Behind the courts, between the locker room and the club, there was a shortcut for members and an artery for the grounds staff. Behind that was a quarter-acre patch of grass between the fence and Route 42 which stretched between Doverton and Barrington. The entire lot was visible to the road, but there was a tree in the middle of it. A mighty oak with horizontal branches thicker than most tree’s fully-grown trunks.

When Chris had a minute and happened upon the right piece of wood, he’d nail chunks of two-by-four or one-by-four into the trunk. He told me about it behind the pool house and in the hidden corners of the parking lot.

I didn’t know what he was talking about until he finished at mid-summer and led me through a hole in the fence. “Where are we going?”

I was barely through before Lance bounced over to me, stopping right before he came to the end of a long chain. Still a puppy, he had big brown eyes and floppy ears with short fur the color of hazelnuts. I ran my hands over his body, and he rolled onto his back.

“Is he safe here?” I asked, crouching to rub his belly.

“Pretty safe. Irv says it’s okay as long as I clean up after him and he’s quiet.”

Lance twisted around and nipped my fingers playfully, trying to wrestle my hand.

“Where’s your ball?” Chris asked.

Lance bounced back to the base of his captivity. The tree. I stood and slapped my hands clean. Chris laid his hand on the back of my neck. I shuddered.

“I was watching you play,” he whispered in my ear. “Do you know you smile before forehands?”

“You should tell me when you’re there.”

“Next time.” He nipped my earlobe, his breath loud in my ear.

Lance dropped a sticky ball at our feet. Chris knelt and patted his head, reaching into his pocket for a new yellow ball. Lance was thrilled. Chris tossed it toward the tree and the puppy ran for it. Chris took my hand and led me to the tree.

“Put your foot on this.” He laid his hand on the lowest piece of wood, at knee height. “I’ve tried it already. It’s safe.”

I dropped my bag at the trunk, and he helped me balance as I got my tennis shoe on the bottom foothold. My hands found the boards above, and I stepped up. At the second step, I pressed the back of my skirt against my bare thighs and looked down at him.

“You’ll need two hands to climb,” he said.

Behind him, on the ground, Lance looked up at us with his tongue hanging out.

“I think you should go first,” I said.

“You’re wearing shorts under your skirt. I can’t see a thing.”

The shorts protected my bottom from view while I ran and spun on the tennis court. But they were still really short, and he was getting a longer look.

“Do you promise?”

“Swear.”

I decided to believe him and climbed until I was fifteen feet off the ground, on a bough thicker than a telephone pole. I straddled the bough and slid back so Chris could fit. He straddled it facing me. Below us, Lance protected the new ball by yipping. I could hear cars on Route 42 and the pock pock of tennis balls hitting the court, but all I could see were leaves, branches, and mottled sunlight.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“I love it.”

He licked his finger and chalked one up for himself. “Did you decide about college next year?”

I shrugged. I wanted to get out of Barrington. Spread my wings. Meet new people and learn new things. But Chris couldn’t afford to go to college.

“Did you check out the financial aid booklet at the library?” I asked.

“There’s no point.”

“Well then, I’ll get an Associate’s from Jackson County. I won’t have to move and—”

“You have to get out of here.” He grabbed my hands. “I can’t go, but you can.”

Chris was an only child to a mother who had been too obese to leave her bed. In the past year, she’d made him proud by losing a hundred fifty pounds. Not enough to be comfortable, but enough to move around the trailer.

“Then come,” I said. “I move, then you move and we meet far away somewhere.”

He squeezed my hands. “Look at you. You can be anything you want. Go be it. That’s all I have to say.”

He looked over my shoulder, then back at my face. I knew him enough from our summer together to know I needed to wait to hear whatever he said next.

“I’ll be here when you get back,” he continued.

I almost lost my mind in his eyes. Almost agreed with him. I could do anything, but I didn’t want to. I wasn’t Harper, with her big dreams and bigger brain. I didn’t have ambitions or a career in mind. I figured I’d inherit the factory and keep it going, or not. What I really wanted was a house full of people who depended on me.

“I’ll think about it,” I said because I wanted to make Chris happy for a moment.

“When do you have to be back?” he asked.

“Mom thinks I’m volleying with Marsha.”

He brushed my knee with his fingertips. My skin felt as though it was melting underneath him and I became very aware of the hard trunk between my legs.

“Marsha’s in the pool house with what’s-his-face.”

“Charles.”

He leaned into me. “What do you think they’re doing in there?”

They called Marsha a tramp, but I didn’t think she was. Or maybe I thought being a tramp suited her. Or I thought it wasn’t a big deal.

“Stuff.”

“This, maybe?” He ran two fingers inside my thigh.

Sensation rushed behind them, to my knees, and ahead to the soft place between my legs. We’d kissed plenty in the back room of the pro shop and in the utility closet. He’d run his hands over my shirt, but he’d never touched me like that before.

“Maybe,” I gasped.

I shouldn’t let him run his hand up my other thigh. I should stop this right there. He was going way too fast. There were steps and he wasn’t honoring them. But that made his touch even more explosive. My body didn’t expect the speed of his advance, and it reacted by opening up all the way.

“Oh, my God.” His eyes were wide and his lip was stretched behind his top teeth. When he let it go, it went from white to deep pink. “Look at you. I can’t believe how sexy you are.”

My face tingled. Chris wasn’t any more experienced than I was, but he was so open and honest about what he was doing and what he wanted that his words made me blush.

His index finger brushed the edge of my shorts. “Can I touch you?”

I throbbed when he asked. The ache inside me was almost painful in its need.

But was it too much? Would he think I was a slut? My legs were already open, by design. Wasn’t that already an invitation? I could have swung both legs to one side, but I hadn’t taken the modest posture.

In the pause after his question, he kissed me, pressing his thumbs into my inner thighs. His tongue in my mouth was such a sweet violation. I wanted more. All the more.

I picked up his hands and put them on my chest. Lips locked, he ran his thumbs over my hard nipples as I reached back, under my shirt, and unhooked my bra.

He broke the kiss. I came forward to put our mouths together again, but he leaned back. “Show me.”

I would have preferred to kiss while he felt my breasts so it would feel as though I was in thoughtless throes of passion. It would feel less mindful. If we were putting thought into it, pausing and stopping, appreciating every act, then I had no excuse.

Chris gently pulled at the hem of my shirt. He didn’t want mindless. He wanted to see every second. I knew my nipples were hard under my bra and he was looking at them as if he was savoring the sight. His relish shamed me and made my skin tingle at the same time.

In the choice between shame and the tingle, I made my choice.

I pulled my shirt up over my breasts. The bra lifted. He ran his hands along the underside before he pulled the bra up.

He sucked in a breath.

“These are beautiful.” He bent my hard nipples before he gently squeezed them.

The feeling shot right between my legs as if connected by an electric wire. My back arched, and my consciousness hid behind a wall of pleasure.

The bough slipped from under me, and his hands tightened on my rib cage.

“Whoa, there,” he said, keeping me from falling.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Just remember where you are.” Ever so tenderly, he pinched my nipples again. It hurt a little, but the pain was part of the pleasure. “Can you put your hands behind you? On the branch?”

He guided my arms behind me. My shirt fell back down, but once I was secure, leaning back against my locked elbows, he drew it up again. I was exposed to the sky.

“Next time, I’ll do it your way.” He pushed my chin up so I was looking through the branches at the clouds and ran his hand down my body. “I’ll go up first so you can lean on the trunk.”

“Yes, okay.”

Both hands landed on my breasts. “I like it when you agree.”

He kissed my sternum and twisted my nipples.

I groaned.

He twisted a little harder. “Do you like that?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“You smell like roses.” He sucked one nipple and hurt the other in a way that brought pleasure to the surface. I was filled with blood, my insides bigger than my outside, stretching my skin to thin translucence. “I should call you Catherine of the Roses.”

“More,” I gasped, the word falling out of my mouth like a piece of gum I’d forgotten about.

I didn’t even know what I was saying. I was losing my mind as he worked me over. Blind, deaf, dumb. My whole body was wedged between his fingers.

My face was toward the sky, a curtain of dappled orange from the daylight on the other side of my closed eyes. A frame of white-hot shockwaves flickered in my vision, and something broke in me. I stopped thinking, breathing, feeling anything but him as the world pressed in on me and I pressed out into the world.

“Jesus!” he said when I finally gasped and opened my eyes.

“Oh, my G—”

“You came.”

Sitting up straight, I put my hands over my face. I was ashamed. I’d done that, in front of him, from nothing. “I didn’t think I would!”

When I took my hands away and saw him looking at me, I yanked my shirt down.

“It was awesome!”

Awesome? I wanted to die.

Lance yipped right before Harper’s voice came past the fence.

“Catherine!”

Chris looked at his watch, but I didn’t need to see it. Three p.m. had come and my bra wasn’t hooked. I reached behind me and grappled with it.

I had to get down and Chris was in my way. He’d made me come right here, outside, in a tree. I was ashamed and nervous, and he was pulling my shirt down to cover me. He was beautiful, with his blue eyes and the wavy fall of hair over one side of his forehead. He was inappropriate. Unsuitable. Dangerous to my future, whatever that was.

“Hey,” Harper called without shouting, as if she knew I was close by.

Chris climbed up a branch to get out of my way, indicating his handmade staircase, then putting his finger to his lips.

Lance stretched his chain to get to Harper, wagging his tail like windshield wipers in a storm. She crawled through the hole in the fence to pet him while looking all around.

“Cath?” she called.

“Coming!” I shouted, scuttling down.

“There you are!” She stood while Lance sniffed around her ankles. “Mom said to go to the car.”

I slung my bag over my shoulder. “Okay, let’s go.”

“This is Lance, right? Is Chris around?” She pointed at the tree. “Were you climbing with him?”

“I’m sure he’s working.”

“Is that a ladder up the trunk?” She pinched her bottom lip until it creased.

I slapped her hand down. “Stop bending your lip like that. It’s going to stay that way.” I took the hand I’d slapped before she had a chance to bend her lip again, pulling her to the break in the fence. “And don’t even think of climbing that tree. It’s not safe.” She went through first, and I followed. “I’m telling the grounds crew it’s there before someone gets hurt.”

My muscles didn’t relax until we got to the car and I knew Harper hadn’t seen Chris in the tree. If anyone knew the way he’d touched me and the way it made me feel, I’d die. Literally die.