“She did to him what she did to you. When he went to HR to complain, they fobbed him off. Took no action against her. None at all. No one listened to him, so he made us hear him.” He cleared his throat. “He killed himself in his cubicle.”
“Fuck,” I whispered rawly.
“That about sums it up.” His nostrils flared. “The second I found out, I acted, but Rhode is... Rhode. I knew, no matter what we hurled at her, she’d sue. The board did as well, and they were more interested in covering up her shit because she’s good at her job. That wasn’t going to happen on my watch, but it took too fucking long.” He reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You got hurt because of me. Someone else might have been hurt because I didn’t do enough to stop her.”
I didn’t have the patience or energy to let him wallow, so I asked, “Did you do everything you thought you could at the time?”
He sighed. “I felt like I did, but I spent most of that time being frustrated. I wasn’t getting anywhere, and I’m not used to that.”
“I can imagine.” He was an Astley. No one dared say ‘no’ to him.
But it seemed there were other ways of saying that without uttering the word.
“I should have done more.”
“Yes, you should, but what’s done is done.”
“Do you hate me?”
“Right now, I don’t have the energy to hate Rhode, never mind you.” I blew out a breath. “Do you think my case will be thrown out of court?”
“What makes you say that? We have blood evidence, the samples taken that night, and video footage, Micah. There’s no way she can worm her way out of this.”
“I heard you mention leverage on the phone to Lizzie, but that part of the conversation wasn’t really clear. What has she done?”
His mouth tightened, and at that moment, even though he wore a simple wine-colored sweater, a black tee peeping out at the neckline, black slacks and no shoes, he was every inch the CEO.
“She’s painting me in a bad light.”
For the first time, emotion stirred to life inside me. “How?”
“When I dragged her off you, I flung her against the cubicle. She hurt herself, got bruised. But she’s put about ten tons of fucking make-up on her face and is claiming I beat the shit out of her. Obviously, it’s fucking bollocks, but I have to follow up with it.”
“Yes, of course,” I confirmed, my mind whirring at the implications of what she’d done. “Why would she think to leverage this over you? She didn’t know about us having any kind of personal connection. Aside from the fact you complained about my workload to her.”
“No, but she knows I have a bottomless bank account. Paying you off would be child’s play.” He sneered at the screen. “She isn’t to know that the Astleys have outrun all scandal and gossip.
“There isn’t a damn thing she can do to hurt me, but I don’t want her hurting you.” He plucked at his bottom lip, absentmindedly playing with it as he casually broke my heart and built it back up again with his words. “I’ve asked for my personal lawyers to get involved. They’ll put pressure on the cops.
“Once she’s indicted, we’ll head to the UK. I need to spend some time there anyway. Father’s not doing well, and I was only saying to you the other week that the amount of humanity in New York was starting to get annoying—”
“We’ll head to the UK?” I sputtered, taken aback at yet more casual talk of his affection for me, of where he saw us heading—in this instance, literally.
The craziest thing of all?
Nothing had me pulling back. Running away.
Not one ounce of me wanted to be anything other than here. I might be miserable. I might be lost and hurting, but he was here.
And I knew, if I let him, he always would be.
Funny how this situation had let things boil down to black and white.
I’d thought he’d be ashamed of me, I thought I might become his dirty little secret, what with his father’s insistence that he did his duty. Instead, Devlin was taking it for granted that I’d go with him to England, where, presumably, during that trip, I’d meet his family.
This was beyond confusing. Delightfully so, but still confusing.
Was this why I liked him?
Because he fit no standard pattern?
He was impossible to predict, and who the hell liked predictability? With his smooth charm that I’d yet to experience firsthand, a cut-glass accent that sent shivers down my spine, that British stiff upper lip that made him surprisingly witty, the disconcerting tendency to feed me foods we’d talked about out of context, and an uncanny ability to look at me once, just once, and I’d get a boner...at least, before.
No, definitely not predictable.
This wasn’t insta-love, though.
For either of us.
He might go goo-goo when he looked at me, and he might be okay with me sleeping in his bed when I knew his exes had all been tossed out when he was done with them, so I knew I meant something to him, but exactly what was difficult to figure out. Especially when I didn’t understand my own feelings.
I’d never felt this strange twist of excitement, anticipation, and acceptance before.
I’d never looked at someone and felt like the world could be going to hell outside these walls, but inside them, my comfort levels weren’t affected.
I thought back to the rape kit, when he’d stayed in that clinic with me, refusing to leave but agreeing to stay out of the way, stoic to the last, watching as I was violated again in the name of criminal justice just so that I could keep my eyes on him. And, without either of us uttering a word, he’d known that was the only way I could get through the dazed, befuddled moments where I was still drugged but trying to protect my future self.
Where looking at him was my only means of coping, where thinking of anything else than what was happening was how I survived. To remember the dark room, where my consent hadn’t been something to be stolen from me, to contemplate a gourmet carbonara eaten in a kitchen I knew he rarely used where we’d argued about the Nasdaq.
Then, I thought about these past few days. How he’d let me come to terms with what had happened without forcing anything on me—be it his opinion, his wisdom, or his presence.
He’d let me be me. Let me find my new balance, which was, to be frank, something I was still hunting down. But no one had ever done that. Had ever let me be me. Had ever not forced their opinion on me, had ever not let me decide how to move on in my own way.
Had let me be Micah.
He didn’t offer trite words of comfort—he was too stiff for that—but he was there when I needed him, which was more than anyone else had done for me.
So, while I couldn’t classify what I felt as love, I knew if there was some such thing as pre-love, I had that.
It went deeper than lust.
I just didn’t know what else to call it, and maybe something like this didn’t need words because it couldn’t be labeled.
Maybe, something like this was why, on social media, you could classify your relationship as ‘it’s complicated.’
In response to my spluttered question of, “We’re going to the UK?” Devlin merely pulled a face. “You won’t sound so excited when you meet my father.” He hummed. “Lizzie can look after your fish.”
Unable to believe he’d remembered my fish, I blinked at him, well aware that while my emotions had just gone through the wringer, he’d been thinking of the trip ahead. A trip where, in his mind, it was a done deal I’d be joining him.
And while that sounded as if he was making a decision for me, I knew it wasn’t like that.
For him, it was akin to holding out your hand when you met someone to shake theirs in greeting. Like putting one foot in front of the other to walk.
To Devlin, it was instinctual that I be there with him when he traveled overseas. Only that made any sense to him, something I instinctively picked up on because if he was questioning things, I knew he’d get stilted again.
He’d turn awkward, and would start talking about stocks and shares—his go-to, conversational ‘get out of jail free’ card.
Instead, he was plotting. His narrowed eyes, the clenched jaw, the way he was staring at the computer, the tension throbbing through him all spoke to one thing: Rhode was going down.
The craziest thing of all?
I agreed with him.
With everything.
Rhode was going down.
But more importantly, where he went, I was going.
Fuck school. Fuck my MBA. Fuck the law. Fuck rape kits. Fuck an uncertain future.
I’d let Devlin worry about tomorrow for me—I needed to embrace today and he gave me the freedom to do that.
Twenty-Six
Devlin
It had been too much to hope that our discussion, our plans would make him feel better. But watching his slow decline was torturous.
Together, we dealt with the ramifications of what happened to him. I was there when he spoke with the police, when he went through what had happened. I was there with the doctor who gave him the test results back—he was clean, thank God—and I was there with the lawyers as I started a ball rolling that should have been set in stone long ago.
I was screwing Astley Publishing, but I was okay with that.
We’d made this happen, and it was up to us to fix that. Only trouble was, my board of execs had, in the eyes of the shareholders, fulfilled their duties to the max. That meant making any changes to the running of the company was nigh on close to impossible.
I tried to prove to him that I was there for him, every step of the way, but he was struggling. And it killed me to see him that way.
From my desk, I watched him pace the length of the hallway. It was like he was a caged lion or something, but this lion held the key to his cage. He wouldn’t leave the apartment, not even to go to the gym in the complex, and I was tempted to buy a treadmill so that he could use it in here because I felt how stir crazy he was going like I was experiencing it myself.
Well, I guessed I was experiencing it by myself, because I wasn’t about to leave unless he did, and that had yet to happen. I’d made sure that everyone came here, to him. I wasn’t about to force another trauma on him.
For whatever reason, he was comfortable here. He hadn’t asked to go back to his apartment once, and from Gian’s descriptions, I couldn’t bloody blame him for being happier in my penthouse.
In that tiny shoebox, it wasn’t stir crazy he’d have been feeling, just outright lunacy.
“Micah?” I called out, unable to bear watching him pace much more.
He didn’t hear me, though, which made me wonder if he had earphones in, but to be on the safe side, I called out again.
When I still didn’t receive a reply, I frowned and got to my feet. Not even the spinning of the wheels on my desk chair roused him, so when I moved into the hallway and veered into his path, I wasn’t surprised when he nearly walked into me.
As my hands came up to steady him, his eyes caught mine at long last, but the bewilderment in his, the outright terror, and the sheer devastation within those beautiful moss green orbs that had entranced me from the start was more than I could bear.
Unable to stop myself, unsure if he wanted this from me, I pressed a kiss to his forehead, letting my arms move around him, letting them hang loosely so he knew I wasn’t forcing him to stand here and take my embrace.
For a second, he was still, then he pushed into me slightly, before lowering his head to my shoulder.
I took the weight of it, took the weight of him, just like I wished I could bear the burden of what he was going through.
God, if I could turn back time—
Of course, the thought was futile. Not only because I couldn’t control the hands of a clock, but also because nothing would have changed.
The threat of being sued, of a court case dragging the company’s reputation through the mud, the costs of fighting a woman of Rhode’s stature with precious little evidence? No way in hell would the board have ever gone for her being fired off the cuff.
Regret filled me, but it was proof enough that the company had to change at a molecular level.
I was proud of Astley’s ‘progressive’ label by the media, so proud that I cultivated it. Yet, here I was, holding a victim in my arms. I didn’t see him that way, he’d never be simply a victim to me, but to the company? He was more than that.
He was dangerous.
And I wouldn’t allow him to take Robert’s path. Would always be here to bring him back from the brink, and not just because he could bring the company to its knees in a way that Rhode could only do through longevity.
When he burrowed his face in my throat, I felt the wet prickle of his eyelashes, and held him tighter. “I-I can’t... I don’t know what to...” He sighed, impatient with himself and his inability to express what he was feeling. I felt that frustration like it was my own, and I’d have given my left nut to take it from him, to ease his pain. “I don’t know how to be.”
“Just be you,” I told him softly, happening to see my housekeeper in the corner of my eye as she drifted from the bedroom door into the hall.
Her startled gaze made me wonder if I was that terrifying, but I didn’t care. I just didn’t want Micah to think someone was witnessing this. He was fragile right now, in need of protection.
Even from my housekeeper.
She might have been with me for years, but everyone had a price. I refused for Micah to be fodder to hungry journalists who were desperate to break a story on the developing situation between me and Rhode.
However, her leaving the bedroom with cleaning products in her hand gave me an idea.
“I don’t know how to be me,” he whispered miserably. “And I know that makes no sense. It was one thing... one thing. How can I feel so fundamentally changed?”
The question broke me like nothing else could.
He was questioning this? Questioning why he couldn’t get over being raped? Not only that, but being drugged?
The horror of what he’d been through, and in his inability to accept that it was life-changing, made me want to shake him. Which was stupid. The last thing he needed was me trying to make him see sense, so I used words. Words when they’d never been my forte—selling, sure. I could sell shit to a horse farm. But this wasn’t a sales pitch. This was Micah’s life.
“This thing that you think isn’t fundamentally life changing? Well, if I’d had a knife in my hand when I found her raping you, Micah, I’d have stabbed her. I’d have fucking killed her. So, what you think isn’t all that important enough to feel down about, to be unable to come to terms with, was enough to make me want to commit murder.”
He tensed. “You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t I?” I said grimly. “I threw her off you, and though I didn’t hurt her, if I’d been armed, I swear to you now, I would. I almost regret that I didn’t, because she deserves to be suffering like you are.”
“If you’d done that, then you’d be in a jail cell too.”
And that would bother him?
His arms tightened around my waist. “I don’t want you to be anywhere other than here.”
“I’ve never desired to be elsewhere,” I told him gruffly. Feeling awkward, I patted his back before I whispered, “Can I draw you a bath? Let’s get you to relax, hmm? I have the new first draft from Trevelyan. You could read that while you chill out if you want.”
He pulled back at that. “You have his next Preacher novel?”
My lips quirked into a smile at the sight of his first buzz of excitement. “Yes, I do.”
“I-I don’t want a bath though.” His big green eyes peered into mine like I had all the answers to the world’s problems, and how I wished I did.
“Why not?”
His brow puckered. “I don’t like—I don’t want to be naked.”
“Why?” I queried, for the life of me, unable to figure it out.
“I just don’t
want to look at myself.”
That this beautiful man could say that to me was enough to blow my mind.
I refused to let Rhode rob him of his sense of self—the question was, how to help him?
Stroking my hand over his head, I let out a sigh and murmured, “Maybe you need to speak with someone, Micah? I’ve told you countless times that you’re so beautiful you’re painful to look at—”
My words triggered a reaction I didn’t anticipate. “You think I’m so fucking beautiful when this body is the reason she could do that to me. She fucked me, Devlin. She fucked me. My dick was hard.”
“From chemicals!” I retorted, pissed that he was somehow failing to remember that salient piece of information.
“How can it be beautiful if someone so ugly thought they could use it against me? And it worked!”
“You’re—” The words ‘being irrational’ were on the tip of my tongue, but I knew if I flung them down at this moment, it would be the verbal equivalent of tossing a gauntlet at his feet.
I had no desire to argue with him, not when he was well within his rights to be irrational.
If anyone deserved the freedom to think and do and feel whatever they wanted, it was him.
So, I raised my hands in surrender, and murmured, “Why don’t you get into bed? I’ll email you the manuscript. You can tell me what you think of it.”
The light sparked into being in his eyes for a split second, but I knew any joy he’d felt had perished under my mentioning the bath and then trying to make him see himself for what he was—gorgeous.
If he wanted to think he was ugly, then I’d let him. For the moment.
I had no experience in how to handle this, and whenever I tried, I fucked up. The only thing I knew how to do was to be there for him. To be there with him.
If he wanted to shout, he could shout at me—I had broad shoulders, I could take the burden.
If he wanted to hit me, I’d even take that. Didn’t I deserve that? I felt like I did.
Until we could leave New York, until the cops said they were done with him, officially, I’d let the status quo rest.
The Intern: An MM Office Romance Page 19
