I feel possessive now, of both my playing and the money I earn from it.

“Well, you’re free to do what you want, aren’t you?” He shrugs.

His tone, though. Somehow his talking about freedom feels like a noose tightening around my neck. “I like the idea of only playing like that for you. It’s just…I don’t understand. I mean, you liked it? Is that why?”

“Everyone liked it. You couldn’t have been more seductive if you had stripped your clothes off and spread your legs for them.” His nostrils flare a little, as if he is aroused—or angered—by the image.

I look down at my hands, start pushing at my cuticles. I’m afraid to move, afraid to defy him, but I’m pulsing between my legs again, the wetness seeping out of me and drenching my underwear. He’s waiting for a response, I think, watching as my breath rushes away from me. But I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to make of being bossed around because I’m too desirable. Seductive, supposedly.

He stands abruptly to gather our plates. I help him wash and dry the dishes and stow everything back in his worn but immaculate cabinets. I wipe the countertops, the stove, the table. I’m still shivering, but I like how ordered I feel just being here, where everything is in its place.

In his bedroom, he makes me drop to my hands and knees on the floor.

“Put your chest down so your ass in is in the air,” he says, and I do it, and then he says, “Now spread it and show me everything.”

Then: “Make yourself come.”

It takes me a long time. I couldn’t do it the last time, maybe too shy to get into it, too bound by dignity to let go. But this time I close my eyes and picture that first date when he pulled my dress down and pinned my arms by my sides, how he finger-fucked me on the counter, how I’d never felt so exposed in my entire life. I think of how he barely touched me that day with the manatees, how I stood bare-breasted before him and he gazed into my eyes, chastely, respectfully, while I was the one who secretly hoped he’d fuck me. And then I see myself at the water’s edge, my face pushed into the mud, Garrett pounding me and pinching my nipples and scraping my arms in the mangrove roots, making me come when I could have sworn I didn’t want it. It’s not as if I have any dignity left; what’s the point of pretending?

My breath hitches and squeaks, and then I’m making myself moan, giving over to my own hand, pushing two and then three fingers into myself and he’s saying “You’re a dirty little whore, aren’t you?” And I’m liking it, god, what the fuck is wrong with me? My knees bang hard into the wood floor as I squirm and rock against myself, Garrett encouraging me: “Only a whore would play like that in the streets for all to see.” He’s right. It really was like I’d spread my legs for those people, and I knew exactly what I was doing. I move my hand faster and faster and Garrett says, “You and your wet, hungry cunt, you like it like this, don’t you?” and then I’m coming around my own fingers, shuddering and groaning, and fuck, I don’t think I’m supposed to get off on this. But I am.

He pulls me up and guides my face to his penis, and I suck him, ravage him, run my hands all over his washboard stomach and claw at his backside until he comes into my mouth. And this time, though the taste is vile, I swallow, because I know there is no point in resisting. He keeps his hands off my head—he trusts me now.