He pulled onto the Gowanus and home to Manhattan. Traffic was light, and I was confused about my intentions and my feelings. I felt as if he was going too fast, and I didn’t know what I wanted out of him or the next four days. I didn’t know if he was going back to being a man who could train me, or if his needle had found the groove of his old self. I held onto the edge of my seat.

He rubbed his bottom lip as he drove. Had he done that in Montauk? Even one time? I couldn’t remember. My eyes had been on the floor half the time, and the other half was spent getting my bearings around a stranger.

“You’re looking at me,” he said with a smirk. Not the devilish smirk that betrayed plans for my body. Just a plain smirk on a devilishly handsome man.

I turned to my window. He was in the reflection. A half mask of blue dashboard lights.

“Sorry,” I said, apologizing for nothing.

I’d never finished the drawing class. Never learned to hold two ideas in my head at the same time. Not about soup cans and not about men.

“What happened back there, Adam?”

“Back where?”

How deep was I going to go? Was I really going to shred this thing?

Yeah.

I was.

“What happened? In your old room?”

He looked away from the road for a second, taking my temperature. “We fucked. Why?”

“It was the old way.”

“Diana.” His voice went deep and slow, but it wasn’t the voice that made me feel safe. “Did you think regular sex was against the rules?”

“I want to talk about it.”

“Okay.”

Wrong answer. Wrong answer a million times. He was just rolling over. He was supposed to tell me that he’d fuck me how he wanted, when he wanted.

Even as my anxiety grew from a pinprick to a full chest pain, I knew I was being unreasonable. I was expecting him to read my mind, and I wasn’t respecting his need for five minutes off from bossing me around.

“You’re supposed to be training me. Twenty-four seven. That’s what you said.”

He exited the parkway, eyes drifting past me as he looked behind him for traffic. We were right by the grey building with the white trim. The one he’d bought whole and sold in pieces.

“Did you not want to have sex?”

“No, I mean, y—”

“Did I rape you?”

“No!”

“What’s the problem exactly?”

“It’s…”

“You think it has to be a power exchange every time?”

“No. I… no, not that.”

He pulled up to a metal gate and pushed a code into a panel. “What is it then?” The gate rolled open.

I felt silly. I had nothing concrete to say. I had feelings and intuitions and assumptions. What was I supposed to say? It felt like you loved me, but you also seemed like the guy I wanted to divorce, so which are you? Because I need to know if I love you or not?

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Is that literal or rhetorical?”

It was as if he’d read my mind.

“Both.”

He drove into the tiny alley behind the converted warehouse. It had a few reserved parking spaces that surely cost a fortune to rent. The loading bay had been converted into an outdoor eating area with strung lights and big doors leading inside. He parked in front of three garage doors.

“Literally,” he said, “here.” He put the car into park and looked at me.

I swallowed hard as if that gave a woman strength against a man who loved her.

“Rhetorically? Fucked if I know.”

He got out before I could respond, came around the front as always, and helped me out of the passenger side. He didn’t make eye contact, but walked to the garage door.

“Adam!”

“What?” he asked over his shoulder, not looking back around.

This was the man with half his attention on me. This was the man who patted my shoulder when I was in pain. The one who made love to me like a nice guy.

I leaned on the garage door so I could see his face as he put in another code. I was in his sight, but he didn’t look at me. He was all avoidance and internal energy. Locked away like the crown fucking jewels. Had it been being in his old house? Had it been the memories of his grandparents? The vanilla fuck? Had his love for me turned him back inward?

“Step back please,” he said as if speaking to an employee.

I got off the door, and he yanked it up. I was assaulted with the smell of old grease and liquid chemicals. Adam flicked on a light. The garage had room for one car, and it looked to be under a tarp. Adam walked around it, unsticking Velcro tabs, then he whipped the tarp away.

“Wow,” I said.

“That’s exactly the word,” he replied, rolling up the cover.

“What year?”

“’67. V8. 450.”

The Mustang’s paint was perfectly red. Not too blue. Not too yellow. The interior was clean white leather and exposed by the convertible top, which had been removed entirely. It had been placed on a ledge by the four wheels, which hung on the wall.

“I took it when the garage started leaking and put it up on blocks. Uncle Bernard never knew. But hell if I was giving up this car.” He ran his knuckle along the side. “I figured since you had the Jag, I might as well use this one.”

“That’s a good idea.”

It was a great idea if we were divorced. If we were together, it was stupid to have two cars in the city. We had the money to keep two cars, but we didn’t drive enough to make putting the wheels back on the Mustang sensible. And what was the point of having a car like that if you didn’t take it out?

Or the point of having a husband who only loved you when you didn’t love him?

If this man standing in the flood of yellow light was Adam, we were getting divorced because I didn’t love him even though he loved me. I could love the man in Montauk, but this one? No.

I wanted to love him more than I wanted to be loved.

I felt empty without that love. Crippled. A speed machine drained of gas and up on blocks for the preservation of its uselessness.

“I can’t…” I stopped myself. I had an end to the sentence, but not the one after it.

“Can’t what?”

Deal.

Decide.

Understand you.

Leave you.

Be with you.

I couldn’t fight to be loved and be true to myself. But I could fight to love.

I dropped my bag and took off my coat, which I threw on the hood of the car. The cold air bit my skin and my nipples tightened.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t make a move toward or away from me.

I dropped to my knees, keeping my eyes on the concrete floor and my hands to the side. I heard his soles against the floor’s grit, and his shoes came into my vision.

Bending at the waist, I put my hands flat on the floor and my forehead between them. My hair spilled around his shoes. My heart thrummed. I stayed still, even as I panicked. On my knees, unable to see him, I wasn’t protected. I was vulnerable to emotional hurt. But I didn’t know how else to say what needed saying. That I needed him to be Montauk Adam. I needed his control and his dominance. I needed to love him.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Whatever you want.” My breath hit the floor, and dust blew back up against my chin.

He moved. Grit scraped. He walked far. Then near. To my left. To the other side of the car.

“What if I want you to get up?” he asked from far away.

“I’ll get up if it pleases you.”

“What if I don’t know what pleases me?”

I had a moment of confusion, then I remembered my husband of five years. The man who was afraid to do what he liked to do because he didn’t want to lose me. What had he done when he was fearless? When losing me was a foregone conclusion?

I brought my hands around, and with my forehead still on the floor, I unbuttoned my pants and pulled them down, exposing my ass. The shame of it was overwhelming. To talk to my husband by showing him the ways he could fuck me was a deep humiliation, and the only option I had.

The garage door was wide open, and I could hear the hoosh hoosh of the expressway. He came around behind me. If he told me to pull up my pants and get in the Jag, I was going to cry, because if I couldn’t reach him with this, we were finished.

Doubling down, I put my hands on my cheeks and spread them apart.

He moved. I felt it but couldn’t see him. He did it slowly. He knew I was in a dark tunnel. I knew why. To keep me unsure of my own choreography. The garage door rattled down, cutting off the coldest of the wind and revealing the rumbling white noise of a heater.

Forever. That was how long he let me kneel like that. Until I was hyperaware of every sound from the apartments above. The sting of the floor on my knees. The cold air on my sensitive parts. The sound of his breath, revealing his position next to me, on one knee.

“Are you wet?” he asked.

I was so relieved I almost wept. “Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I know you’re wet. I was checking to see if you still had the ability to answer questions. I asked you something you didn’t answer.”

“I’m sorry.” My breath hitched. I was going to cry. “Sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

“Do you want to answer?”

“I forgot the question.”

“You said, ‘I can’t,’ and when I asked you to complete the sentence, you didn’t. So why don’t you tell me what you can’t do?”

“I don’t remember.”

“What do you want, Diana? In the next four days, what do you want?”

I swallowed a lump of cry gunk and sniffed hard. What did I want? I wanted to love him and I wanted him to love me. I wanted the impossible.

“Everything,” I sobbed.

“I can give you everything. But not all at the same time.”

I nodded by pressing my head to the floor harder. He stood up and slapped his hands clean. I swallowed the rest of my tears. I couldn’t break down. Not now.

“Get up on the hood.”

Was he back? Was he the man I loved? When I stood and saw the way he took up more space than a normal man and how his posture was perfect and confident, I knew I had him back. He regarded me with curiosity and care, but not love. I was relieved and I despaired at the same time.

I took two unsure steps back with my pants half down, then I got up onto the cold metal of the car.

“Legs out,” he said, standing in front of me. When I straightened them he got his hands under the heel of my boot and pulled it off. “Just because I fucked you like a husband this afternoon doesn’t mean you’re in charge.” I was left with a sock half off, and he left it there to pull on the other boot. “You don’t kneel to force the issue. I see right through that.” The other boot slipped off, the sock with it.

“You were sad and unhappy,” I said.

“What makes you think that?” He took my pants by the cuffs and pulled, whipping them off. His erection pushed against the front of his pants.

“You looked… I can’t explain it.”

He took my underpants down and put them and my jeans over the car door. “Spread your legs.”

I did.

“Wider.”

I tried.

He grabbed my ankles and pushed them up and out. I fell back onto my elbows, unbalanced on the uneven car hood. One foot leaned on the car antenna.

“You look wet.” He put his fingers on the base of the antenna and twisted. “Tell me how I looked.”

“Like you were hiding something.”

“I’m not hiding anything.”

“Not a secret. Not a thing, exactly.”

The antenna came out, and my foot fell outward. I thought he was getting it out of my way, but when he swiped the air with it and it hissed through space, I knew different.

“I know you think you successfully psychoanalyzed me back there.” He whipped the antenna through the air again, landing it inside my thigh.

The pain was searing. I yelled and closed my legs.

He jerked them open and leaned into my face. “It’s not that simple.”

What was he trying to defend, when I hadn’t accused him?

“Yes. It. Is.”

“It doesn’t change anything.” He spoke through his teeth, as if opening his mouth all the way would let out something he wanted to keep inside. The truth. The fact that maybe something could change.

“Not today.”

“What did I look like?”

He really wanted to hear it. Well, I wasn’t ready to tell him. I put my head back, exposing my neck, and spread my legs. I felt him stand straight, but all I could see were the yellow lights and the spider webs on the ceiling.

“You want me to break you?” he asked.

“I want to please you. I want you to use me.”

I heard the whipping sound before the pain buckled me. Involuntarily, I closed my legs and rolled. He pushed me back and open, whipping from knee to center as if moving the sensation to the core of my desire. It felt good to hurt. So good to focus away from myself and into the immediate moment. I was untouched by worry, and my only desire was for relief from the pressure of my arousal.

He stopped and threw the antenna into the front seat.

“You’re the one who’s hiding something.” He laid his hand inside my thigh and squeezed the raw flesh. I sucked in a breath. “What is it?”

“Yes.”

His hand moved, hurting with a promise of pleasure that had to overcome such pain. He opened his pants. Cock out. Fingers inside me. Had I ever been so wet?

“You like it when I hurt you.” He tapped my clit with the pad of his finger, and I arched and twisted.

“Yes.”

Pulling me forward, he put his dick in me. My mouth opened to scream in gratification, but nothing came out. He gave me two thrusts. I thought I was going to burst between the pressure of the pain and the nearing orgasm that complemented it.

“Are you going to come?” he asked from deep in his throat.

I nodded, unable to form words.

He pulled out and rested his head on my clit. “You don’t run this show, Diana. I top. You bottom. Got it?”

“Yes,” I squeaked. “I’m sorry. I wanted to talk and I didn’t know how else to get to you.”

I wasn’t sorry. I would have done it again exactly the same way. Either he intuited my insincerity, or he wanted to punish me. Maybe he had some other motivation. My brain was too soaked in sex to discern why he pulled his body away.

“Don’t stop!” I gasped. “Please.”

He wasn’t going to. I could see the satisfaction of control in his face. He almost looked peaceful and content. Gratified with his denial.

I turned to one side so I could get off the car, but he pushed me back down and leaned over me until his face was an inch from mine.

“You want to fuck?”

“Yes.”

He flicked my clit with the head of his dick and buried himself inside me, pushing so deep it hurt, then deeper, until his root pressed against every fold and knot.

“I looked like what?” He pulled his full length out and thrust in again.

“God, it hurts. Yes.” I clawed at his shirt.

He wrangled my wrists together, crossing them and pressing them against my chest. “What did I look like?”

“Like you loved me.”

He slammed me, and it was so good, so painful paired with such a rush of shuddering pleasure that words broke down into syllables, then individual sounds.

“When?”

I had to organize the sounds. Had to do what he told me. “Porch.” I spit it out.

Holding me down, he took my body on the hood of the car. He took my will, timing his movements perfectly, as if he knew what I needed and how to deliver it.

“Do I look like I love you now?” he said through his teeth.

I could barely see through my own pleasure or speak through the pain. He’d never driven so deep it hurt. Never ripped through me like this.

“Answer,” he demanded.

“I’m. Come. Going—”

“Do not come. Answer. Do I look like I love you now?”

“No.” I thought it would come out in a shout, but it was a whisper.

“Good girl. Come for me. Say my fucking name.”

His name boiled in my core and flowed past my lips. Pleasure exploded, overtaking the pain, mating them into a blinding whirlpool of soul-shaking ecstasy.

He put his free hand on my face, pushing me down with his weight on my wrists, sternum, head, possessing my body completely, holding me still so he could use me.

With a jerk, he came inside me. Framed by his fingers, his surrender was visible in his hooded eyes and slack lip. His dominance was in his clenched jaw and the ropes of strain in his neck. He was both in that moment of ultimate vulnerability.

He chanted my name as if it were law, then fell on me, his chest rising and falling with mine.

In one second, he’d shift his weight.

In three seconds, he’d get up.

In ten seconds, he’d look me in the face.

In thirteen seconds, he’d speak.

In fifteen seconds, I’d realize he didn’t love me.

“Get off me.”

He propped himself up on his hands so he could see me. I was right. He was Dominant Adam, with nothing but confusion in his heart.

He stood back and got his dick in his pants. I snapped my underwear off the convertible door. He grabbed it.

“I have it.” He held out my underwear so I could get my feet in the holes.

I pulled the sock off and put my feet in, then I jumped off the car to get them up my thighs.

“No. You don’t.” I snapped my jeans away from him. “All the tender shit is lies. You shred me then take care of me like it was an act of love. But it’s not. Not for you. You’re just playing a part.”

I hopped into my jeans. He stood back with his arms folded as if he was passing judgment on my delivery.

“When I’m gentle, it’s a lie? Is that why you can’t stand it?”

“The problem is this. When you dominate me, I’m in love. But when I submit, your love dies.” I got my jeans around my waist and buttoned them as if I were trying to fling the sides together. I missed and slowed down to fasten them correctly. “We are the two most incompatible people who ever lived.” I bent down and got my other ball of a sock and poked the toe through the ankle. “Do you agree or not?”

I snapped the sock, trying to uncurl it. It wouldn’t go. I did it again, getting frustrated. Adam took the sock.

“You have a lot to answer for,” I said. “With everything. Lying the whole marriage and taking me to Montauk to get over me.”

“I didn’t think you’d love me.”

“I know. I believe you.”

“This is not what I wanted.” He held out my untangled sock. “It’s an unmanageable clusterfuck.”

“Epic.” I snapped the sock away. “And I wanted that old Adam back so he’d love me, but I just…” I shook my head and studied the stitches in my stupid sock. “I’d only hurt him again. I can’t do it all again. It’s too much.”

He put his hands on my shoulders. I didn’t look up. If I looked at him, I would love him or not depending on who I saw.

“Do you think I can’t love someone who loves me?” I asked.

“Huntress.”

“I mean it. Because if that’s the case, I am royally fucked.”

“And I am too.”

A teardrop fell on my sock. I wiped my eye with my wrist and sniffled loudly. He put his hand on my jaw and made me look at him. He didn’t look dominant and assured, but he didn’t look locked up like Manhattan Adam either.

“I need you,” he said. “I don’t know how to love you, but I don’t know how to live without you either. For now, can we just need each other?”

“I don’t want to get stuck. I don’t want to wake up in a year in this weird in-between place. We need to finish this the way we planned, when we planned. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s the only way.”

I wanted him to fight for me, but he wasn’t going to. A sinkhole of despair opened up inside me.

Don’t say it.

“You’re as trained as I can get you in the time we had.”

You’re saying it.

“If I ever love a sub, it’s going to be you.” He stepped close to me and put his fingertips on my collarbone, brushing my skin with a light, preoccupied touch. “Today I felt close to you. Very close. And at the same time, I can’t. I’ve tried. Every time you submit to me, it’s like I’m waking up from a dream and the reality is that I’m fucked up.”

He hurt me. Every word opened me to hopelessness. But my overriding emotion wasn’t self-interest. It was compassion. He was truly pained and utterly confused. He couldn’t explain it to himself any more than he could explain it to me.

I felt sorry for him.

I also felt a responsibility to him.

And though he could hurt me worse than any other human being could, I decided to put my own pain away for a minute. I’d feel it later. I’d feel his lack of love like a punch to the chest. Later.

I pounded my feet into my boots. Later.

I’d left him once. I knew what it took to admit the bond was gone. To say it out loud. To be responsible for the vacuum where love used to be. Even if he left me on day thirty-one, his suffering was greater than mine.

I reached down for the garage door handle and yanked it up. It rattled, and the whoosh and white noise of the expressway filled the room.

“We should stop,” I said. “We’re just making it worse.”

I didn’t want to see his reaction. If he agreed, I’d choke on my loss. I couldn’t bear it, so I walked out to the Jag without looking back.

He got in front of me, wedging himself between the car and me, holding my elbows with an unexpected intensity. “Give me a chance. Give me the days we have.”

I held two things in my mind. He was making me crazy. He was confusing me. He was yanking me toward him and pushing me away at the same time. I was angry, frustrated, vulnerable, defensive, and broken.

And I saw this for what it was. The obfuscation before clarity. Everything had to come out of the closet before it was rearranged. This was the mess where every emotion was strewn on the carpet, waiting to be put back in an orderly fashion. Through all my confusion, I made the calculation that this was a necessary stage.

Fear was hitched on the back of that calm assessment, because the emotional certainty that was to come might include love and it might not.

“What are you fighting for?” I asked, pushing him toward the lucidity I feared.

“Us. Me. I don’t know.”

“You just said—”

“I know what I just said. Then you walked away and I thought it might be the last time you left, and I made up this thing in my head that if you got to the car before I caught you…I got scared.”

He didn’t recognize his own scramble of emotions, and I didn’t recognize the woman who made the calm assessment that this was part of his journey either toward me or away from me. But though she coexisted with a hysterical panic, she was in charge.

“What were you afraid of?” I asked.

“That I’d never see you again.”

“That’s not love?”

“I don’t know what it is.” He drew his hands down my arms pensively. “Maybe it’s just the opposite of indifference.”

Can a body survive on scraps?

Can a woman pick the meat off dry bones and live?

How long would we do this to each other?

“Four more days,” I said.

Love or bust in four days.