SULLIVAN #2
But I can’t kiss him before I leave, can I?
I can’t let him hold me or grope me or get off with me.
I can’t whisper things in his ear like I’ll miss you, don’t forget to call me, or ask whether he still thinks about me like I think about him even though I know he does.
I know it like I know the shape of the music he makes when he smiles in the sunshine.
Our house is shutting down for the night. The last few men have been entertained, paid their hostesses, and are being shown the door. Harrison is checking the rooms. I’m in the kitchen refilling my water when there’s a knock on the back door.
I startle, wondering if some idiot got stuck in the backyard, and how drunk they are.
Chelsea is cleaning the half-drunk Solo cups off the counter and stares at the door with me. She calls out for Harrison.
He comes in grumbling, having heard the knock, too. “It’s three in the morning. What the hell is wrong with these losers?”
Because of where I’m standing, I get the first glimpse of the man outside before Harrison even has the door all the way open. I recognize Knight immediately and say quickly, “Oh, I’ve got this. He’s a friend of mine.”
Chelsea cranes her neck even as I’m already at the door, bumping Harrison out of the way and keeping the door mostly closed. “Are you sure?” she calls after me. “Who is it?”
Here it would be great if Knight had a name less like Knight and more like Ethan, but I’m not going to lie about it to Chelsea, or she’ll just follow me outside. “It’s Knight.” I glance up at his face and we lock gazes. “He’s drunk,” I add, even though he clearly isn’t.
He rolls his eyes, but I’ve said enough, so I step outside with him and shut the door behind me. “What are you doing here?” I whisper as I walk him backward off the stoop and into the yard toward the fire pit where there are only embers left.
“Wanna go on a walk through the woods?”
“Seriously?”
“You weren’t at the party.”
“Yeah, well, I had my reasons.”
“So…is that a yes?”
He looks so good. His longer, wavy hair is so perfect on him.
His scruffy jawline and full lips beneath those dark, beautiful eyes make him the most attractive man I’ve ever seen or could ever imagine seeing.
I love everything about his face. The small dimple, the freckles on his tanned, olive skin.
I didn’t even know skin like that could freckle.
They’re faint, though. You have to look really close.
And if there’s anything I’m really good at besides music it’s looking at Knight Winters really closely.
“I can’t,” I say. “I shouldn’t.”
“I really want to talk to you before you go.”
Because I want the exact same thing, I find the offer impossible to refuse. “Why the woods?”
“Why not the woods?”
I sigh in defeat. My resistance is useless. “Fine. Let me grab my jacket.”
He doesn’t appear to have planned anything more than a talk. As I walk around his truck and peek into the truck bed, none of the comforts of spring are there. It’s only a strapped-down Yeti and a pair of muddy boots. No blankets or pillows. No bluetooth speaker.
And he doesn’t take me to the spot we went to in Spring either. He parks at the back of our old dorm parking lot on campus. Before we set off toward the woods, he leans into the back of the truck, opens the Yeti, pulls out two blankets and hands one to me.
“Where are we going?”
“I thought we’d head back to the Front.”
“Why?” I ask even as the mention of the place we first kissed spikes my heart rate.
“I don’t know,” he says. “It’s just the place I was thinking about going.”
I can’t argue that. I still dream about the train tracks and the tunnel. The glow of the fire light on all our fresh young faces. The way our legs touched and the cold brick against my back. Other things.
Like that first night, Knight has a flashlight, and I have the light from my phone.
Navigating the dark woods on the vague path keeps us from having a meaningful conversation, but once we get to the train tracks, we both grin when we find another fire with the embers still glowing, a few beer bottles and cigarette butts lying around.
“How do we know no one else is here?” I ask.
“Yo, who’s out here?” Knight yells in the loud way he calls out to his teammates on a football field in a boisterous stadium.
There’s silence. Just rustling wind in the trees, cold as hell.
Both of us turn off our lights and head over to the dying fire.
Knight picks up a few twigs and branches along the way, pitching them into the pit.
“This is a dumb place to be,” I say, still looking around for anyone out here. “So many people know about it.”
“Not really,” he says. “Just people from our old dorm.”
“Yeah, and their friends and friends of those friends.”
“Whatever.” He crouches beside the fire and places his twigs and branches at the base of it among the hot coals. “It’s almost four a.m. And I just want to talk.”
“Even us talking would look weird,” I tell him, though his words sting.
“People know we’re friends. Look, if I’m not worried, you definitely shouldn’t be.”
Now I do think he might be drunk. “How much have you had to drink tonight?”
“Just a few beers at the house. Literally only enough to try talking you into coming out here with me.”
“Oh, did that take some nerve?”
“No, but what I’m about to ask you does.”
Dread sinks low in my gut. My mouth goes dry, and I look down at him as he glances up at me. “It’s a friend question,” he says, like he can’t interpret the look I’m giving him.
Somehow I already know this isn’t going to be about him and me.
This isn’t a sudden, awkward change of heart from him to ditch this bullshit friendship thing we’ve been playing at, but a deeper, more unspeakable concern.
He’s worried about me. Not us, but me. And I can only assume it’s because of that phone call last summer—the last time we were apart for any length of time, where I was suicidal, and he wanted me to listen to Sia.
“I can’t talk about it,” I say after a moment’s hesitation.
He rises to his full height, but I don’t look up at him. I stare at the small fire fighting to live a few more precious minutes. “Can’t or won’t?”
“Both.”
“Let’s work on the won’t then.”
I shake my head. Shame so cellular it feels like it’s coded into my bone marrow makes me feel heavy and hot in the bitingly cold air.
I drop the blanket and take a step back, finally turning away from him and walking into the tunnel where it’s so dark, I can barely make my feet out on the tracks.
The walls of it do block the wind, though.
Knight’s hands on my shoulders root me to the spot, stopping me from getting any further away.
I should have run. I could have outrun him at least.
“Tell me where you’re going,” he says.
“I—no. It’s none of your business.”
“It’s dark. We’re all alone out here. No one can hear you. I can’t even see you. Tell me where you’re going.”
“Detroit,” I say past the giant lump forming in my throat, threatening to choke off my airway.
“What’s in Detroit?”
“The place I go when I don’t go home.”
“Who is in Detroit?”
“The person who pays my tuition.”
“And for your car. I know that part. Who is it?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
I force myself to swallow. “Won’t,” I choke out.
“And this is the same person who hurts you?”
“How do you remember all this?”
“How did you think I could forget?” he asks.
I shut my eyes and try to focus only on the weight of his hands on my shoulders.
The warmth of him at my back. I wish we were closer.
I wish he’d wrap his arms around me and tell me to shut the fuck up.
But I can’t do that. And maybe it’s because of that—because I can’t show him how much I want him or need him—that I say what I say.
“He took me in when I was sixteen. He brought me to his home and told me how talented I was and that he could help me bring my talent to the world.”
“I’m listening,” Knight says softly.
“But he didn’t just want me for how well I could play the violin. He told me…he told me I was like an angel. That every part of me…” I choke, coughing, as tears burn my eyes. “Was precious. Holy and blessed by God.”
He gives my shoulders a reassuring squeeze. “How did it start?”
“Small corrections,” I say after swallowing the lump in my throat.
“He’d put his hand on my back while I played to get me to sit up straighter.
Then he’d have me stand. It’s called um…
conservatory style, when you play standing up.
I’d never had private lessons before, so I didn’t know—there was so much I didn’t know. ”
Knight’s grip softens, and I put a hand over one of his to tell him I don’t need for him to let go.
“Once I was standing, he’d touch more of me. My stomach, my outer thighs. He’d tilt my head and run…he’d run his fingers down my neck and say something like, “This line, how does that feel?”
Knight inhales, and I feel his exhalation gust over my neck. “And how did it feel?”
Shame again. Warm and pulsating at my core. The shape of a mace. “Good,” I whisper.
“How old is he?”
“He’s forty-five now.”
“And you were sixteen?”
I nod. “Yes, and I looked younger.”
“Did you want him to touch you?”
The tears spill. “I don’t know how to answer that.”
“I’ll never judge you, Sullivan. I told you that.”
“You say that because you can’t possibly know what all there is to judge.”
“But I know myself. And I know I keep my promises,” he says.
“Yes, I wanted him to touch me,” I burst through a painful sob that rips from my chest, tearing out of me with claws spread.
Claws that have kept this secret fastened tightly in the center of my soul for so long, they’re still fighting to hang on.
“No one had ever—I wanted it. His approval. His—he was like—in awe of me, and no one had ever listened to me play the way he did.”
“He worshipped you…”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“How long did it take for him to want more than just touching?”