his freedom, that he was a man and could do anything he wanted to anyone he wanted, while she had to marry him to escape the prison of her life and the prison of the world’s expectations. In another world getting married was considered the epitome of settling down, behaving oneself, fulfilling one’s role as a woman in the world.
Oh, but not Tamara. Not his Tamara. She’d somehow made marriage her teenage rebellion. What other rebellions did his rotten girl have in her?
Levi went up on his hands again. He thrust into her harder than he should, but she took him. In the dark he could see the outline of her body, her breasts moving with each thrust, her head back and her hands clutching at his arms, clinging to him, panting and moaning with each thrust. She wanted this as much as he did. More maybe, since she’d never had it before, and because she was seventeen, and when he’d been that age, he would have died without sex and considered it the gift of life when a girl gave it to him. So he gave it to Tamara because she needed it, and even though there were a thousand good reasons they shouldn’t be doing this, none were good enough to stop them.
Knowing he couldn’t last much longer, Levi braced himself on one arm and touched her where they joined. He wanted to feel it while it happened, feel it on his fingers, feel how soft she was against his hardness. He found her clitoris swollen and throbbing, and he stroked it as he rode her, focusing all his attention on the one goal of making her come during her first time. He had to. His self-respect depended on it. The more he rubbed her, the tighter she contracted around him and the harder she breathed and the more she whimpered and moaned and writhed. Her fingers gripped the sheets so hard he thought they’d tear and her hips rose so high off the bed she almost lifted him with her.
They were there. Together. Everything stopped, frozen, tense, taut as an equilibrist’s high wire. And they balanced there on the edge, holding on, not blinking, not seeing, too tight to breathe as they pushed, pushed and pushed into each other until the pressure became unbearable, utterly, utterly unbearable...
...and then it was everything all at once. Tamara cried out. Her head fell back. Her inner muscles fluttered and shuddered all around him as he came, pouring into her as they crashed against each other, out of control, erupting with a thousand little explosions along every nerve in their bodies.
Then it was over. Nothing left but the aftershocks, the catching of breaths, the separation and inevitable contemplation of what the hell just happened.
Levi wrapped Tamara in his arms and rolled them together so he lay on his back and she lay on him, her head on his chest, her legs on his legs. It was real now. They were husband and wife. She’d lost her virginity to him. And he’d lost something, too, although he wasn’t sure what it was, only that he wouldn’t be getting it back. He doubted he’d miss it.
“So that’s what it’s supposed to be,” Tamara said, and he felt her chest moving against his in laughter. Sweat dripped off her forehead onto his shoulder and his semen dripped out of her and onto his thighs.
It was an odd thing to say, but he’d heard odder after sex. Levi stroked her hair, stroked her back, held her close.
“That’s what it’s supposed to be.” He tried to sound as mature as his years, and he thought he pulled it off. He’d never had sex that felt like that before, like they were the same person, same body and blood. It scared him. He didn’t like it and yet he wanted more. Having sex with Tamara was like getting high and sobering up all in the same moment. He shivered in the night air like a man with the DTs and pretended the night air caused it.
“Are you scared?” she asked. She must have felt him shaking.
“Terrified. You’re an animal. Hold me.”
Tamara laughed, a human sound, normal. He took a deep shuddering breath and willed his heart to settle down, but it wouldn’t obey. He felt like he’d awoken from a night terror—drenched in sweat, blood racing, and fear, wild irrational fear. As a boy he’d had night terrors, but he hadn’t had one in years, and never while awake. No matter how much he told himself it was fine, he was fine, on and on his heart ran as if it wanted to flee his own body.
“I shouldn’t have come in you,” he said, finding the source of his fear. “I wanted to stop but couldn’t. You’re on the pill, right?”
Tamara rolled over onto her side away from him.
“No.”
18
As soon as she said it, Tamara knew she’d said the wrong thing. She should have lied, but she couldn’t do it, not after what he’d done to her. Not after he’d made her feel like that.
“No?” Levi repeated. “No? You let me fuck you and—”
“We’re married. We’re supposed to do this.”
“You’re seventeen years old, and I don’t want a baby with you.”
She felt the bed shift and she turned over in time to see Levi yanking his jeans on.
“What do you mean you don’t want a baby with me?”
“I don’t want kids. Kids trap you.”
“I’m not trying to trap you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you aren’t on the pill?”
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
“You didn’t think it mattered? Didn’t matter? This isn’t a real marriage, Tamara. You remember that? You remember why we’re doing this? I help you get the company from your mother. I get my horse farm. You remember that conversation?”
“Not a real marriage?” She pulled the blanket up to her neck as Levi struck a match and lit the lantern. She wished he hadn’t done that. Now she could see his face and she’d never seen him this angry. “We—”
“We fucked. That’s all. That’s it. I’ve fucked a lot of people. Didn’t make me married to them.”
“But you are married to me.”
“Not for long.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means we’re done. Tomorrow we’re getting the fuck out of here. We’re going back to Kentucky. I’m filing for divorce. You can keep your money, you can keep your farm, you can keep it all because I want nothing to do with this or you anymore.”
“But, Levi—”
He waved his hand as if chopping off her words as he walked from the bedroom.
“We’re done,” he said. “I should have known better than to trust a goddamn Maddox. You’re as bad as your mother.”
He slammed the door behind him.
“I’m not a Maddox!” Tamara screamed, a primal sound that scared her even as it erupted from her own body.
She sat up in bed, panting harder than she had even when Levi had been inside her.
“I’m not a Maddox,” she said again, quieter this time, speaking to herself.
Tamara crawled out of bed, wincing as she did. She ached inside. Sex with Levi hadn’t hurt, not in the usual way she thought of things hurting. There wasn’t a pain inside her. Instead, she felt hollowed out like he’d scraped her insides and opened up parts of her that had long been walled off until now, letting in light and fresh air. She didn’t want to close those parts of her up again, not so soon after seeing the light.
When she stood, she felt a rush of fluid from inside her, coating her upper thighs. Tamara looked around the room, found nothing except the corner of the sheet to use to clean herself. That made it too real for her, wiping Levi’s semen out of her. It had been so easy in her mind to plan things like Marry Levi and get pregnant to punish Momma. But now it was a real thing, not a fantasy. Oh, God, she could be pregnant. She really could be pregnant. And Levi was leaving her.
She didn’t want to cry, but she did it anyway as she pulled on her nightgown. From the day she’d met Levi, she’d wanted him, and having him was even better than the wanting. Didn’t he know how hard it had been for her to let him do that to her? Didn’t he know what it had meant for her to... No, he didn’t know. He didn’t know because she hadn’t told him. And she couldn’t tell him now. He’d think she was lying to make him stay. And if he thought she was lying, it wouldn’t matter because s
he’d never want to see him again, anyway.
Tamara picked up the lantern and carried it with her from the bedroom. Carefully she walked down the steps, afraid of falling in the dark, afraid of spiders, afraid of snakes. She clutched the cross around her neck and stroked it for safety and for luck.
“Levi?”
He didn’t answer her. She called his name again. Still no answer. She carried the lantern through the living room, into the kitchen, into the bathroom. No Levi, no Levi, no Levi. She took it into the little office, but she couldn’t bring herself to step across the threshold into the room where Daddy had shot himself. Still she whispered Levi’s name. He wasn’t there, either.
Weeping openly now, Tamara climbed the stairs again. The door to the pink bedroom, her bedroom, was closed. She set the lantern down on the floor by the door. She jiggled the handle and found it locked. Levi had locked himself in her bedroom. No. She was locked out.
“Levi—”
“Go to bed, Tamara.”
“I have to talk to you.”
“Go to bed. We’re done talking.”
“But—”
“There is nothing you can say to make this all right. So we’re done.”
Tamara pressed her hands to the door as if she could magically make it open by sheer wanting.
She knew she should go. She knew she should leave him alone to cool off. But she had his come inside her and they were in the house where her daddy shot himself and she was scared. She hadn’t been this scared or miserable since the night of the flood.
“Momma was going to kill Kermit,” Tamara said. She didn’t say it loudly, but Levi must have heard her because after a minute the door opened a crack, and she nearly fell into the room.
“What did you say?”
Tamara stepped back, afraid she’d made it worse.
“Momma. On my birthday. I had to pick—either she’d kill Kermit or she’d fire you. I had to pick. That’s what she did to punish me for kissing you. Your job or my horse.”
“Your mother did that to you?”
Tamara nodded.
“What did you pick?”
“I should have picked your job, but I couldn’t do it. And I couldn’t pick Kermit, either. I told her I was going to get you and Kermit and we’d ride away and she could shoot herself instead. She slapped me and left. I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For not being able to save your job.”
“You think I would have picked my job over your horse? There are other jobs.”
“There are other horses.”
“Your daddy gave you Kermit.”
“Yes, he did.”
“Your mother is an evil woman.”
Before the night of the flood, Tamara would never have thought such a thing. Was her mother a little crazy? Well, yeah, but Granddaddy made everybody crazy. And who could blame her with her husband dead, too? And they’d fought a lot, her and her mother. She couldn’t have said she’d liked her mother all that much most days. But evil? No, Tamara would never have said that about her mother before that awful night. She’d felt sorry for her. Even in that big house with her big Cadillac and the credit cards Granddaddy paid for, there was something about her mother that had always reminded Tamara of a dog who had been kicked by its owner one too many times. But the pity was long gone. Her mother had killed the pity.
“Yes, I think she might be,” Tamara said.
Levi exhaled and rested his forehead against the door frame. With the lantern between them at their feet, Levi looked like a ghost of some sort, and she imagined she did, too. Their shadows stretched upward to the ceiling. She’d never been this tall, tall as a man, tall as a monster.
“After your mother fired me, I had this fantasy,” Levi said. “I’d come back to Arden at night and knock on your window.”
“You knew my window?”
“Last window on the side of the house nearest the road. Yeah, I knew your window.”
Tamara started to open her mouth, to say something to that, but decided better of it.
“I’d knock on your window in the middle of the night and get you to let me in. And then, in your own bed, I’d fuck your brains out. I’d do it the next night, too. And the night after. And every night until I knocked you up. And then you know what I dreamed of doing?”
“No,” she said, her voice hardly more than a whisper.
“I’d leave you. I’d leave you pregnant and alone to face your mother and you’d have to tell her you were pregnant and it was mine, all mine.”
“That was your dream?” She’d had dreams like that, too. Not the part at the end. The part at the end was every girl’s nightmare.
He nodded. “My fantasy. My ugly awful fantasy to get back at your mother for what she said to me and what she did. I’m not telling you this because I’m proud of it. I’m not. Uncle Andre would kill me with his own hands if I did that to you or any other girl. And here you are, making me into that person I don’t want to be. Don’t do that to me. Do anything but that to me, Tamara.”
“That’s not what I want to do, I swear,” she said. “I had this idea, the same idea as yours. Momma hates you worse than anybody in the world. Me having your baby would make her madder than anything. It would kill her.”
“And you want to kill her.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Go to bed, Tamara. Get some sleep. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
“It? What are we talking about in the morning?”
“What we’re going to do, I guess.”
“Are you going to divorce me?”
“Eventually, I imagine. That was the idea, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, but that was before...you know.”
“I know.”
“Do you hate me?”
“No, I don’t hate you. I’m not happy with you, but it’s as much my fault as yours. More my fault. I’m an adult. You aren’t. I should have taken care of this and not left it to you. This is on me.”
She knew what he wanted to say and it hurt. She knew he meant “You’re a stupid kid and I shouldn’t have trusted you.” And maybe he was right. Maybe he shouldn’t trust her.
But she wasn’t a stupid kid.
“I’ll go to bed,” she said. “If we have to... If we have to go to a doctor to take care of it, we can do that.”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah, there’s always that. It was only one time. We’ll see what happens.”
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll see.” She looked up at him. “Good night.”
“Right. Good night.”
Levi started to shut the door and then stopped.
“I know you hate her,” he said. “I hate her, too. But don’t ruin my life trying to ruin hers, okay?”
Tamara swallowed hard and what she swallowed tasted like guilt.
“I won’t. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. It isn’t. I shouldn’t have lost it. It’s my job to be in charge of this stuff, you know. Every girl on earth is on the pill. Except the one I happened to marry.”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
He sighed—heavily. One of the old exasperated Levi sighs she’d always adored.
“Do you really think you could handle having my baby?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You know he could be dark, right? I’m light, but that doesn’t mean my children will be. It happens sometimes. There are black women so light they can pass for white and they marry rich white men and every time they have a baby it’s a waiting game. Will the baby be light? Dark? You never know.”
“Is that why you don’t want to have children with me?”
“The list of reasons why I don’t want to have children with you could wallpaper this house. But if you want to know the number one reason, it’s because I don’t want to have children. Period. Not in this lifetime, anyway. I can’t trust this world with my children. I know what it does to kids like me.”
&n
bsp;