He sends me home afterward.

I can barely walk. I pray that no one will see me as I limp through the dorm doors, pray that no one is in the elevator—I cannot manage even one flight of stairs—pray that Daphne is not in our room.

The room is dark when I push open the door. Empty. I want to shower, but I’m afraid of how much the water will sting. My whole lower half is covered in glowing welts. I peel my jeans off as gently as I can, my tears returning as the denim brushes over the most tender spots, and then I crawl into bed with Gerta the hippo hugged tight to my chest.

I stay there for two days.

Daphne comes and goes but I keep my back to her and ignore her attempts at conversation. She tries crawling in bed with me again and I flail wildly at her, screaming at her not to touch me. I hear her crying softly across the room. It gives me a headache to think I’ve hurt her, but I cannot make myself respond to her sniffling.

Bethany messages me several times, asking where I am. I was supposed to meet up with her to practice. I respond—Sick—so she will leave me alone.

It is the same with Rome, though he is more persistent. I’m coming to see you, he texts Sunday afternoon, and I text back I WILL NOT OPEN THE DOOR.

Twenty minutes later I hear his plaintive knock, and I yell for him to go away. He knocks once more, harder this time, but I ignore it, and after that he leaves me alone.

Bethany texts again on Monday: Any better?

Still sick.

OK, she responds. I will tell Yarvik.

I’d forgotten I had a lesson today.

Rome texts in the afternoon: Knock knock.

I play along even though my brain feels like a giant wad of cotton: Who’s there?

I am, he says. And I’m not going anywhere.

And I cry. I don’t know what he means, that he is there for emotional support or that he is actually standing outside my door, but all I can do is cry until I exhaust myself back into sleep.

Daphne comes by in the afternoon, lays a hand on my shoulder. “Malory, please tell me what’s going on.”

“I can’t.” And it’s true, I literally cannot explain myself. I enjoyed Garrett’s rough handling for so long, begged for it even, but now suddenly it’s too much? I’m a hypocrite and a very fucked up person. I’m insane. I’m…I’m like my mom. A fresh wave of anguish pummels me and I clutch my covers tight around me, my teeth chattering.

For the first time, I think that I might be better off if I didn’t exist.

I think immediately of Liza, though, and I change my mind.

---

A knock at the door wakes me. I’ve been dreaming, something beautiful but I can’t recall any specifics other than that I was on stage with my cello. I can almost still feel my bow in my hands.

For a moment, I forget that I don’t want to speak to anyone, and I open the door. Rome’s eyes widen in surprise when he sees me, his face screwing up with an ache so real and deep I can feel it pulsing in my own bruises, and he turns away from me, grabbing his hat off his head and clutching it to his chest.

A strange laugh erupts from me, as out of place as if I were at a funeral.

“Don’t laugh,” he says. His gaze is on the floor and he’s breathing hard. “Please don’t do that. Please, you’re fucking scaring me, Mal.”

“Okay.” What if I weren’t here? What if I’d offed myself, like my mom? I wonder how Rome would react. He’d be sad, probably. He cares for me in that boring, pathetic, doting sort of way.

“Malory, I want you to go take a shower right now. I will wait here for you. And…please put some clothes on.”

I look down at myself. Oh. I’m not wearing pants. The belt marks are visible all up and down my thighs, and Rome has seen them. I flush with embarrassment. I think I should be a little worried about what sort of action Rome might take against Garrett, but I am more concerned that my bruises are on display—incontrovertible evidence of how stupid I am.

I shower, because it is easier to do what Rome says than to argue. And in the shower, I do not have to endure his worried gaze.

I return to my room freshly dressed in leggings and a tank top, my hair a wet curtain down my back. Rome is sitting in my desk chair. The muscles in his forearms flex as he clenches and unclenches his fists.

“Rome, please.” I shuffle to the bed and climb back in. It smells a little, since I’ve been lying in it for two days. I look at the clock for the first time that I can remember: five after eight. And it’s dark out—nighttime. I pull my sheet up to my shoulders and turn on my side so my back is to Rome.

“You need to report this, Mal.”

“No.”

“Then I will.”

This is mine, not anyone else’s. “If you do, I will never fucking speak to you again.” My voice is cold and without inflection.

He says nothing for a very long time, then lets out a great sigh of resignation. “Can I sit next to you?”

I hesitate, then scoot over gingerly to make room. The bed shifts under his weight. My eyes are unblinking and burning, staring at the stark wall. I feel Rome’s hand on my shoulder and my whole body goes rigid, like I’ve never been touched before and my nerves have no idea how to respond. He lifts his hand with a choking sound. Whispers, “I will never hurt you, Malory.”

His hand comes softly back down to my shoulder, and gradually my coiled muscles let go as he moves his hand up and down my arm, petting me like I’m a wounded animal. I suppose that is what I am.

This is Rome, I tell myself. I turn on my stomach and sigh. He pulls his hand back—he must think I moved because I wanted him to stop.

“You can keep doing it,” I whisper.

“Any bruises back here?” he whispers back.

I shake my head, and his hand moves to my back, petting gently for a while, then beginning to knead. His touch is kind, gentle—I melt beneath his fingers. I have spent so many weeks wound up with the anticipation of sexual depravity that this different kind of touch is a whole other universe. Silk compared to sandpaper.

He has both hands on me now, adept and sure, knowledgeable about the geography of my back—the muscles, the bones of my spine, the ticklish spots on my sides. He smooths the hair away from my neck so he can massage me there, and a swath of goose bumps spreads over my skin.

I’m embarrassed, sure he noticed. I don’t want him to think I want him. Then suddenly I’m crying, hot tears dribbling a tiny river down my nose and onto my pillow. I’m scrunching my eyes shut, trying to staunch the flow, This is not the pretty kind of crying, but there’s no stopping this grief.

Rome’s hands sweep my hair back from my face, dab at my tears, pause and start in frantic little movements; he doesn’t know how to touch me, what is allowed. But I feel his desperation to love me as clearly as if he has said it. I sit up and reach for him, let him enfold me in his arms, and I don’t care if I’m leading him on. I sob into his shoulder as he strokes my hair from the top of my head all the way down my back, over and over, petting the helpless, pathetic, wounded creature.

When my tears subside I pull away from him and settle back down under my covers. Rome’s hands are still moving up and down my back. He would probably stay here all night if I let him. Maybe I will.

The door opens and Rome’s hand freezes. My chest seizes with panic, but then he says, “Oh hey, Daphne.”

Not Garrett. Thank fucking god.

“Um, hey?” Daphne says. “Am I…uh, interrupting?”

“Nah,” says Rome, and I feel him getting up. My heart lurches. Don’t go. I almost reach for him, but I stop myself, twisting the sheet in my fist and focusing on a hairline crack in the wall.

“Mal,” he says, “I’ll check on you tomorrow, okay?”

I nod just enough for him to see.

“Later, Daph,” he says, and I hear the door click shut behind him.

I stiffen, waiting for Daphne to say something mean about Rome. But she pads to her desk and opens her laptop without a word.

---

A text: You overwhelm me. I’ve never been overwhelmed before.

It is a siren call, to be adored this way. It is delicious—a million times sweeter than tiramisu. I agree to meet him downstairs.

I made it to class earlier, to Music Theory and then to Twentieth-Century Europe. I got out of that stuffy dorm room and moved around, functioned a little, but I could not bring myself to take notes. Rome sat next to me and pretended not to be worried about me, but his leg jiggled the entire class.

You overwhelm me.

Now I’m standing under the overhang in front of my dorm watching Garrett’s approach. He can have any woman he wants. His face, his body, the way he carries himself…he’s as perfect as a god. I look down at my Goodwill sweater, my tattered, ripped jeans, and worn-out flip-flops. I don’t belong with someone like Garrett, but he is telling me, showing me, that I overwhelm him.

I’ve never been overwhelmed before.

I overwhelm him. Me.

I come down the steps and cross to the tree where he waits for me in the sunlight-speckled shade. His arms are crossed and his eyes narrowed, his thick black lashes emphasizing his icy eyes.

He reaches out a hand to me, and my pulse climbs. “You hurt me,” I say, willfully ignoring his outstretched hand, pretending I am strong.

“I thought of you with…him, and I couldn’t have it.” A muscle in his jaw twitches, but he lets his hand drop.

“He’s just a friend.”

“That’s not what he thinks.”

“Does it not matter what I think?”

“I suppose it does.” He shrugs. “He’s pathetic, anyway.”

“Garrett.” I sound like an admonishing mother now.

“I went running without you this morning, and it wasn’t the same.”

“Do you really think I’m a worthless whore?” I’m not sure why I ask this—it’s a silly thing to ask since I already know the answer. Of course I’m a whore. I’m literally a whore. Didn’t I sleep with someone to get a free car? I’m a scraggy little nobody with a psychotic, runaway father and a dead mother, playing on a borrowed cello and chasing a dream that won’t ever come true. But I need to know what Garrett thinks. I’m getting too close to you, he said. You overwhelm me. He can undo every hurt just by imbuing me with a little value.

“I only say that,” he says reasonably, “because you seem to enjoy it. It makes you wet when I call you that.”

A heat blooms between my legs even as he speaks. He’s right; I do like it. I swallow hard, feeling the heat scurry up my body until my face flames with embarrassment and I have to look away.

I am a little whore.

“Is it not true?” he asks in a tone that is much too polite given the topic of conversation. “Either way, come back with me tonight.”

But then I remember the other thing he said—I was wondering how much I would have to hurt you to get you to dry out. How much does he have to hurt me before I’ve finally had enough? There is a tension inside me, a sick anticipation to answer that very question.

---

We have an understanding now.

I’m on Garrett’s kitchen counter, naked but for the belt he’s fastened around my upper body to pin my arms to my sides. My legs are lifted and spread wide, my heels propped up on the edge of the counter. My black orchestra clothes lie in a heap on the floor. Bethany and the other music students went out to celebrate without me.

“You really do enjoy being my plaything, don’t you?” There is awe in Garrett’s voice, as if he is surprised that this is actually true.

My chest rises and falls with my desperate panting. I’m disgusting right now, a buffet of depravity, hot and wet and spread for him. It’s fucking sickening how much I love this.

“Your cheeks get red,” he says, pinching one of my nipples between his fingers. “You get all blotchy everywhere. You’re so easy to read.”

I convulse, wriggling my hips on the counter. I’m sitting in a puddle of my own wetness.

He traces my inner thighs, where the skin is so pale that the veins show like delicate purple-pink spider webs beneath my skin. Then he brings the backs of his fingers to rest against the source of my wetness. He hesitates there, studies my face.

I push my hips at his fingers, and he laughs. “Tell me, Malory. Tell me how much you like being my plaything.”

Strangled little gasping sounds come out of me, like they always do when he says these things. “I like it,” I say, and then I have to catch my breath. “I like it because it’s wrong.”

He slides his index finger into me. “Why is it wrong?”

“Because…because…” My words are stilted. I’m tripping over my own tongue. “I’m supposed to want to be loved.”

“And I don’t love you?” Another finger. He’s filling me, building me up while he tears me down.

My face grows hot, and tears squeeze out of my eyes, staining my cheeks. I can’t wipe at them with my arms pinned. “You don’t. You…can’t.” I realize the truth of this only as I say it.

He smirks and adds a third finger, stretching me, slowly, methodically. “Then what are you doing here?”

“I don’t know,” I say, and I don’t. I don’t know why I want this.

He laughs again. “Oh, you know why. Tell me why.” He pulls his fingers from me abruptly and now I’m spread-eagled without his touch, cold and alone. Always so cold. “Because I’m nothing,” I say. Because to deserve love, I would have to be something.

The only reason you make good grades is because the teacher feels sorry for you. You can’t keep friends because there is something odd and off-putting about you. You won that competition because no one else who entered it was any good.

I’ve been waiting for this all along.

Even your own mother didn’t love you enough to stay alive for you.

Garrett’s jamming his fingers back into me now, fucking me up to his knuckles, hurting me, and I’m moaning in ecstasy, trying to free my arms so I can grab him by his hair and pull him to me, and he’s watching me struggle against the belt with a satisfied look on his face.

“I own you, Malory. You’re mine.” Such a cocky motherfucker, this guy.

But I hear myself agreeing: “Yes, I’m yours, and I like it when you hurt me. I’m such an easy little cunt.” And the more terrible things I say about myself, the more my body buzzes, and he keeps fucking me and fucking me like that until I’m spasming around his hand, almost falling off the counter. Before I’ve even finished he’s unzipped himself, pulling me down from the counter and setting me on my knees at his feet so I can take him in my mouth. My orgasm hasn’t finished, so even as I suck him, I put one of my own hands between my legs and rub myself until the pulsing stops. He doesn’t last long; I’ve already brought him to the edge with my eager debasement.

As he releases into my mouth, he fists my hair and yanks it, and I revel in the hurt. “You’re my little sex slave, Malory,” he says through clenched teeth, “and I can dispose of you anytime I want.”

Later that night, when we go to sleep, he spoons me with his arm wrapped tight around my waist, almost as if he loves me.