by Keeland, Vi
I swiped my phone to off and sat at my desk. It was nine o’clock at night, and a few people were still milling around the office, but I didn’t give a fuck. I cried like a baby.
CHAPTER 33
* * *
Autumn
Just a week ago, I felt like a butterfly that had spent years inside some sort of cocoon. I’d been so afraid to venture out into the world on my own. But I flapped my wings a few times, and once I started to fly, the isolated darkness I’d been in for so long seemed more like a punishment than a place of protection. Now I desperately wanted to crawl back into that cocoon, yet it seemed I could no longer fit.
Over the last few days, I’d kept replaying this silly little moment Donovan and I had shared. We were at the hotel the night before my dad’s wedding. Because even crossing the state line from New York into Connecticut made me feel tense, I’d decided to take a hot shower. After, I’d sat at the desk diagonally across from the bed where Donovan was watching some baseball game on TV.
I’d been lost in my head, thinking about how long it had been since I’d been to my dad’s house, while drying the back of my hair. At one point, my eyes caught Donovan’s in the mirror. He smiled, apparently no longer watching the game, so I turned off the drier and asked what he was looking at. He’d shrugged and said he was just enjoying watching me. I went back to doing what I was doing—which was a pain in the ass since my hair had gotten pretty long. Donovan walked over and took the dryer and my brush from my hands. He looked completely out of his element, almost as if he didn’t even know how to angle the dryer with one hand and work the hairbrush with the other. But he stood there—still wearing a custom-made dress shirt from work that day, one that covered all of his badass tattoos—for ten minutes and finished drying the back of my hair.
And that’s when I knew. I knew that no matter how hard I tried, no matter how hard I fought it, I couldn’t stop myself from falling for him. And that’s why today, after spending days curled in a ball on my bed, I got up, looked up the address of a certain lawyer whose name I never thought I’d type into Google, and took the train to Hartford.
“Hi, I’m here to see…” I took a deep breath. “Braden Erlich.”
The receptionist smiled. “Of course.” She hit a few keys and then looked up. “Hmmm… I don’t have an appointment down for Mr. Erlich this afternoon. He must’ve forgotten to put it in the master calendar.”
“Actually, I don’t have an appointment.”
“Oh.”
“But we have some business that needs to be finalized. Could you just let him know I’m here?”
“Sure. What’s your name, please?”
“Autumn Wilde.”
I watched her face as she called back to Braden. “Hi. I have Autumn Wilde here to see you. She’s not on the calendar but said—”
The man on the other end had clearly cut her off. She listened before covering the phone and whispering, “Did I get your name right?”
I smiled. “You did.”
She uncovered the phone. “Yes, the name is definitely Autumn Wilde.”
The receptionist looked confused as she set down the phone. “Umm… He must be on the other line or something. I’m sure he’ll call back when he’s off.”
No sooner than she’d finished speaking, Braden came marching down the hall behind her. He had two black eyes, a bandaged nose, and one eye was swollen shut even though almost a week had passed. His face was hard as he stared at me, and I thought I might throw up. He walked directly around the reception desk and took my elbow.
I yanked it away and hissed, “Don’t touch me.”
Braden’s eyes jumped to the receptionist and back to me, and he held up his hands. “What do you want?”
“To speak to you.”
His jaw flexed. “Not here. Come into my office.”
“That is usually how it works,” I murmured.
Somehow I managed to put one foot in front of the other as I made my way into the inner sanctum of his fancy law office. When we arrived at his door, he extended a hand for me to enter first. I did, but stopped in front of him.
“The door stays open.”
“I would prefer privacy.”
“And I would prefer not to have to take drugs at night in order to sleep because I’m afraid an animal might come into my apartment and rape me. I guess neither one of us gets our preference, huh?”
Braden rubbed his face with his hand as he stared at me. “Fine. Keep your voice down.”
I took a seat on the opposite side of his desk. My hands shook, so I gripped the arms of the chairs with all my might so he wouldn’t see it.
He folded his arms across his chest. “If you’re here to try to get me to drop the charges against your hoodlum boyfriend, you wasted a trip.”
When I’d thought about coming here, I thought it would be difficult to look at Braden, but in the moment, it was just the opposite. Maybe it was that he was beaten and bruised, but staring at him made me feel stronger, not like the cowering weakling I’d thought it would. My heart still ricocheted inside my chest, my skin was clammy, and my posture was most definitely rigid, but I thought there might be some exhilaration mixed in with my terror.
I tilted my head. “Do you think about what you did to me?”
He flinched, but tried to hide it. “Nice try. Are you wearing a wire or attempting to record me on your phone?”
I held eye contact as I lifted my purse, dug out my phone, and placed it on the desk. I swiped it on and turned the cell to face him as I pressed the button to power it down. He said nothing, but still didn’t look convinced. So I stood and held out my arms.
After a minute-long stare-off he motioned to my seat. “What do you want, Autumn?”
“I want answers.”
He looked back and forth between my eyes. “To what?”
“You’ve moved on. I want to know how.”
He flashed a maniacal smile. “Did you think I’d stay celibate after we broke up?”
I shook my head. “No, but I want to know how you sleep at night knowing you raped me.”
His eyes jumped to the door behind me. “Lower your voice.”
“Or what?” I smiled sardonically. “Oh…of course. No one here knows what you were accused of—what you did. If they knew, they’d look at you a little differently. Most of them would say they didn’t believe it. But in the back of their minds...there would always be just…” I held my thumb and forefinger up, displaying a quarter inch of space. “That much—that much doubt that you might’ve done it. Even the people who like you would never feel the same way about you. I bet a few of the ladies would make sure they were never the last ones alone in the office with you at night, too.”
Braden’s jaw flexed. “Cut to the chase, Autumn. I’m not an idiot, so I’m not answering any of your questions. If that’s all you came to do…” He motioned a circle with his hand. “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”
“I didn’t expect you would answer my questions, and honestly, I’m not sure there’s anything you could say that has any value to me. But you are going to listen to what I have to say.” I took a deep breath.
“For a year after you raped me, I used to watch old videos of us together. I spent countless hours studying them—watching the way you looked at me, watching your eyes to see what I’d missed. I mean, the devil doesn’t just come out of someone one day. He seeps into your soul and little by little sucks the good out of you. It’s like a cancer left untreated. It festers and grows and takes all the good from your body until you’re a rundown shell of who you once were. So I didn’t understand how I hadn’t seen it happening.” I tapped my chest. “I couldn’t accept that I’d spent four years with a person who was capable of doing such a heinous thing all along. So it had to be that I missed something. The alternative was so much worse. If I didn’t see it in you, how would I see it in someone else? That meant no one could be trusted.”
I paused and shook my
head. “Did you know that when you’re looking for something, you always look from left to right? You never start scanning a room on the right side. And when another man comes near you, even a guy passing by who isn’t paying you one bit of attention, you square your shoulders. You should’ve been a peacock, at least you’d have pretty feathers to show off. Oh, and when you’re having a drink? You always hold it up to examine how much is left before you take the next sip. We spent four years together, and I never noticed any of that. But watch a few videos—oh, I don’t know, ten, maybe twenty-thousand times—and you notice things.”
I picked imaginary lint from my pants. “Do you know how hard it is to see the face of the man who raped you on video over and over again? Especially when he’s laughing and having a good time in them, and you realize he’s probably laughing and having a good time right now, too. While I, I’d just thrown up my dinner…again.”
I took another deep breath and studied Braden’s face. What I saw made me smile. I was certain the smile came off as insane, but I didn’t give a shit.
I tapped the skin at the corner of my left eye. “You just twitched. It was very slight, because I assume you’ve gotten better at hiding your tells over the years, but I saw it. I forgot to mention that while studying those videos, I also learned that you felt extremely threatened by my father and your own father.” I pointed to the corner of his eye. “It’s a little hard to see today, surrounded by all that black and blue and bruising, but it was there. You’re feeling threatened right now.”
Braden spoke through gritted teeth. “Don’t flatter yourself. The muscle in my eye is probably damaged, which causes involuntary twitching. I’ll make sure to note that in my civil suit against the thug you’re dating—after I make sure he’s locked up.”
“Sure, that’s it.” I smiled and looked at my nails. “Anyway, I just wanted to let you know a few things more. First, you ruined my life for six years. I blamed myself for not seeing things in you, and because of that I kept my distance from anyone I might’ve had a real connection with. I was afraid having feelings again would make me blind to seeing the truth about a person, like it did with you. I trusted you. Even when I knew you were following me and lying about it, I still trusted you enough to open the door to my home and let you in that night to talk. I felt bad for hurting you, even though I’d done nothing wrong in our relationship. When you refused to stop, it did more than break my trust in you. It broke my trust in all men—hell, it broke my trust in humanity. You were my first, Braden. My first serious boyfriend, my first sexual experience, my first everything. Firsts are where we learn things for our second and third. And I learned things no woman should ever have to learn. You ruined my life.”
I’d been on an adrenaline high since I walked in, but now I felt the inevitable crash starting to take root. So I knew it was time to go. Standing, I smoothed out my pants and looked up at the face that haunted my dreams for so many years. It was fitting that it was beaten and bruised.
“Goodbye, Braden.”
I made it almost to the door when he yelled after me. “That’s it? You’re not even going to beg for leniency for your boyfriend?”
I turned back. “I begged you to stop once, so I already know how that goes. I’ll save my breath to pray for the other survivors. Because I’m sure I’m not the only one you did this to.”
The corner of his eye twitched, and his jaw tightened.
“I thought so,” I said. “Rot in hell, rapist.”
CHAPTER 34
* * *
Donovan
Ten days had passed since I last saw Autumn. She’d texted once and said she was okay but needed to work through some things by herself. But it was quickly becoming clear that one of the things she needed to work through was me.
It was the Tuesday after Labor Day—the day I’d been looking forward to for months, and now dreaded.
“You coming?” Trent poked his head in my office door.
“Do I have to?”
He smiled sadly. “Nope. But if you’re ever going to make it through this, you need to start holding your head up high and taking your lumps.”
I sighed and tossed my pen onto my desk. “Fine.”
We rode the elevator together up to the executive floor. The “announcement” of the names of the new partners was always done in the conference room before popping the champagne. But the people about to be named had been informed before Labor Day, because they had to write a big fat check to formally buy into the partnership. Needless to say, my phone hadn’t rung over the weekend.
Trent punched my arm as the elevator halted. “Chin up, buddy.”
I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Sure thing.”
The fourteenth floor conference room was crammed with people, so we had to stand out in the hall, which I was relieved about. Juliette was packed in near the door, along with the other sardines. When she saw us, she squeezed her way out to us. She took one look at my face and frowned.
“You still haven’t heard from her?”
I shook my head. It was pretty funny that we were standing and waiting for the announcement that someone other than me had made partner, and Juliette knew that wasn’t the reason for my long face.
She rubbed my arm. “She’ll come around.”
I could tell from Juliette’s face that she didn’t even believe what she was saying. But she was a good friend, and I didn’t have the energy to argue anyway.
“Thanks.”
For the next twenty minutes, I stood while they announced the names of the new partners. I kept my eyes straight ahead, even though I felt others watching to see how I’d react. When it was finally over and the first bottles of champagne had been opened, I leaned over to Trent. “I’m gonna get out of here.”
He slapped my shoulder. “Yeah, of course. You did what you had to do. No reason to prolong the torture. Order dinner at seven?”
I shook my head. “Actually, I’m just going to call it a day.” I smiled halfheartedly. “One of the benefits of derailing from the partner track—doesn’t matter if I put in fourteen hours every day.”
Trent nodded. “Take it easy, buddy.”
Outside on the street, I took a deep breath and loosened my tie. The air had been stifling up there, but I knew if I went home at this early hour, I’d wind up drinking to numb my thoughts. So I decided to head over to Bud’s house. I’d spoken to him a few times, but hadn’t been to see him since the weekend in Connecticut.
I found him in the garage with a three-foot ruler hanging out of his cast and a saw next to him on the table.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Got this goddamn thing stuck. I need to saw it off because I keep whacking shit as I walk.”
I chuckled and walked over to examine what the heck was going on. “Why is it in there to begin with?”
“I had an itch. I’m sweating in this thing, and it’s making my skin itchy as hell.”
“Did you try pulling it out?”
“Oh, that’s a great idea. Wish I would’ve thought of it.” He rolled his eyes. “Whatta you think, I’m a dumbass? Of course I tried to pull it out—it’s stuck.”
“Let me give it a try before we saw it off.”
It took about ten minutes and some olive oil for lube, but I got the thing out.
Bud shook his arm. “Don’t know that I’ll be able to make the eight weeks they want me to keep this thing on.”
“Take it day by day, and do the best you can.”
Bud smirked. “I believe that was my line to you for half your life.”
I nodded. “True.”
We went into the house, and Bud pointed to the watering can he’d had since I was a kid. “Help me do the inside ones, will ya? If I use my other hand, I spill half the water on the floor. If I use the hand with the cast, it drips down my arm and makes me itchy.”
“Why don’t you sit down and relax. I’ll hit them all.”
Bud pulled out a stool on the other side of th
e counter while I filled the can. “Anything new on the charges in Connecticut?”
I shook my head. “Nah. We filed some paperwork and requested a conference. But I don’t expect to hear anything for a few weeks at least.”
He nodded. “Things with Autumn smooth over?”
I frowned. “She doesn’t even want to talk to me.”
My eyes caught with Bud’s before I started to water his million houseplants. He was quiet for a while, which didn’t surprise me. Bud wasn’t a man who talked for the sake of filling silence.
“I bet she’s hurting.”
As if I didn’t feel enough like shit. “Of course she’s hurting. And that’s my fault.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “But let me ask you something. Don’t you think she’d probably be hurting just running into the guy? Even if you hadn’t swung?”
“Yeah. You should’ve seen the way she looked when he walked up—like she’d seen a ghost. What happened might’ve been six years ago, but it was two seconds ago in that moment.”
“Okay…so let’s say you’d handled things differently. She’d probably still be a bit on edge for a while. What would you do about that?”
“What do you mean, what would I do about it? I’d talk to her, listen to whatever she wanted to get out. I wouldn’t fucking leave her side, if that made her feel better.”
“Okay… And yet you’re here and not at her place tonight.”
I finished watering a fern that was probably as old as I was and set the can down. “She doesn’t believe violence is ever justified. She doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“And what do you believe?”
“I believe the guy deserves a hell of a lot worse than I gave him. But that’s beside the point. It wasn’t my choice to make. I made a mistake.”