She’d come here. He hadn’t gone fucking looking for her. And he was the rapist?
Of course, even as he was feeling entrapped, put upon, and misjudged, the thought of her against that tree, soaking wet, the t-shirt sheer and clinging to her caught his imagination, and the thought of taking her—not hurting her, but her really letting him—got him hard again. Her lips parted, her sighing breath, her body so open to him.
He started to stroke himself, closing out all memories of the taste of her tears, of the look in her eyes when she’d finally opened them, that dark, disintegrating feeling when she’d accused him and he felt both wronged and guilty. Shutting it out, thinking of her heat, her soft body, her soft skin, he fisted his cock, needing to come.
But it was useless. Every time he sank into the memory of his hands in her hair, his mouth on her, the memory of her saying please, please in that voice, that voice, made him guilty and miserable. Every time he escaped the memory and conjured the remembered fantasy, her sighing and succumbing, writhing against him, opening her mouth to him, opening her legs for him, he remembered how hurt, how scared she’d actually looked, and the shame came back and buried all the arousal, all the heat. He gave up on jerking off. And almost threw up.
After he dried off and dressed he checked on dinner and, seeing it was ready and simmering happily, he went back to the shut door of her room, and softly rapped.
“I made stew.”
“Thanks. I guess I’m not hungry yet, but thanks.”
She sounded like she’d been asleep.
Hours had gone by, and still her door was shut, and silence behind it. He’d managed to eat without being sick, but with every passing hour he felt more and more that he’d been in the wrong. She’d come there, fine. But when, when in all their time together had she given the least sign that she liked him at all, much less desired to be shoved up against a tree and fucked? Every notion he’d had of her desire for him had come from one of two things: her mere presence there, which was circumstantial at best, and his own perverse imagination. Not a look, not a gesture or a word of hers had encouraged him in any way.
All right, it was weird that she’d said nothing, when it was pretty clear where things were going, out there in the rain. She’d been silent and compliant the whole time he’d been whispering in her ear and playing with her fucking hair and playing the Marquis or whatever it was he was pretending as he’d held her arms up over her head like that.
Fuck, his face flushed hot when he thought of how he’d pulled the elastic bands out of her hair. More than anything—even more than putting her hand on his cock—the memory of the way he’d messed with her hair embarrassed him. Every book he’d ever read, every film or stupid TV show he’d ever seen where some asshole rearranged 101
some woman’s hair had bugged the crap out of him. Who were these men who wanted to coif the women they were about to fuck? It was so…proprietary. But they were there—her two elastic bands still digging into his wrist, cutting off his circulation, reminding him that he was just like those morons he’d despised. He was keeping them on, pretending it was so he could give them back to her if she ever emerged from her hideaway, half acknowledging that it was some pathetic form of penance.
He was miserable, worried that she was curled up in a corner in that little room, waiting in terror for the moment when he’d come and do…well, what he’d been about to do earlier. Or even just that she was afraid and feeling alone and trapped there with him, some predatory brute who’d been momentarily deterred from his inevitable attempt to have his way with her. But there was nothing he could do. If he went and knocked, tried to talk to her, of course she’d think it was just some move to seduce her, or to lure her out under some delusion of security so he could jump her. He’d just leave her alone and hope that giving her space would convince her that he wasn’t out to hurt her in any way.
The whiskey was sounding pretty good. He normally didn’t drink so damned much, and he was starting to think, this trip to the cabin, that he was becoming an alcoholic. And he wasn’t such a fan of the way he’d been acting on the booze. Every time he had a drink, and she was there, he seemed to turn ugly. But he couldn’t cope with his head. His thoughts. How fucking shitty he felt about himself and the way he’d acted with her. Maybe a little pot for a change. He silently gave himself a derisive laugh.
He rolled a joint and started to head outside, but closed the door instead and walked down the hall to her door, and softly knocked. He’d have left her alone if that gentle knock hadn’t gotten a response, but a few seconds later he heard her soft tread, and then the door opened. She seemed wide awake. He was ready to say something like, “I’m gonna go outside and smoke a little pot, Want to join me?” But now that she was standing there, looking at him, that sounded ridiculous.
“I hope I didn’t wake you.”
She shook her head no.
“Do you want to…can we talk?”
She stood there looking at him, waiting for him to say what he had to say and go away.
“Maybe out on the porch?”
It had sounded reasonable in his head, but as soon as he’d said it he felt like an idiot.
Gee, would you like to come back outside where you think I tried to rape you a few
hours ago?
He waited for her to slam the door shut and to hear the scraping sounds of her jamming a chair under the doorknob. But she gave a half-hearted smile and nodded. Then she stepped out, into the hallway with him.
“Hang on a sec,” he said, then swiped into his room and came back with the thick wool throw from the end of his bed.
“It’s cold out,” he mumbled as he handed it to her, and she took it with a smile that didn’t seem pretended.
Maybe he was wrong, but she didn’t even seem scared of him now. They went out onto the porch and curled up in the two big wooden captain’s chairs. When he’d 103
done the one-eighty and gone back in, for her, he’d forgotten about the joint in his pocket. He’d thought, in that moment, that he needed to set things straight, put her at ease, ease his conscience, rather than needing to get stoned. But now, whatever little speech had half-formed in his head had faded away, and he didn’t know what to say.
She was sitting there, next to him, apparently calm, staring up into the night sky, and to bring up what had happened earlier seemed profane. Even cruel. In his nervousness and uncertainty he reverted to the original plan, and fished the joint and lighter out of his pocket.
“Do you smoke?” he asked.
“Pot?” She actually smiled. “I’ve just tried it a couple of times.” He lit up and took a drag, drawing on the joint until he was sure it was really lit.
Then he offered it to her, relieved, almost thrilled, when she took the cigarette from him and put it to her lips, and the cherry flared up a hot white-yellow in the night.
“Parties?”
“What?” She said oddly, holding the smoke in.
“You’ve tried it a couple times—at parties?”
She exhaled, shook her head, handed the joint back to him.
“No. Not parties. A friend of mine’s sort of a pothead. She’s gotten me stoned a couple times. That’s all.”
He took another hit, then handed it back to her. She took a couple puffs, then handed it back to him.
“That’s enough for me. Otherwise I’ll end up sleeping right here.” 104
He was a bit thrown off by her apparent calm, her casualness. But, now that he was feeling nice and stoned, he felt like he could cope with her erratic behavior, and actually say what he’d meant to say earlier, at her door. He turned and looked at her, still gazing vaguely into the night, until she seemed to feel his stare, and turned to look back at him.
“I’m glad you agreed to come out with me.” he said, stoned and slow, but lucid. "I thought maybe you’d be…afraid.”
She kept looking at him with no discernible change of expression, but he still imagined a glimmer of suspicion had appeared in her eyes.
“Devan, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I scared you earlier. I really didn’t mean to…”
“It’s all right. Really. I know…you couldn’t have known, because I didn’t say anything. I let it go too far.”
“Still, I’m sorry. I didn’t…did I hurt you?”
She laughed. It had to be the pot, but it was adorable. “No. No, you didn’t hurt me.” She gave him another smile, but it was weaker. Sober. “Can I have another hit?” He handed her the remnant of joint.
“You…” he smiled at her, afraid he was about to demolish a miraculously placid outcome to their afternoon disaster, “I don’t say this to be a dick, but, really, well…”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“Well, I fucked up. Looking back, I really don’t know what I was thinking. But you…I hope, for your own sake, that you get comfortable with telling guys no. Because, as I so aptly demonstrated this afternoon, we’re not so hot at mind reading.” There was a long silence.
“I would have stopped, you know.”
“You did stop.”
“Earlier, I mean. If you’d just said something.” He was justifying, fishing for absolution. But she only sat there, looking at him oddly.
“I just, I hate to think of …you getting hurt.”
After an agonizing minute she stopped staring him down, and sucked down the rest of the joint.
Sitting there, stoned, next to him, stoned, was funny. Almost comical. Just a couple hours after she’d stood there silently sobbing as he rubbed her hand back and forth over his erection.
What do you want? What do you want?
His words had been echoing in her head over and over all evening. The whispers in her ear,
What do you
want?
had been a threat. A promise. Not a question. But he’d stopped. No scream, no desperate strike or attempt to flee. He’d guessed the tears she’d tried to hide out of fear they’d provoke extra cruelty, and he’d stopped.
What do you want?
It had been a question, after all. He’d stopped. Angry. Confused. Hurt. Ashamed. Even in his anger he’s been very careful of her. She’d noticed it all. She couldn't exactly trust him, but she understood what had happened, and her part in it, and that she could collaborate with him to make it possible for them to exist in the cabin together for the next two-plus 106
weeks. And so she’d come out of her room, come out to the porch with him, smoked a joint with him.
"I'm gonna go for a walk. Out in the woods. Why don't you come along?"
With curiosity he watched her tense, then smile oddly.
"Oh. That's nice. Nice of you to ask me. But maybe I'll stay here."
"You can't stay cooped up in here the whole time. Come on. It's a nice day for once."
It was not so much that he cared whether she was sedentary as a statue during her time there, or that he wanted her company. But he still couldn't stand the idea of her left to her own devices while he was off wandering in the woods. The thought that there was so much as a slim chance of her poking around in his things while she had the place to herself was enough to keep him from going out if she refused to come along.
Or at least, that's what he told himself.
Without guessing why, she sensed that he would not go without her. And what excuse could she give? With quiet resignation she tried to crush her dread of the woods, and her irrational fear of wandering off into the wilderness with him. If the guy wanted to do something awful to her, it wasn't like there was anything stopping him, there at the cabin.
They bundled up and set off. Back into the woods, for a while following almost the very path she'd wandered days earlier, faint with fatigue and hunger and fear. The forest was, Devan thought, strangely lovely that day, the way a woman can seem more beautiful when she is sad. The tree trunks and needles, the low plants and ground cover 107
all were wet after a damp night and days of rain, but the sun shone through in places making the greens appear luminescent.
When she heard the sound of the river she relived the moment when she had heard it that morning she had awoken in her bed of leaves, lost and disoriented, and when the river came into view it seemed to her that it pointed straight back to that other cabin, to Conrad, that it ran like a ribbon between them, tying there and then to her here and now, and she struggled to stay calm, to hide her agitation from Vaughn who seemed more relaxed and natural out here in the woods than she had ever seen him.
When he began clambering upstream over the half-submerged logs and rocks along the edge of the river, she set off downriver, unwilling to go even a little way back toward the place she had fled. When she glanced back a while later and saw Vaughn moving back in her direction, she turned back to meet him, and they set off back toward the cabin in complicit silence. She was drifting in and out of dark thoughts and the slanting dappled sunlight of the present. She was paralleling Vaughn's steps, keeping him in her peripheral vision. But when she drifted back, into her mind, he would fade away and other men would appear.
Before anything else she heard a strange noise. Something between a muffled whimper and an inhaled scream. Then she realized why. A hand was circled around her forearm. Then a hand over her mouth.
But it was strange. The grip on her arm was so light. Barely even a touch. And the hand at her mouth, just two or three fingers at her lips, not even touching her now.
She looked at him in perplexed terror. He looked back, startled. Confused. Then he 108
smiled. A strange smile that she would think, later, was like that of an embarrassed child.
"Shhh. I want to show you something," he whispered, then took his fingers from her lips, and still holding her arm, led her to the nearly vertical sweep of a hillock, almost hidden beneath brush and behind trees. He peered silently between two thick evergreens into darkness fringed by scraggly forest. He looked over his shoulder at her, then turned to stare once more into the black.
Her pulse was banging painfully in her ears and she was almost terror-stricken, panicked by the way he'd stopped her, grabbed her, then dragged her along, frightened by sudden, irrational thoughts that maybe he'd waited until now, until he had her away from his home, to punish her for intruding, to get rid of her.