Page 123 of These Secret Years

“How long did it take for him to want more than just touching?”

“A few months, and then that summer, before my senior year he wanted me to stay with him so he could give me more intensive lessons.”

Knight breathes again. “Did you want that?”

“Anything was better,” I say. “I couldn’t stand being around my mom. My dad was so fucked up, and every time I saw him, I thought it’d be the last time, and I wanted it to be. I wanted him to just fucking go ahead and die and my sister, she—” And here’s where the shame takes on a new shade of color. A deeper, darker shade. “I wanted her to go to. To give my mom some fucking peace because she seemed like such a burden, and no one saw me. No one saw me but him and I was being so fucking selfish.”

“You were just a kid.”

“Don’t make excuses for me.”

He does anyway. “You were alone, and you were scared, and you were looking for a way out.”

“I was selfish. I was stupid. I was naive and—” I cut myself off.

“Desperate,” he finishes for me with the word I didn’t want to use.

I sob again before wiping my face with both hands. I blurt out the rest, or most of it. “You know, I never really had to do anything. He just wanted to like—touch me or—blow me or whatever. He didn’t ever ask me to do anything to him. He wouldn’t even want me to touch him, which was good because I had no idea what I was doing anyway, and I didn’t even know if I wanted a man doing that stuff to me. I’d always pictured being with a girl before that, and it was confusing the way I got turned on, and you know like—basically was asking for it.”

Knight is quiet enough to make me go quiet. I gulp down air because I said way too much, and I don’t even force his hands to stay on me anymore, but they do anyway. He gives my shoulders a firm rub.

“But you know now he was hurting you?” he finally asks.

I don’t answer that. Instead, I say, “He was married. He is married. To another man. And I don’t know what their dynamic is or if they have sex or what, but the deal sort of shifted when the husband really came into the picture.”

“Shifted how?” Knight asks in a low, deadly voice.

“The husband wanted more than what I was giving Adrian.”

“Adrian?”

Oh fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I whirl around, my vision having adjusted in the dark tunnel, and I can see the look on Knight’s face clearly enough. He’s memorizing this. Every word I’m saying. He’s taking mental notes, and he’ll remember, he’ll—“Knight, please, please, forget I said that. Forget everything I said.”

His head ticks once, twice, almost mechanically from side to side. “What did the husband want?”

“What do you think he wanted?” I ask, angry now, at myself for letting the name slip, refusing to say any more.

“And this is what you’re going to Detroit for? More violin lessons? Will the husband be there?”

I shrug.

“You don’t know?” he demands.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know who’s gonna be there. I don’t get to know those things. It’s his house. I’m a guest. I’m his protégé, and I take what I’m given.”

Knight’s hand flies up to cover his mouth, and he takes a step away. The shame now feels like it’s the shape of my body, coating me in something ugly and vile, something contagious. “What does that mean?” he asks, barely dropping his hand.

I shake my head violently. “I need to go. I don’t want to be here.”

“Sullivan,” he says sharply as I move to walk around him. I don’t stop until he takes hold of my arm, dropping it as quickly as he stops me in my tracks. “Thank you for telling me.”

A bitter laugh barks out of me, and the tears dry up because all the gut deep emotion is gone, replaced with a numb tingling in all my limbs.

“Can I ask you one more question?”

“What?” I snap.