But I do. Right now I need it worse than ever. I don’t know why, and I don’t care. I just want Jonah to take me without mercy.

“Come on,” I whisper as I slide my hands under his shirt. “Last night we were interrupted. Don’t you want to pick up where we left off?”

That makes him smile—the dangerous smile that makes me hot in an instant. “I knew you wanted it.”

Then he shoves me onto the bed, hard.

I gasp in genuine surprise. Jonah’s with me in an instant, standing by the edge of the bed to peel off my panties. He tears them from me roughly, then leans over my body and bites my breast—not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough that I have to stifle a cry.

He hears the moan in my throat. His palm covers my mouth, fingers hard against my face. “Don’t you fucking scream. Do you hear me? Don’t scream.”

Jonah rolls me onto my stomach. I hear the zipper of his jeans, and I realize he’s not going to get me ready. He’ll fuck me right away, as hard as he can. It will hurt. He wants it to hurt.

There’s a price to pay for demanding our game tonight. I want to pay it.

His hands clutch my waist and pull me down until my legs dangle off the bed. He parts my thighs roughly, then grabs my hair and tugs hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. The whole hot length of him fills me as he thrusts inside.

“You’re already wet,” he says, as if it disgusts him. “You’re such a filthy slut.”

Jonah starts taking me hard and fast, every stroke meant to punish. His grip on my hair tightens as he pumps into me. My blood has rushed to my clit, my cunt, and already I know I’m going to come hard, soon.

“That’s right,” Jonah pants. “You know you have to take it, don’t you? Don’t you?”

Yes, yes, I have to take it, no matter what you give me, no matter what—

And then Jonah says, “Good girl.”

This room vanishes. Jonah vanishes. The past decade of my life is gone. I am a fourteen-year-old girl; I am lying on the couch; Anthony is raping me. He is inside me right now.

Within one breath I know what this is. A flashback. I’m having a flashback. I haven’t had one in years, not a real one—a moment where I am back there, and Anthony’s on me, and it is real. It is completely real.

I gasp, “Silver.”

Immediately Jonah stops moving.

“Silver, silver.” Tears have begun to flow down my face, and even as the nightmarish image of Anthony fades, the horror remains.

Jonah pulls out. He rolls me over, and at first the sight of him frightens me. He’s naked; his still-hard cock stands out from his body, ready to fuck me again. But then I see the expression on his face—concerned. No, stricken.

He’s not going to hurt me. Jonah would never hurt me.

“Are you all right?” he whispers. I shake my head no. He begins to lie down beside me, then pauses. “What should I do?

“Hold me. Just hold me.”

Jonah stretches out by my side and pulls me into his embrace. I start to cry—deep, racking sobs that hurt my throat. When did I last cry like this? Have I ever let go so completely? I can’t remember. I can’t think.

All I know is that Jonah is with me, pulling a blanket over me and holding me close, and it feels like the only safety I have ever known.

Thirty-one

“What’s wrong?” Jonah whispers once, late at night, after I’ve stopped sobbing but before I can fall asleep.

“I can’t. Please. I can’t.”

“You can tell me.”

“It wasn’t you. Please, Jonah, not now, not tonight.”

I drift in and out of sleep, never truly losing consciousness for more than a half hour at a time. Jonah holds me all night long.

•   •   •

First thing Sunday morning, I decide to start the drive back home just after lunch.

“I’ll be back for Thanksgiving,” I say as I towel-dry my hair in front of the mirror in Jonah’s room. “If anything happens before then, I can get back PDQ.”

He nods, but says nothing. We dress in near silence; I slip on my jeans as Jonah buttons his shirt, both of us aware of each other yet never meeting each other’s eyes. The weight of unasked questions fills the room.

Jonah wants to take care of me. He wants to understand me in a way no one else has. He’s knocking at the locked door nobody else ever even found. My famished heart hungers for this, for him. But I am still not ready to speak the words. I am not ready to tell Jonah who and what I really am.

Somehow it seems as if when I say the words to him, when I say, Anthony raped me, all of it—the rape, Anthony’s power over me, the true depths of my sexual compulsion—will become more real.

Which is ridiculous. It’s pretty fucking real and always has been. Still, that’s how I feel.

Jonah says, “Would you like me to drive back with you?”

“But you bought a plane ticket.”

He gives me a look that reminds me his dad owned an airline. “It’s not a big deal. Besides, you might need someone to change a flat.”

That makes me smile for the first time this morning. “Okay.”

I text Mom and Chloe my decision about leaving today before we head to the house to say good-bye. This saves me the angst of a face-to-face confrontation, but means they’ll have time to prepare their most withering put-downs before I even get there. The lesser of two evils, I figure.

Fortunately, when we arrive, the first family member out the door is Libby, her bright yellow overalls as sunny as her smile. “Aunt Vivi! Uncle Jonah!”

He gives me a look—but it’s not the panicked face most guys would make upon inheriting the title of uncle after just one meeting. Jonah’s not scared, not at all.

I think, I’m in so deep.

So I swing Libby up into my embrace. With a pang, I realize she’s already almost too heavy for this. I’m missing this little girl growing up. “Where were you this morning?” she asks. “I had to eat Cocoa Krispies all by myself.”

“Yeah, but Jonah’s bed-and-breakfast had waffles.” I smile at him, and finally, the two of us are once again at ease.

“Waffles?” Libby’s face falls. Obviously she feels she got cheated.

So I quickly add, “Next time Jonah’s in New Orleans, you and I will take him to get some beignets. How about that?”

“Ohhh-kay,” she sighs. I am being forgiven, but barely.

Which is better than I’m going to do with the rest of my family.

Inside, my mother accepts my introduction of Jonah politely, though without ever leaving her seat in the high-backed armchair. Her blue eyes scour him as roughly as steel wool. She’s never trusted my judgment about anything—least of all men. Geordie they liked well enough, but he was an exception to the rule of disapproval. “A professor, you say? Were you one of Vivienne’s teachers?”

How blithely she accuses Jonah of a massive ethics violation. Before I can reply, Libby does it for me. “MawMaw, I told you, Jonah teaches volcanoes!”

She raises her eyebrows. “I assumed that was a story.”

“I’m an earth sciences professor.” Jonah meets my mother’s eyes steadily, even searchingly, as if he’s looking for the truth I won’t tell him. “Vivienne and I have mutual friends.”

Which is a pretty neat way to sidestep the question of how we started going out in the first place. I’m impressed. “Jonah flew down yesterday morning,” I add, “and he’ll drive back with me today, so I don’t have to go alone.”

“Very kind.” Mom sounds like she doesn’t believe her own words.

This is when Chloe makes her appearance, coming in from the kitchen in a sweater dress and, Jesus H. Christ, high heels. “Heading back already?” The way she smiles at Jonah makes me realize why my sister went to all the trouble to fix herself up this morning. No, she’s not actually flirting with him; whatever Chloe’s other flaws may be, she’s not a cheater. She’d never go after a guy behind Anthony’s back. But she still has this need for men to notice her as the most beautiful woman in the room.