by Keeland, Vi
When my eyes grew wide, she shook her head and her hands.
“No—don’t panic. I went to see him in his very full office and made him leave the door open. I was always safe.”
While I was relieved, I still couldn’t breathe very well. “What happened?”
“He was snide and thought I was wearing a wire trying to record him admitting to something—pretty much what I expected. But I didn’t go there to get anything from him. I went for myself, because I needed to say some things to him.” She shook her head. “I don’t even remember everything I said, but I wanted him to know he’d ruined many years of my life and made me not trust anyone or myself, how much damage he had done—not that I think he cares. But I needed to look him in the eyes and call him a rapist.” She smiled. “I also told him to rot in hell, which, surprisingly, felt more cathartic than the rest of the stuff I said.”
I smiled. She’d been carrying the weight of other people’s choices on her shoulders for too long, and I was damn proud of her for unloading it. “Good for you.”
“His face was a mess. You fucked him up good.” The corners of her lips twitched up, but she quickly looked down again. “I hate violence. Not only because of what happened to me, but also because of all the kids I work with. It never solves anything. It just makes new problems.”
“I know. And I made a shitload of new ones. I’m sorry, Autumn. I really am.”
She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “Can I tell you another secret?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
“I’m not that sorry, so you shouldn’t be either.”
My heart leaped, but I was still afraid to get my hopes up. “Really?”
She nodded. This time, it was her who squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry I pushed you away. I just needed some time to work through things. Actually, that sounds like I’m saying I’ve finished working through them. I’m sure I haven’t, but I think I’ve finally started. I can’t promise you that getting closer won’t scare me, or that I won’t do something stupid like run away again. But if you’ll have me, I’d like to try.”
“If I’ll have you?” I reached over and yanked her out of her seat and onto my lap. “Sweetheart, just try to get rid of me.”
She smiled. “Did you mean what you said in your voicemail?”
“What did I say?”
Autumn bit down on her lip. “That you love me.”
“Would it freak you out if I did?”
“No.” She leaned closer so we were nose to nose. “You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I love you, too.”
The biggest, dumbest smile took over my face. “I fucking love you.”
She giggled. “Fucking love, huh? Is that equivalent to a lot?”
I took her cheeks into my hands and smashed my lips with hers. When we came up for air, I smiled. “Totally enough.”
Her brows dipped. “Enough? You don’t want more kisses?”
I grinned. “Oh no, I want more kisses. Does your doorbell, by chance, keep the videos it records when someone rings it?”
She nodded. “For a month or until I delete them, why?”
“You can watch it later and figure out what I meant by enough.”
I went to kiss her again, and then it hit me that I hadn’t just professed my love to her on that doorbell video and told her she was enough. I’d come back drunk and belligerent. Shit. “Actually, can I borrow your phone a second? I need to see that app…”
***
That afternoon I’d run out to get us some dinner and made an unexpected pit stop. I’d texted Autumn so she wouldn’t worry when I was gone longer than the fifteen minutes it should’ve taken me to grab Chinese food two blocks over.
“I was getting concerned.” Autumn looked up from her laptop when I finally returned. She was sitting bare legged with her feet up on the couch. “You’ve been gone almost two and a half hours.”
I set the takeout bag on the kitchen counter and walked over to kiss her. “Sorry.”
She closed her laptop. “I thought talking to plants was an old wives’ tale. It’s an actual thing.”
I smiled. “Deep dive on talking to plants while I was gone?”
She shrugged. “I thought you were making it up.”
I walked back to the kitchen and unpacked the cardboard containers of food. “Nope. But I admit, when Bud first told me he talked to them, I thought he was nuts. I looked it up myself.”
Autumn came into the kitchen. She took a seat at the island across from me. “I watched an entire episode of Mythbusters about it. They set up a bunch of greenhouses next to each other. The silent greenhouses actually showed the least amount of plant growth.”
“Oh yeah?”
She nodded and took an eggroll out of a bag. “I’m starving.”
I laughed. “I could tell. You didn’t even wait for me to get plates or utensils.”
She grinned and covered her mouth. “Sorry.”
“I’m teasing. Let’s just eat out of the cartons and share.”
“Okay.” She finished chewing and extended the eggroll to me. “So what took you so long, anyway?”
I shrugged. “Had to get something fixed.”
Her brows drew together. “Vague much? And take a bite and give me back that eggroll.”
“Wow, you’re bossy when you’re hungry.”
She held out her hand. “Bite or give it back.”
I took a bite and handed it off.
“What did you get fixed?”
I pointed to my left arm. “A tattoo.”
She laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”
I pushed up my sleeve and showed her the bandage. A piece of gauze was stretched over the area, followed by a clear plastic covering. “Nope.”
“You just randomly decided to get a tattoo fixed on the way to pick up our Chinese food? What tattoo?”
“The bird.”
“The one in the cage that you got when you were sixteen? I love that one. It was so meaningful, and I could relate to what you were feeling at the time you got it.”
“I could, too. But things change.”
“I don’t understand.”
I slowly peeled the plastic back from my forearm, then lifted the gauze. The original tattoo was a single, small, black bird alone in its cage. Jimmy at Dark Ink had done a few of my tattoos over the years, so I knew what I wanted would be an easy fix. He’d modified one of the bars and turned it into a door, and now the cage was open. I’d also had him add a second bird just outside the door.
“It’s in color!” Autumn smiled. “I thought you said you didn’t think anything was important enough to put in color.”
“It wasn’t. Until now.”
“Wow. Well, it’s beautiful. Before it was so lonely, one bird locked in a cage. But now it almost looks like the little red bird is leading the other one out.”
I smiled. “She is.”
“She? The red bird is a she?”
I nodded. “She’s you, Red.”
I watched Autumn’s face as she stared down at my arm. She’d been smiling and teasing, and her face suddenly fell. I wondered if maybe it was too soon and I’d freaked her out. When her eyes filled with tears, I thought I might’ve really fucked up. But then she got up and walked around the counter.
Autumn leaned down and kissed just above the top of the bandage that was still partially in place. “I love it.” She looked into my eyes. “And I love you, Donovan.”
My head dropped as I let out a loud rush of air. “Jesus. Thank God. I thought I’d upset you.”
“Upset me? God, no.” She placed her hand over her heart. “I just got a little overwhelmed with emotion, that’s all. I love it, and I love what it represents to you, though I think you have it backwards, Donovan. You’re the red bird who helped open my cage and set me free, not the other way around.”
I leaned my forehead against hers. “This was meant to be, Red. You know what else I realized earlie
r?”
“What?”
“You have to sign a release form when you get a tattoo—at least in the legal places I go to now. I had no idea what the date was, so I asked the guy behind the desk. Today is September thirtieth. It was one year ago today that you stole my luggage.”
“Really?”
I nodded.
“Are you sure? I know the bachelorette party was after Labor Day, but I don’t remember exactly when.”
“I checked the date on the picture I took of you. It was the morning after we’d stayed up all night. The date was October first.”
“Wow. So a year ago today. That seems like a lifetime ago.” She smirked and wrapped her arms around my neck. “You’ve been crushing on me a long time, then.”
I smiled. “Damn straight. You might’ve disappeared on me, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you. For a long time I couldn’t understand why that was. But it all makes sense now. I couldn’t let you go, because I wasn’t supposed to. We were meant to be.”
EPILOGUE
* * *
Autumn
One year later
We arrived at the restaurant a few minutes early. Donovan had driven us, even though we typically walked or took the subway to a place this close. But the sky-high heels I had on for our celebratory dinner weren’t exactly concrete friendly.
“Hi,” I said to the host. “We have a reservation for six people at eight.”
“Last name, please.”
“It’s probably under Decker.”
Donovan walked up as I waited. He wrapped a hand around my waist and leaned to kiss my bare shoulder.
“I’m sorry.” The maître d’ shook his head. “I don’t see a reservation under Decker for eight PM.”
I looked over at Donovan. “It was for eight o’clock, right?”
“It’s under your name.” He winked at me before speaking to the maître d’. “The reservation is under Wilde. Doctor Wilde.”
The man scanned his book again. “Ah yes, here we are. Dr. Autumn Wilde.”
I rolled my eyes at Donovan, but I also hadn’t been able to get the smile off my face since they’d called Dr. Autumn Wilde at the graduation ceremony earlier today.
Donovan whispered in my ear. “I can’t wait to get home later. I’ve never fucked a doctor before. And those heels stay on when I rip that dress off of you, doc.”
Just like that fateful day we’d met at a coffee shop to exchange luggage two years ago now, butterflies fluttered in my stomach. Things never dulled with this man, and certainly not over the last twelve months. So much had happened, but all of it had made us stronger.
In the weeks that passed after I’d gone to see Braden, I couldn’t stop thinking about the face he’d made when I’d mentioned praying for his other victims. The countless hours I’d spent torturing myself by watching videos of us after he’d attacked me had finally paid off. I knew in that moment that I hadn’t been the only one he’d hurt. At first, I’d just let it niggle at me. After all, I was trying to lay that part of my life to rest and move on. But eventually I realized that was impossible. If there were others, there might be more in the future, and I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try to stop that from happening. So I asked Donovan what I could do, and that started a chain of events that would forever change our lives.
Donovan asked a private investigator he used on a lot of his cases at work to poke around in Braden’s relationships that had come after me over the years. That’s how we came to know about Sarina Emmitt, a woman Braden had dated for a year after me. The investigator had spoken to one of Sarina’s previous coworkers and found out that two weeks before she abruptly quit and moved back home to Ohio, she’d shown up to work on a Monday morning with a black eye and told people she’d been mugged. Her friend had wondered if that was actually true, because she’d seemed really rattled, and some of the details of her story didn’t quite add up. The investigator checked the story with the police and found no mugging ever reported. So I took a chance and booked a trip to Ohio.
At first, Sarina vehemently denied that anything had happened to her. But I shared my story with her and knew from her face that she was lying. I was disappointed, but I didn’t want to push a victim. So I’d left her my cell phone number and flown home the next day. Twenty-three days later, she called. She hadn’t been able to sleep since I left and was ready to tell her story. That call changed everything. Unlike me, Sarina had evidence. She’d had a Ring doorbell, the kind that took video of everyone coming and going, and she’d saved the footage from the night Braden attacked her—video that included her answering the door without a black eye, and Braden leaving an hour later with scratch marks all over his face. She even had an image of her walking out the next morning with a black eye, though no one else had entered. Sarina had tried to fight Braden off and lost. She’d been in shock and devastated, but somehow, she’d had the wherewithal to keep her torn clothes, too.
Hand in hand, Sarina and I went to the police together. Braden was arrested three weeks later and charged with two counts of first-degree forcible rape. And unfortunately, while that may have further justified Donovan’s actions, his assault case continued moving forward—until Cara, Braden’s now ex-fiancée, came forward to tell the police Braden had actually started the fight, and Donovan was only defending himself. Apparently, she’d had a flicker of doubt about her fiancé since she’d seen my face that day. And after hearing Sarina’s story, she couldn’t deny the truth anymore. We’d been good friends in elementary school, and she wanted to help me, which in her mind meant telling a little white lie.
I don’t actually think the prosecutor believed her, but it had given them a reason to drop the charges against Donovan.
“Right this way, please,” the maître d’ said.
“I wonder if the others are here yet,” I mused.
“Guess we’ll find out,” Donovan said.
We followed the maître d’ through the lobby and into a long hallway. I’d been to Tavern on the Green a few times before, but I’d always been seated in the main dining room. We turned left and then right, and at the end of that hall was a set of double doors.
Rather than opening them, the maître d’ stopped and smiled at Donovan. “I’ll let you seat Dr. Wilde.”
“Thank you.”
My forehead wrinkled as he walked away. “He’s letting us pick any table we want?”
Donovan brushed a lock of hair behind my ear. “I guess you can say that. Before we go inside, I just want to say one more time how proud I am of you. Not just for graduating, but also for everything you’ve gone through over the last year. I know it wasn’t easy.”
“I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Donovan smiled. “That’s nice of you to say, but total bullshit. You can do anything. I’m just lucky to be along for the ride, Red.” He brushed his lips against mine before holding out his elbow to me. “You ready to celebrate, Dr. Wilde?”
I laughed and took his arm. “You’re acting weird, but yes, I’m ready.”
Donovan opened the double doors, and we walked inside. Skye and her boyfriend, and my dad and his new girlfriend (Yes, he got divorced again.) were already seated.
“Hey, guys!”
Skye stood. “I hope you don’t think I’m paying you to listen to my shit now that you’re a big, fancy doctor.”
I laughed. “Never.”
We hugged. But as I went to say hello to her boyfriend, I noticed a familiar face over Skye’s shoulder. My eyes widened. “Oh my God. Is that Storm?”
He smiled. He looked adorable in a shirt and tie. But who was he here with? I scanned the table and got even more confused. Half the staff I worked with at Park House was here, too. I glanced over at Donovan, and he leaned in.
“I wouldn’t let them yell surprise because I didn’t want to scare the shit out of you,” he whispered. “But keep looking…”
I scanned the room, and there had to be a hundred people—friends of mine
, friends of Donovan’s, people from my work and school, Bud and his lady friend, Donovan’s new partners Juliette and Trent (They’d all left Kravitz, Polk and Hastings three months ago and started their own firm together.), and Trent’s new fiancée, Margo, was smiling, too.
I clutched my chest and turned to Donovan. “Oh my God. You did all this for me? How did you even contact everyone?”
“I had a lot of help from Storm and Skye. You deserved a graduation party.”
“This is crazy. But thank you so much!” I threw my arms around his neck and crushed my lips to his. “I love you.”
“Right back atcha, Red.”
I rubbed my nose with Donovan’s. “Did you know some of the topiary Edward trimmed in Edward Scissorhands used to be on display here before the restaurant closed for a few years?”
Donovan laughed and kissed my forehead. “You’re just a plethora of useless information, Dr. Wilde. It’s one of the things I love about you.”
For the next half hour, I made my way around the room to greet people. Donovan stayed dutifully by my side, only disappearing occasionally to refill my wine glass. And people were handing me presents! I was completely overwhelmed. By the time we’d visited the last table, both our hands were full again. There was a long buffet table off to one side of the room where we’d been piling up gift bags and boxes. We walked over and set the last batch down, and I looked around one more time.
“I still can’t believe you did all this. And all of these people came to celebrate with me.” I pointed to the gifts and shook my head. “All of these are just over the top.”
Donovan wrapped his arms around my waist. “Well, I still didn’t give you my present.”