But he’d done it behind my back! He’d done it in secret!
"Are you wanting me to thank you?" My words were sour, poisoning whatever gratitude I meant to show.
"No," he scoffed. "That's not why I did it."
"Then why did you do it? Why did you care about me enough to do that? Because of what happened in your office? Because we had sex?"
He frowned as though offended. "Do you really think that was when this began for me?"
No. I thought it began that night at The Keep.
But I wasn't giving him that. I wasn't giving him anything.
"How can I have any idea when you haven't told me shit?" My voice was already raised. I was already swearing, and we were only on the first item.
Good thing I had nowhere else to be, because I was going to stay until this was done. Until I knew everything I wanted to know. I hoped he was prepared for it to be a long day.
"I noticed you the first day you walked into that classroom, Sabrina," Donovan said. "That's when it began for me. And it never stopped."
Goose bumps scattered down my arms despite the sudden warmth that filled me inside.
We’d barely known each other, and yet he’d noticed me. Out of everyone. Out of an ocean of people, he’d found me.
But I had to ignore that—had to ignore the way it made me feel. It didn’t benefit me at the moment.
What I needed were facts. Details. Confessions. The more, the better. "So you anonymously paid for my house? So that I would…?"
"So that you would be taken care of," he said with pronounced candor.
I closed my eyes for a beat.
Then I opened them again. I couldn't spend too much time on this one thing, large as it was. There was simply too much to go through. I took the receipt back and put it face-down on the inside cover of the folder and moved on to the next item.
The next several papers in the file were related to school. Recommendations he’d sent that I hadn't known about, items related to the internship from my master’s program. We went through every single document, Donovan explaining each connection and his reasoning for interfering. Every time, it had been for my own good. As though he’d been my secret fairy godfather, showering me with the best opportunities at every turn.
"If you were this determined to butt in," I said after learning that the article I'd been asked to write for University Today had been suggested to the editor by him, "why didn't you just bring me back to Harvard? I was certainly trying hard enough to get there. Couldn't you have pulled strings there?"
He stared at me with a dull expression. "I'm flattered that you think so highly of my influence. It was Harvard, Sabrina. I can pull strings, but I'm not a miracle worker."
On and on it went through piles of invoices, receipts, copies of contracts, and school papers and essays I'd written. The headhunter I used to find a job in California had worked for Donovan. The management company that had overseen my first apartment was owned by Donovan. The new security system that had been installed in my second apartment hadn't been paid for by the landlord as I'd believed. It was all Donovan.
Memories reshaped and took on new form. It was like when I learned that Santa Claus wasn't real; that all those gifts I'd been given had really been from my parents instead of some magical being. Now I was learning that situations I had always attributed to good luck or good fortune, other situations that I hadn't even thought more than two seconds about, all had been gifted to me by Donovan.
I couldn't help but ask over and over, "Why? Why? Why?"
And always, always it was the same answer. "For you."
We'd been at it for a couple of hours when I came across a paper that didn't make any sense. "Why is there an employment contract for Brady Murphy in here?" I hadn’t noticed it the first time I’d been through the file.
Brady Murphy had been someone I’d dated for a short time while working in California. The relationship had never been very serious, but I'd been more serious about him than most of the guys I dated. He was too nice maybe. Too soft in bed. But a good guy. We might've stayed together longer than the four months that we had if he hadn’t gotten a job offer from an up-and-coming tech firm in Japan.
…and suddenly I had a feeling I knew the answer.
"Brady Murphy was never right for you and you know it," Donovan said in answer to my question.
"So you got him a job that took him out of the country?" I didn't bother keeping the incredulity out of my voice.
Donovan shrugged. "If I’d found him a job in the states, there was too great a chance that you would have moved with him. And you needed to break up."
Indignation fumed inside me. "You sent my boyfriend away so that we would break up? Oh my God. I can't fucking believe you!"
"It would have been too easy for you to settle down with him. And that's exactly what you would have been doing—settling. It was for your own good."
I spoke over him, my words landing in unison with his. "Don't tell me it was for my own good. You didn’t do that for me. That was for you. You were jealous."
Donovan gave me his version of an eye roll, a slight shift of his gaze. "Oh please. There is nothing to be jealous of about Brady Murphy. He's a weak, whiny sap. I was looking out for you."
I didn't believe him. "You didn't want me with another man.” I was almost more flattered than I was mad. Or something deeper than flattered. Just like his jealousy was primitive—because he was jealous no matter how much he denied it—the emotion it ignited in me was equally primal. Equally base. It turned me on. It aroused me.
“How many other relationships did you meddle with?” My mind started to race through all the other boyfriends I’d had, the other men I'd casually dated. Donovan had messed with Weston and I by arranging for him to be part of this fake marriage with Elizabeth Dyer. I knew that. It only made sense that he would've interfered with others.
"Roger Griffin?" I asked. "His grandmother wasn’t really sick, was she?"
"Are you accusing me of luring a man away from you with a fake sick grandmother?" Donovan stared at me unblinking.
"Okay. I didn't really think that one through."
"But if his grandmother hadn't gotten sick, I did have an arrangement in the works," he admitted.
My interest was piqued. "What kind of arrangement?"
"Turns out Roger had a weakness for high-priced call girls."
I scowled. "I don't even want to know how you knew that." I chewed on my lip, taking in this new information. It wasn't as if any of my previous relationships had really been ones that I’d wanted to continue. Every man I'd been with before Donovan had just been a placeholder, someone to fill my time while I waited and wondered if anyone could ever truly know and love me.
And all along there had been someone.
He just never bothered to tell me, instead choosing to watch quietly from the wings.
It took another hour to finish going through the rest of the folder. Close to the end, there were papers that showed he’d paid to move me to New York, that he’d negotiated the extra benefits in my employee contract. I was becoming numb to it by this point. I wasn’t shocked anymore by new discoveries. I was overwhelmed, but no longer surprised.
Then I reached the final slim stack of papers that addressed Theodore Sheridan. I'd saved them for last on purpose. There was a narrative I had created about these documents, and I wasn't sure that I wanted to find out my story wasn't true.
I slid the pile across the table to Donovan. "Tell me about these."
"Those are the court papers for the trial against Theo Sheridan,” Donovan said, gliding the pages right back to me. “He’s currently serving time in a prison in upstate New York. He was sentenced to seven years. He's got four left."
A mystery that had been unsolved since college found its answer.
"You framed him at Harvard." It was an accusation, but it didn’t carry judgment.
After Theo had assaulted me, he’d been arrested for possession of dr
ugs with intent to sell. He’d had to drop out that semester. I'd never found out what had happened after that, though I’d searched online from Denver. I'd always had a feeling that Theo’s arrest seemed too convenient. Too easy. But I hadn’t ever really thought Donovan was involved.
"Those charges didn't stick," Donovan said dismissively, confirming my suspicion by not denying it.
"And so you set him up for a sexual assault charge seven years later instead?" I couldn't hide the hostility in my voice. I appreciated the intent. It was a sweet gesture, noble even. Of course he’d done it as revenge for me. But I had serious problems with sending a man to jail on trumped-up charges. I told him so.
Donovan tilted his head and stared at me with a strange expression on his face. "Those weren't trumped-up charges," he said slowly. "Theodore Sheridan raped Liz Stein."
And that was exactly what I didn't want to know.
"No," I said, shaking my head back and forth vehemently. I didn't want to believe it. I grasped for other possibilities. "You found someone, paid someone to say these things. For me. To get him back for what he did to me."
"Are you looking for honesty? Or do you want me to tell you what you want to hear?" It was remarkable how Donovan could be so obviously irritated and incredulous, and still retain a note of compassion in his subtext.
I didn’t want compassion. I wanted the truth.
"I want you to be fucking honest. For fucking once. I want you to fucking tell me that you made this fucking happen."
His jaw worked. But he stayed silent, and the silence told me everything. That he'd already been honest. That he'd been honest all day. That the truth hurt.
I shot up from my chair and crossed to the window. I bit my lip and folded my arms across my chest, hugging myself. It looked cold outside, like the temperature had dropped. The snow banks at the side of the road lit up as cars passed them, the exhaust slowly discoloring their purity.
I didn't hear him, but I felt Donovan move up beside me. His hands were tucked safely in the pockets of his pants. He wouldn't dare touch me. Not after everything we'd gone through today. All the disclosures and revelations had been laid out, but had yet to be weighed. Who knew which way the scale would tip—in his favor or not?
Still, I could sense his desire to connect to me physically.
Or maybe that was me.
"I've only ever thought about myself," I said, my eyes never leaving the road below. "I thought about what people would say about me if I called the cops that night. What it would do to my life. I didn't once, for a single moment, consider what he might do to someone else." My voice was steady, but inside I was cracked. Theo hadn't even had his dick inside me, and he'd wrecked my life. What had he done to this woman? What had I done to this woman by letting him go free?
"You couldn't have changed anything. The only reason he's behind bars is because Liz Stein had a good case and a good lawyer. And she only got the good lawyer because I had people monitoring Theo so I could be there in case he ever got into trouble like this." He wasn't just being kind. It was rational. Somehow, I understood that.
It didn’t relieve my guilt.
"I could have at least tried."
"I tried for you," he insisted, turning to face me. "I couldn't get the drugs to stick, even when he'd been caught with them. I had a better chance at that than you did with your assault case, and you know that. I'm sorry if it’s hard to hear."
It did hurt to hear, even though I already knew. I'd always known. It was why I hadn't pressed charges in the first place. Because I'd always known that a girl crying assault at a college party—a scholarship girl no less, accusing a rich, white prep boy—never went anywhere.
Knowing didn't make it any less painful. Not then, not now.
I turned toward Donovan. "Tell me what happened to her. Tell me what he did to her. I need to know."
"If I tell you, are you going to hate yourself if you’re turned on?"
Fuck you.
But I didn't say it. Because I couldn't promise either.
"Tell me how he did it."
Donovan regarded me briefly. "He worked on Wall Street. He met her in a bar that he frequented after work. Her friends abandoned her, so he volunteered to walk her home. He took the subway with her, walked her to her door, then asked to use her restroom before going home. Inside her bathroom, he saw her robe hanging on the back of the door. He pocketed the belt of the garment before joining her again. She offered him a drink.
“While she was making it, he came up behind her, secured her wrists with the belt, shoved her up against the counter, pushed down her pants and penetrated her. He held his hand over her mouth so she couldn't scream. And when she fought too hard, he covered her nose with his palm as well so she couldn't breathe, until she settled down. He untied her before he left and threatened to ruin her and her family if she told anyone. She immediately went to a neighbor and they called the cops. He didn't use a condom. He came inside her which made it easy to collect his semen in the rape kit."
I wasn't turned on. I was sick.
I moved to lean on the conference table. It was horrible, and horribly true. Hearing her story brought back all the things that I remembered from my own night with Theodore. How he'd pushed down my pants. How he'd covered my mouth and my nose with his hand. How I'd fought. How it had been hopeless.
Until Donovan had shown up.
"He took her robe belt. She might've even just offered if he'd waited." And she might not have ever been there with him if I'd done something first.
"He's a predator, Sabrina. He's not interested in an offer."
Right. He was a predator.
But what about Donovan? Was he a predator? Was he interested in my offers? Or was he only interested in what he could take from my life without my permission?
I stared at my hands, angry with him, with Theo, with myself.
I walked back to where I’d sat, closed the file and slid the file across the table. I didn’t want it anywhere near me anymore. I didn’t deserve the good deeds inside it, and I didn’t want to think about the mess that Donovan had cleaned up on my behalf.
"That wasn't so bad," he said, crossing back to where he’d sat, and I wasn't sure if he was saying that to me or to himself, but he did look a lot more relaxed than he had when we started.
Too bad I didn’t feel the same.
"I'm not done yet," I said. I had one more question to ask, the question I'd been wondering for weeks. It felt even more relevant now that I’d wondered about the exact definition of a predator. "Are there cameras in my apartment?”
Donovan’s skin seemed to sallow before my eyes. He paused. Then swallowed. “They’re rarely ever on.”
My stomach dropped like a boulder into the ocean. “But sometimes they’re on.”
“Sometimes they’re on," he confirmed, heavily.
I knew this. In my heart of hearts, I knew this. Too many times, he’d known things. Things he shouldn't have known. About how little I slept. About the details of what I was doing.
“What do you watch?” I asked, my voice surprisingly steady, even though my heart felt like it was beating in erratic waves.
“I’m sure you don’t need to ask that.” His voice was low and warning.
“I’m asking because I’m imagining what you could watch. You might as well just tell me so I’m not imagining something worse.” And I was very definitely imagining the worst, me at my most intimate. All the nights I'd used fantasies of him to lull myself back to sleep after being woken by nightmares from the past…
“You’re not imagining something worse.”
My skin prickled. My stomach twisted into knots. My skin got hot, and my blood felt like it was boiling. A low level of rage had simmered beneath the surface of my emotions all afternoon. Now it bubbled to the top. It had been one thing when his violations were in the past. It was quite another to find out he was still invading my privacy, even now, even when we lived in the same city, even when all he had t
o do to be with me was choose to be with me.
I pushed my chair into the table so hard the other chairs rattled.
"Sabrina," Donovan implored. "Don't make this more than it is.”
"Don't make this more than it is?" I echoed. "Which part? The part where you butt your way into every relationship I've had? Every job? Every situation I've been in—none of which you were ever invited to be a part of. That part? Or the part where you spy on me, like a common peeping Tom? Or did you mean the relationship that we have right now, the relationship where I actually wanted something with you, wanted something real with you? Where I asked you for it and I begged you for it, and you pushed me away? Is that what I'm not supposed to make too much of?"
I was trembling with anger and hurt.
Donovan rounded the table to approach me, reaching his arms out toward me in the way I’d wondered if he wanted to earlier. "Sabrina," he said again, softer.
"Don't!" I said, backing away. “I don't want this."
He lowered his arms, but he didn't move away from me. "You don't want what? You don't want this?" He pointed to the file. "Or you don't want me?"
I shook my head, unable to answer.
"Because they’re one and the same, Sabrina. This file is who I am. You don't get one without the other.” His tone was sharp.
It cut at me where I was already bruised.
"You never gave me a choice.” The sum of everything I’d learned. My eyes were wet. I blinked to keep tears from falling.
"I'm giving you a choice now." He took another step toward me. "I fucked up when I pushed you away. But I'm here now. And you have to decide."
I shook my head again. He was so close I could reach out and touch him if I wanted to. And I had wanted to touch him for so long. The yearning and desire from the night before were still inside me, still layered just underneath my skin. Pressing at my edges, begging for his skin on mine.
But the wall that I had hoped would be gone after today was still there too, perhaps less thick than before, but a barrier just the same.
"I think this is enough for one day," I said, wrapping my arms around myself. "I'm ready to go home."
Need you Now (Top Shelf Romance Book 2) Page 36
