by Keeland, Vi
I bumped fists with the guy. “I’m a lawyer, yeah.”
“You do criminal?” his buddy asked.
I shook my head. “Not the kind you might be interested in.”
The guy pulled his head back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I specialize in white-collar crimes—embezzling, corporate fraud, stock rigging, that type of thing.”
“Too good for where you came from, huh?”
This conversation was going a direction I didn’t like. “Not at all.” I shrugged. “It’s just what I’m good at. If you’re ever in a jam for something like that, I’m your guy.”
I could tell from the look on his face he wasn’t sure if I was being sincere. He eyed me for a few heartbeats before nodding. “Yeah…okay.”
The two of them went to sit down, and Autumn glanced over at me. “I bet you get that a lot—people from here who don’t like that you’ve done well for yourself.”
I shrugged. “It is what it is. I get it.”
“Storm hides the fact that he gets straight As from his friends.”
I smiled. “I used to do the same thing. Most people want to see you do well, but very few want to see you do better than them. It’s hard to be a teenager and be different under normal circumstances, but here? It’s more than hard. It can be dangerous.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Maybe, but it’s the truth. On the street, if people can’t relate to you, they don’t trust you. And when you don’t have much else but your word, trust means everything.” I glanced over at the two guys.
The guy I knew from the neighborhood was busy eating, but the other guy was looking at Autumn. His eyes shifted to meet mine, and I held his stare until he looked away.
Fifteen minutes later, my buddy Dario made a surprise visit as we were breaking down the tables I’d brought. We shook.
“How’s Bud doing?” he asked.
“Good. Though he’s in a cast, so he’s gonna need some help for a while.”
“That’s what I came to talk to you about. The crew and me got the next five days. I know you need to work late, and the old bastard doesn’t trust anyone.”
I blew out a deep breath. “Thanks, Dario. That would really help.”
He pointed at me. “But you’re covering next Saturday night. My lady needs some loving on the weekends.”
I smirked. “Is that what you’re calling your right hand these days. Your lady?”
Dario punched my arm. “Dick.”
Over his shoulder, I watched the last two guys leave—the one I knew and the one who gave me a bad vibe. My shoulders relaxed a little. Autumn had stepped away to take a call right before Dario walked in. She came over and smiled.
“Autumn, this is Dario. Whatever he says, he’s full of shit.”
Autumn laughed. “Donovan has mentioned you before. It’s nice to meet you.”
Dario lifted Autumn’s hand to his lips and kissed the top. “The pleasure is all mine.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Take it easy, jackass.”
Dario’s eyes flickered with amusement. He knew how to get my goat. “Donovan says you’re smart. So I figure you probably pick personality…” He patted himself on the chest before thumbing to me with a frown. “…over good looks. This bastard will age, but I’ll always be entertaining.”
Autumn laughed. “I’m sure you will.”
She’d looked upset on the phone a few minutes ago, so I nodded toward the cell in her hand. “Everything okay?”
She sighed. “One of my kids was caught with weed tonight.”
“Is he in lockup? Does he need help?”
She smiled and shook her head. “Luckily it was just someone at the group home and not the police. But thank you for the offer. I actually need to make another call about it, though. The service cuts in and out in here, so I’m going to step outside for a minute.”
I looked toward the front door. Everyone had gone, but that didn’t matter. Congregating was a sport around here. So I gestured toward the back door. “Why don’t you try out that way instead?”
“Okay. Let me help you pack everything up first.”
“I got it. Go make your call.” I motioned to Dario. “This bozo is going to help me anyway.”
Since we’d only served sandwiches and salads, it took just five minutes to pack everything up. The only thing left to do was load the car with the tables and chairs and the cooler. I glanced out back. Autumn was still on the phone, so I told Dario to give me a hand carrying everything out. After we packed the trunk and backseat, I noticed the guy I knew from the earlier twosome still hanging around a few houses down. But his friend was missing.
“Hey,” I yelled. “Where’s your buddy?”
He pointed toward the yard. “He went to take a piss. Dude must’ve gotten lost.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I didn’t waste time shutting the trunk before I took off for the house. I ripped open the front door and ran straight through to the back. The dirtbag was only a few feet from Autumn. He backed up and held his hands up in the air when he saw me fly through the door.
“What the hell are you doing back here?”
The guy kept stepping back. “Just talking to the pretty lady.”
I looked over at Autumn. “You okay?”
Dario busted through the back door.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” She looked a little nervous as she glanced between the two of us, but she shook her head. “He was just leaving.”
“Why don’t you get going, Eddie?” Dario gave a curt nod and glared at the guy.
I scowled. “Don’t make me ask, too.”
Eddie looked pretty pissed off, but that was nothing compared to the anger radiating from me. The vein in my neck bulged and my heart pumped a million miles a minute.
At least the jerk was smart enough to realize walking away was the only option he had. He huffed, but walked around the side of the house without another word. I followed to make sure he really left.
As soon as he hit the street, I turned back to Autumn. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just a little shook up. He didn’t do anything, just caught me off guard because I’d been on the phone, and suddenly he was standing a few feet away in the dark. He asked me if I wanted to party, and I told him I thought it was best if he left.”
I rubbed my neck and blew out a jagged breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you alone.”
“I was only out here a few minutes.”
I shook my head. “That’s a few minutes too long.”
It took until we’d gotten in the car and driven six or eight blocks before my heart started to slow down. Autumn just kept staring at the window, her arms wrapped tightly around her body.
“I’m sorry, Autumn.”
“It’s fine. It’s not your fault, and nothing happened.”
“It is my fault, and you don’t look fine.”
She frowned and turned back to stare out the window some more. Bud’s house wasn’t too far, so a few minutes later, we pulled up outside. I put the car in park. I was never going to be able to relax just letting her drive away. “Would you mind if I followed you home?” I asked. “Or better yet, you can leave your car here, and I’ll drop you?”
She looked down for a minute before nodding. “You can follow me. But come inside when we get there. I want to talk to you anyway.”
CHAPTER 24
* * *
Donovan
Autumn was quiet as we settled into her apartment.
“Do you want a glass of wine?” she asked.
“Sure, if you’re having some.”
She smiled halfheartedly. “I am definitely having some. Why don’t you get comfortable on the couch, and I’ll grab us two glasses.”
“Thanks.”
Autumn came back a few minutes later. She’d poured the wine and also tied her hair into a messy bun on top of her head and changed into yoga pants and a T-shirt.
She saw m
e checking her out. “Sorry. I needed to be comfortable.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. I actually love your hair tied up like that.”
She sipped her wine and smiled. “You do? And here I wasted a half hour blowing it out earlier so I’d look nice. All I had to do was not brush it and twist it up into a knot?”
My eyes roamed over her beautiful face. “Your hair is like that in the picture I took of you during the weekend we spent together. After you ghosted me, I looked at it a lot. I’d tell you how often, but it might scare you away again, and I think I’ve fucked up enough for one day.”
Autumn set her wine on the table and laid her hand gently on my knee. “You didn’t fuck up anything today. In fact, you did just the opposite.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll get to that, but first, what picture did you take of me?”
I smiled. “You were standing at the stove in my kitchen. Your hair was all tied up like it is now, and you had on my T-shirt from the day before.”
She shook her head. “I don’t even remember that.”
I dug my cell from my pants pocket, opened the photo app, and scrolled to the folder I kept it in before turning the phone to show her.
Autumn took the cell from my hand and studied it. “I look like a mess.”
“You look beautiful.”
She kept staring. Eventually she sighed. “I don’t agree, but I will say I look happy.”
I took my phone back and glanced at the photo one more time. “I thought you were. I know that weekend I was the happiest I’d been in a long time.”
Autumn’s eyes moved back and forth between mine. I could see something was troubling her. After a while, she took a deep breath, reached for her wine, chugged the entire remainder of the glass, and lifted one knee up onto the couch to face me directly.
“Summer of my senior year in high school, I met Braden. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’d met him a few times over the years, but I didn’t really know him. His dad worked for my dad before they became partners. I thought Braden was cute, but he was a few years older, so he never looked my way other than to say hello until that summer when I was eighteen.”
Autumn stared down into her empty wine glass. I knew from the very first sentence that this story was not going to have a happy ending. But I also knew I needed to hear it, because it was going to fill in a lot of the missing pieces on the Autumn Wilde puzzle I’d been trying to work out for a long time.
I took her empty glass and swapped it with my three-quarters-full one.
She smiled sadly and took another deep breath before continuing. “Braden was in his first semester of law school and was nothing like the boys I’d gone out with in high school. I had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and he was so driven and mature, and he was attracted to me for some reason.” She turned her head and stared off for a minute. “When I look back at that first summer, I still don’t see the red flags I missed.” She frowned. “I think that haunts me almost as much as anything else.”
“What happened?”
“Braden and I dated for four and a half years. Things didn’t go bad overnight. We grew really close that first summer. I’d dated before, but it was my first serious relationship. Then I went away to college. I only went to Boston, so it was just a few hours’ drive. I’d come home often, and sometimes Braden would visit me. Once in a while he’d even surprise me and not tell me he was coming. But sometimes I felt more like he was checking up on me, rather than really wanting to see me.”
I definitely didn’t like the direction this was heading. It felt like the ominous music of a horror movie had started playing.
“Anyway…” Autumn wrung her hands together. “Over the years, there was never enough to make an alarm go off—not one single thing anyway.” She shook her head. “Maybe there was, and I was in denial. I don’t know. I’d notice small things—like I’d think his car was following me, but then it would be gone. Sometimes I’d ask him about things I noticed, but his answers were so believable that I just kept chalking it up to my own paranoia. He actually made me feel crazy for thinking he’d have the time or inclination to follow me. Plus, and I know this sounds horrible, but it was an easy relationship. Our fathers were business partners and the best of friends, and I’d made the decision to go to law school, so Braden was able to demystify that entire process.” She shrugged. “I just… I was very trusting and naïve back then. Too trusting.”
I wasn’t sure what to say or do. It felt like she needed to get something out by taking the long way, rather than cutting to the chase, but damn, my heart was in agony waiting for that other shoe to drop. Still, I stayed quiet.
Autumn finished off the wine in my glass.
“You want some more?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I shouldn’t. I just needed to take the edge off. I promise I’m getting to the end of this story soon.”
I took her hand in mine and squeezed. “Take all the time you need. There’s no hurry.”
She nodded and stared down for a minute again before continuing. “After I was done with college and back home again, more things started to raise red flags. I’d think he was following me, and then I’d catch him in a lie about being at work. He had this way of turning things around and convincing me I felt guilty because I’d been growing distant. I was in law school and meeting new people and wanted some freedom, so he wasn’t wrong. We had been growing apart. But he’d waited four long years for me to move back home. So I felt bad even considering breaking things off, especially because while we were together, he was so good to me. Though once I’d caught him in a few lies, I found it hard to believe anything he said. One day I’d noticed some of my emails marked as read, even though I was positive I’d never opened them. Things started to feel really unhealthy, so eventually I told Braden I needed a break.”
“How did that go over?”
“Better than I expected, at first. But he was convinced I was just stressed from my first year of law school, and it was only a break and we’d get back together.”
“Did you get back together?”
She shook her head. “We kept in touch, but once I’d broken things off, I knew pretty quickly that I’d made the right decision for a lot of reasons.”
“Okay…”
“Once he realized it was over, and I was moving on, strange things started to happen.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I used to study with a small group. One of the people in my group was this guy Mark. One night, we were the last two of our group to leave the library, and when we walked outside, Braden was there. He said he was going in to do some late-night research, but I suspected he’d been following me again. He was polite when I introduced him to Mark, but I could see how angry he was underneath. A few days later, Mark was attacked.”
“By Braden?”
“I was never able to prove it, but that’s what I’ve always suspected. The person attacked him as he walked to his car late one night. But they didn’t even try to take his wallet or his car keys. They came at him from behind, so he never got a look at the guy’s face, and the guy didn’t say a single word during the attack. All Mark was able to tell the police was that the guy had black dress shoes on. Of course, Braden and a few other million men wear dress shoes.”
I raked a hand through my hair. “Jesus.”
“There were other little things, but at that point, I stopped talking to Braden altogether. I wouldn’t answer when he called, and then he’d send me long emails and texts making me feel terrible for the things I was thinking.” She took a deep breath and looked me in the eyes. “One night he showed up at my house.”
All of the hair on my arms stood up.
Autumn looked down, and when her head came back up, her eyes were filled with tears. “He said he just wanted to talk. He was crying, and I felt bad. So I let him in.”
I couldn’t breathe waiting for the rest.
Her voice was b
arely a whisper when she continued. “No one was home. And he…he…raped me.”
I froze. I knew the story was heading to an ugly place, but not here. I guess I’d thought he’d smacked her around and scared her maybe. Not this… I shut my eyes.
“Autumn…” I shook my head. “Fuck. Autumn.”
When I opened my eyes, tears were rolling down her cheeks, so I did the only thing that felt right. I pulled her against me and held her so tight that at one point, I worried I might be hurting her. My own tears fell against the back of her shirt. After a while, she pulled back.
“I want to finish.” She wiped her tears, and then reached out and dried mine. “I made it this far, and I need to get it all out.”
I nodded and swallowed a huge lump in my throat. “You don’t have to. Not for me.”
She nodded. “Thank you. But I need to do it for me.”
God, if I hadn’t already been crazy about this woman, I would be now. I bet she had no idea how strong she was.
For the next half hour, Autumn told me the rest of her story. How she hadn’t immediately gone to the police, because at first she hadn’t seen it for what it was. They’d had sex for years, and even though she’d told him repeatedly to stop this time, she didn’t physically fight him off with more than a shove. Eventually she’d just stilled, too terrified to move, waiting for him to be done. Then when the shock of it all wore off, she felt partially to blame somehow. She’d let him in. She’d accused him of things he might not have done. She’d made him upset—at least that’s how she’d seen it at first.
Then to make matters worse, when she’d finally started to move from shocked to angry and decided to talk to someone, that person wasn’t supportive.
Her father.
Her fucking father.
The asshole had the balls to question whether she could’ve been giving Braden mixed signals. As if there was any other signal that mattered when a woman said no.
By the time she found the courage to go to the police, of course there was no physical evidence left. So it was her word against his—an upstanding member of the legal community with no prior record. And when they interviewed Braden’s friends, he’d either convinced them to lie, or he’d been lying to his buddies all along, because they told the police Autumn had been the one stalking him, that she’d been upset and persistent when he’d broken things off.