Page 126 of These Secret Years

“What was that?” he finally asks in the echoing silence.

“It was a theory. A nocturne.”

“What made you think it would work?”

“I just knew it would.”

“I hated it,” he tells me.

“And?” Because I know there’s more to it. Confident for the first time ever in this house.

He sighs, unable to look at me. “It was fucking brilliant.”

For all his faults, he knows music. I nod once. “I’ll go settle in now.”

Adrian doesn’t come up to make one of his usual visits that afternoon, and it’s stunning to me that what I envisioned happening in a perfect world is actually happening. I owe this past semester and my time with Deandre and Knight a lot, I think as I’m allowed to be alone in my room and actually settle in. I do feel more confident. I can start to appreciate my gift. It’s like somehow they were developing another muscle inside me with all their training and invitations to spend time with them in and out of the gym. It’s whatever lives inside me that keeps me tethered to myself—to who I want to be and who I can become once all this is over.

It doesn’t feel real. I almost don’t feel real as I lie on the bed after my shower and replay every moment of watching Adrian experience my piece in my head. He couldn’t possibly get it, could he?

No. I don’t think he has any concept of much besides what he thinks I owe him, and now he’s discovering what he’s wrought. The monster he created. The genius he let go unchecked. Not that I think of myself as a genius, but I do think that’s the way he’d put it, once he can put words to the feeling.

I don’t think he’ll ever know or understand how much he’s hurt me, even damaged me. But I do think he can grasp his own greed and ambition. I do think I’ve managed to humble him in some small way. I do think he understands how much I hate him.

At dinner, when we sit down together, I can tell by his sharp, twitchy gestures that he’s still unsettled. By my appearance, the song, this false bravado I came downstairs with, I don’t know which. It doesn’t matter because I need to do what I came here to do. I need to ask him what I told Knight I would ask him because it’s a good question, and I’d like the answer, too.

The sooner I know, the better.

“I have a question for you,” I say as he’s pouring us each a glass of wine.

“Hm?”

“How do you see this ending? This arrangement we have.”

He nearly overfills his glass but finally puts the bottle down. “Ending?”

“Well, you’re already married, so I know you don’t want to marry me. I’m twenty-one, and I have new teachers. I’m clearly working at a level you’re not familiar with or likely capable of helping me advance. Did you want me to play in your orchestra? Did you want me to move in here when I graduate? Where do you see this going?”

“You have a lot to say today, don’t you? Have I not given you everything you ever hoped you would have?”

I sigh. “And then some.”

Sharply, he asks, “What the hell does that mean?”

I openly glare at him for the first time in our acquaintance. “Do I have to answer that?”

His thin lips press tightly together, leaving only a suggestion of a mouth.

“I’m asking what the terms of my scholarship are.”

He’s glaring back at me now. I’m guessing he doesn’t want to put words to it.

“Or can I end it at any time?”

“The choice to be here has always been yours, Sullivan.”

The shame clogs my throat, and it takes strength for me to swallow it back down, to let it settle in my empty stomach. “I think I’d like to reconsider.”

Something in his expression, a pulling together of his brows and a softening of his eyes, relents. “There was a time when I did want you for my orchestra, but when you showed such a gift for composition, I understood that a performance role would be stifling a great deal of your talent. It’s why I advocated for you to attend USM.”