It’s like the air’s been sucked out of me. My face throbs where Mulch hit me with his iron knuckles. Goddamn Mulch. Goddamn everything. I circle my arms around her pulling her close as my insides knot up. My chest burns when I think of her asking to stay so she can wait for me.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and my heart is breaking that she’d be apologizing to me.

She hangs her head, withdrawing into herself, and I graze my cheek across her hair and tuck her under my chin. There’s a ball forming in my throat, and I swallow once, twice, three times before I can speak.

“Don’t worry,” I say. “We’ll find another way.”

She looks up at me and the devastation in her eyes could stop your heart. She lays her hand against my swollen cheek and I nuzzle into her palm. The feel of her skin against mine is a kind of balm.

When she kisses me, the longing and need surge through me, and I press into her, broken ribs and all. I am on fire.

“You’re hurt,” she says, but she’s got one hand on my backside, pulling me closer.

“I love you,” I say.

I lift her skirts and she fumbles at my breeches. When I enter her, she wraps her leg around my hip and pushes into me as I push into her. I’m lost in her, and there’s only one clear thought outside of the two of us, and that is that I will never give her up.

Chapter 73

Maple

I go down through the carry-through and some lazy good-for-nothing has left a tray of glasses on the floor. I suck at my teeth and shake my head. I could have walked right into it.

When I stoop down for the tray, I think I hear an animal from deep in the cellar. I creep back there, careful not to startle it, to see what trap I’m gonna need to lay out. When I get far enough back and my eyes adjust to the dark, I see them. The blacksmith is pressed up close against Sarah. He reaches for her and she pulls him closer. He hikes up her skirt and she throws her leg around him. The two of them move together, rubbing into each other. Like animals.

My stomach churns and my dinner yams climb into in my throat. I rush out gasping at air that’s too humid and hot to be fresh. My head goes light and my eyes prick and darken. And I’m back there in that room, in front of the fireplace.

I feel the floorboards against my back and the ripping, ramming feeling between my legs. And his hand on my mouth when he says, “Look at me.”

I see Rose, trapped under Master Nathaniel, pinned to the floorboards, and then held against the wall like Sarah, with him thrusting into her. And I see her pull at him like Sarah pulled at her white man to keep him ramming into her. And I throw up my yams into the grass.