Now, she shifted slowly down herself. The spiky leaves of the jasmine pricked her arms, and she jerked up automatically and then laughed. Of course. That’s why she had loved this place. She could be pricked and scratched to her heart’s content. She could lie on her back, wrap her hands around the gas pipe, push against the thorny canopy, and daydream of orders and spankings. Josie grinned at her own ingenuity. If Devesh were here, she would beg him to cut a branch. They could play for days.

She smiled. They could play. Play.

She heard the word tinkle in her head like a thousand tiny bells. This thing they created, this dark and tender thing. It was punishment. It was ritual. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe, in some small way, it was a way to atone, and maybe this was okay, and maybe, just maybe, it was also play. The air seemed sucked from her lungs and she clutched at her chest. She could feel her heart pulled from her rib cage, and it was more painful than any beating. Oh, God, she missed him. She had never wanted anything so badly. And all their play. It was vaster than she ever thought. It was also adoration.

“Devesh,” she said. His name was luminous in her mouth, and she said it over and over like a mantra.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

SHE HAD THOUGHT SHE WOULD BE ABLE TO BOOK A TICKET ONLINE and leave two days later, but there were medicines to sort out—malaria pills and a tetanus booster—and her visa had taken two weeks to get, but with every passing day, she grew more and more sure. And her father was surprisingly supportive. “If you love him, Josie,” he said, “you should go. Your mother would want you to go.” She wasn’t sure about this, but she allowed him this satisfaction. Her mother wouldn’t have wanted her to go, but she would have known Josie would do it anyway, and this was somehow comforting. Her mother did know her, and the realization, for the first time, felt warm and gentle inside her.

And she felt inflated with love for Devesh, ravenous for even a piece of him—an inch of his skin, her name in his mouth. She had never felt so desperate, and yet in that desperation lurked a penetrating calm. She ached for him, but there was something staggering about the certainty of her want. It was pure and strong and good and unafraid, and she held it in her heart like a totem and knew she would need to show him.