A History of Wild Places(72)

I slither like a cold, autumn shadow into Levi’s house, my words waiting at the back of my throat, the things I will say to him, the venom burning a hole in my trachea.

But when the door clicks closed behind me, I hear footsteps across the hardwood floor, the heavy breathing of Levi after he’s drank too much.

I say his name into the dark. “Levi?”

He is suddenly in front of me, alcohol on his breath, a hand grabbing my arm, fingernails pinching my skin. He is sloppy, heavy limbed, rougher than he would normally be.

“Come with me,” he slurs against my ear.

I feel my body go limp, a strange acquiescence cascading through me, as though my skin is unable to resist his touch—all the while my mind screams against it, against him. But I allow him to lead me up the stairs. And from some distant echo in my ears, I hear someone else: someone on the front porch, leaning close to the exterior walls of the house.

I was wrong when I thought Levi was alone: Someone is watching him through the window.

But then we are at the top of the stairs, and I don’t resist. I feel only a tingling in my toes, the tips of my ears, a storm of thoughts crashing against my skull—yet they seem unable to form into anything that might resemble words. I am mute.

A girl who has forgotten why she’s come.

We are in his bedroom before he finally releases my arm, and I sink onto the foot of his bed. The room smells like cinnamon, cardamom—like Alice, this room where she has slept. And yet, the fury I had felt walking to Levi’s house, my cheeks burning hot, has now left me. I find myself suddenly unable to say all the things I had planned to—unable to resist any words he might whisper against my ear.

How easily the ache in my heart-center returns, the want that can only be sated with his hands against my cold, cold flesh. I am weak. This man makes me pliable and meek in ways I don’t understand.

Levi walks to the dresser and opens the top drawer where his laundry has been neatly cleaned and sorted and folded by several woman in the community. Levi is always tended to, the necessities of his daily life organized around him. I wonder if this will change once Alice Weaver takes up residence inside his home? Will her hands toil over the fabric that lies against his skin, will she mend the clothes that need stitching, will she hang his sheets to dry on the line outside? Will she fold herself into his life seamlessly, ridding me from it completely?

“I’m sorry about everything,” Levi says, reaching into the drawer and pulling out the flask he keeps hidden there. He unscrews the top, the sound of metal, and takes a drink—his throat swallowing stiffly.

I don’t answer him, instead my ears absorb the sound of his heart beating heavily in his chest, the rapid thud, the booze swimming through him and making his skin radiate heat. He walks to me, careful and slow, and my own heart claws against my ribs—betraying me, wanting to reach out and touch the surface of his flesh, to stand up and kiss him. But I don’t allow myself to do this stupid thing.

He has married another woman tonight. He is bound to her now, not me.

“I know that I hurt you,” he says, words smashed together, and I realize he has brought me upstairs to avoid anyone seeing us together, glimpsing us through a window, alone on his wedding night—when he should be with his wife. He sits on the bed beside me. So close. “I know I’ve made everything worse.” His hand lifts and I think he touches a strand of my hair but I can’t be sure. He lets out a hollow breath of air, like someone has punched him in the stomach, and he turns away, his voice directed at the doorway. “You make this hard for me.” I want to remember the feel of his lips on mine, I want to forget everything he said to me before, I want to forget that later tonight, when the party has ended, Alice Weaver will sleep in this bed beside him. In the same place where I have dreamed and dozed and felt the sunrise.

He makes a weak, shuddering sound, like tears might have broken over his eyelids. But then he says, “I have obligations here, in Pastoral.” He takes another drink from the flask, as if fortifying himself, stuffing down whatever he’s afraid to feel. “Alice understands that, she understands what it means to be my wife.”

The words fall like a hammer against my kneecaps, shattering bone.

And I don’t? I want to scream. I know Levi better than anyone, better than he knows himself. Better than docile, perfect Alice Weaver. But the anger feels buried in my marrow, tamped down by a calm buzzing in my eardrums.

“You have always been fearless, wilder than the other girls, especially when we were younger,” he continues. He smells like sweat and the sharpness of whiskey. He smells like summer grass, green and sweet under a hot sun—he smells familiar—but his words bite at me as if he were a stranger. “It’s what I’ve always loved about you. But it’s also why you’re dangerous. You put everything at risk.”

“Why?” I ask, my voice a distant thing, stuffed into the spaces between my ribs.

“Because I think someday you’ll leave me. You’ll try to leave Pastoral.”

I shake my head, but the motion is dizzying, eyes blinking, fluttering up and down, and I think I see candlelight across the room—a flickering that can’t be anything else. But when I squint, it’s replaced by darkness.

Levi stands up and the absence of his body next to mine makes me shiver. “Those men leaving, trying to escape, it feels like it’s only the beginning. Soon others will try too.”