She unlaced her boots, pulled them off, threw them aside. One hit the cabin wall with a thunk. Down to her bra and cotton panties, she said, “Come on,” and led him up the loft ladder to her bedroom, where Matthew hurriedly undressed and pulled her down onto the fur-covered mattress.

He undressed her slowly. His hands and mouth explored her body until every nerve in her tightened. When he touched her: music.

She lost herself in him. Her body was autonomous, moving in some instinctive, primal rhythm it must have known all along, edging into a pleasure so intense it was almost pain.

She was a star, burning so brightly it broke apart, pieces flying, light spraying. Afterward, she fell back to earth a different girl, or a different version of herself. It scared her even as it exhilarated her. Would anything else in her life ever change her so profoundly? And now that she had had this, had him, how was she supposed to leave him? Ever?

“I love you,” he said quietly.

“I love you, too.”

The word felt too small, too ordinary to contain all of this emotion.

She lay against him staring up at the skylight, watching rain boil across the glass. She knew she would remember this day all of her life.

“What do you think college will be like?” she asked.

“Like you and me. Like this all the time. Are you ready to go?”

Truthfully, she was afraid that when it was time to actually go, she wouldn’t be able to leave her mother. But if Leni stayed, if she gave up this dream, she would never recover. She couldn’t look that harsh future in the eyes.

Here, in his arms, with the magical possibility of time between them, she didn’t want to say anything at all. She didn’t want words to turn into walls that separated them.

“Do you want to talk about your dad?” he asked.

Leni instinctively wanted to say no, to do what she’d always done: keep the secret. But what kind of love was that? “The war screwed him up, I guess.”

“And now he hits you?”

“Not me. My mom.”

“You and your mom need to get out of here, Len. I’ve heard my dad and Large Marge talking about it. They want to help you guys but your mom won’t let them.”

“It’s not as easy as people think,” Leni said.

“If he loved you guys, he wouldn’t hurt you.”

He made it sound so simple, as if it were a mathematical equation. But the connection between pain and love wasn’t linear. It was a web. “What’s it like?” she asked. “To feel safe?”

He touched her hair. “Do you feel it now?”

She did. Maybe for the first time, but that was crazy. The last place Leni was safe was here, in the arms of a boy her dad hated. “He hates you, Matthew, and he doesn’t even know you.”

“I won’t let him hurt you.”

“Let’s talk about something else.”

“Like … how I think about you all of the time? It makes me feel crazy, how much I think about you.” He pulled her in for a kiss. They made out forever, time slowing down just for them; tasting each other, taking each other in. Sometimes they talked, whispered secrets or made jokes, or stopped talking altogether and just kissed. Leni learned the magic of knowing someone else through touch.

Her body wakened again in his arms, but lovemaking was different the second time. Words had changed it somehow, real life had pushed its way in.

She was scared that this was all they would ever have. Just this day. Scared that she’d never get to go to college or that Dad would kill Mama in her absence. Scared even that this love she felt for Matthew wasn’t real, or that it was real and flawed, that maybe she’d been so damaged by her parents that she couldn’t know what love really was.

“No,” she said to herself, to him, to the universe. “I love you, Matthew.”

It was the only thing she knew for sure.

TWENTY

A hand clamped over Leni’s mouth; a voice whispered harshly, “Len, wake up.”

She opened her eyes.

“We fell asleep. Someone’s here.”

Leni gasped into Matthew’s palm.

It had stopped raining. Sunlight poured through the skylight.

Outside, she heard a truck engine, heard the rattle of the metal bed on the axle as the truck rolled over the ground.

“Oh, my God,” Leni said. She scrambled over Matthew, snatched up some clothes and dressed quickly. She was almost to the railing when she heard the door open.

Dad walked in, stopped, looked down.

He was standing on the wet heap of her dress.

Shit.

She launched herself over the side of the railing and half climbed, half slid down the loft ladder.

Dad bent down for her soggy dress, lifted it up. Water dripped from the eyelet hem.

“I—I got caught in that squall,” Leni said. Her heartbeat was so hard, she was breathless. Dizzy. She glanced around for anything that might give them away and saw Matthew’s boots.

She let out a little cry.

The rack to Dad’s left was full of guns, the shelf beneath them layered with boxes of ammunition. He barely had to turn, reach out, and he’d be armed.

Leni rushed over and grabbed her soaking-wet dress.

Mama frowned. Her gaze followed Leni’s, landed on the boots. Her eyes widened. She looked at Leni and then at the loft. Her face went pale.

“Why did you wear your good dress?” Dad asked.

“G-girls are funny that way, Ernt,” Mama said, sidling sideways, blocking Dad’s view of the boots.

Dad looked around; his nostrils flared. Leni was reminded of a predator on the scent. “Something smells different in here.”

Leni hung her dress up on a hook by the door. “It’s the picnic I packed for us,” Leni said. “I—I wanted to surprise you.”

Dad walked over to the table, flipped open the picnic basket, looked inside. “There are only two plates.”

“I got hungry and ate mine. That’s for you guys. I—I thought you’d enjoy it after the haul to Sterling.”

A creak from upstairs.

Dad frowned, stared up at the loft, headed toward the ladder.

Sit still, Matthew.

Dad touched the loft ladder, looked up. Frowned. Leni saw him lift a foot, place it on the bottom rung.

Mama bent down, picked up Matthew’s boots, and dropped them in the big cardboard boot box by the door. She did it in a gliding, single motion, and then slipped in beside Dad. She said, “Let’s show Leni the snow machine,” loud enough for Matthew to hear. “It’s parked out over by the goat pen.”