That was the last thing I felt like doing.
Instead, I made the final move even though my body ached with it, and I cut the space between us to a few inches. He was stilted at first, but then his arms swooped around me, and I burrowed into them, not stopping until I was flush against him, until there was no space at all and skin touched skin.
The confusion, the pain, the stress, the tension, it didn’t magically float away because he was there, but it was true what my grandmother had told me once—a problem shared really was a problem halved.
Twenty-Four
Devlin
I didn’t go into work for the next few days. Anything on my plate, I dealt with from the home office I never used even though it was fully kitted out for telecommuting.
Was it stupid to need to be close to him? Even if, after that first day, I could tell he didn’t really want me there?
He was quiet, withdrawn, tired, and on edge. Understandable, all of it, so I let him be, let him have some space and gave him the freedom of the apartment to come to terms with what happened.
When I’d started worrying about his safety, about him being mugged at a subway station, I hadn’t thought this would happen, and there was no not feeling guilty about this.
Robert Llewelyn had taken his own fucking life because HR had refused to listen to him, and even though I’d taken notice, the process of saving my company’s ass had taken precedence over the safety of my employees.
I deserved to be fucking lynched.
The thought had me clenching my teeth as I dove into work to try and offset my guilt. It didn’t work, of course. Not only had I put my workers in jeopardy, but Micah had paid for my mistakes as a result.
Micah, who was starting to mean much more to me than he should have after such a short space of time.
Micah, who I still didn’t have a fucking clue what to do with.
I felt emotionally crippled by my inaction and the subsequent tragedy that had ensued.
What Micah was going through right now was my fault. Astley Publishing’s fault. And that was what I couldn’t forgive.
The board had allowed that predator to stalk the halls of the Tower, to seek out her prey. We’d given her access to—
My hands balled into tight fists just as my cellphone buzzed. For a second, I ignored it, then when the notification popped up on my screen, I sighed and answered because ignoring calls from Lizzie was never advisable.
“Devlin, we’ve got a problem.”
“Music to my ears,” I said dryly, reaching up to rub a hand over my head, and encountering the damn stitches along the way.
I deserved more than a stapler to the cranium and a black eye for my pains, though.
Not just for Micah, but for Robert.
How Lizzie could bear to look at me, to work for me, while staying in the same fucking tower as Rhode was beyond me. The trouble was, apologies meant nothing when action was never taken. I’d already said sorry so many times, all without resolving anything. I was either incredibly lucky that she loved her job, or she simply couldn’t afford to leave. And with her salary, health benefits, and pension, I knew it was that more than anything else.
Which was less of a punch to the gut and more of a herniated disc—excruciating to accept, devastating to realize.
“I’m sending you a link. Open it,” she said briskly, but her tone was no different than the thousand other times she’d called me to offset a crisis. Did she loathe me? How could I blame her? Even doing everything I could, the law and legalities had prevented me from doing what was right. “I’ve got Kirkland on it, but the board are already grumbling about an emergency meeting. Nothing concrete yet, but I’d expect to be hauled in tonight.”
Frowning, I clicked on the link, and what I saw had my already soaring blood pressure shooting into limbo.
“The lawyers are already on it. It won’t make the print edition,” she soothed before I could say a damn word.
Astley HEIR ASSAULTS BELOVED NYC SOCIALITE
If the headline wasn’t atrocious enough, that was nothing to the pictures splashed all over the fucking front page of the website, with, I saw, more promised.
Rhode was leaning against a wall, peering out of a window, looking more like a woman waiting on her man to come home from war than a bloody ‘beloved’ socialite. She was also covered in bruises—bruises that hadn’t been there when she’d left the Marketing department.
“It’s make-up,” I rasped, suddenly concerned that, on top of everything else, Lizzie would think me capable of this level of violence against a woman.
Even if Rhode totally deserved it.
“I didn’t do that to her. I went to smack her, but the guards pulled her away.”
She clucked her tongue. “I didn’t think you’d done it anyway. I’ve already grabbed footage from the halls that night, Devlin. I know exactly what happened.” Her tone softened. “How’s he doing?”
“Badly.” I reached up and plucked my bottom lip. “Even if they have proof, she’s going to spin it, isn’t she? Twist it so that, somehow, I’m the bad guy.”
“She can try, but we have a bigger PR department.”
“This isn’t a dick measuring contest,” I argued gruffly, well aware that even if we sued, even if we threw cease and desist letters at websites and bloggers, the content wouldn’t stop spreading.
It’d go viral.
Because that’s what shit like this did.
And the only way to counter it was to go forward and reveal a truth that wasn’t mine to reveal.
Plucking at my bottom lip as I scrolled through the images, zooming in on some to enhance the bruises on her face and neck, arms and torso which she revealed in a demure camisole she’d never have been seen dead in at work.
“What’s her game?” I asked softly. “Micah’s pressing charges. It’s not like she can bury that.”
“Maybe she thinks she can. Maybe she believes she can leverage Micah’s charges with her pulling back from all this bullshit she’s selling.”
I pondered that, and almost immediately accepted that Rhode was that devious, capable of far worse than just that.
Legally, the board couldn’t do shit against me when I held fifty-one percent of the company stake. They couldn’t force me to resign, but could request me to take a step back for the sake of the company. A company that mattered to me.
Astley Publishing was one of the country’s leading publishers of Black and LGBT authors.
I’d worked hard to make it progressive and diverse, and the prospect of all the positive things I’d achieved being raked through the mud wasn’t about to put me in a good mood, but neither was I going to let that bitch bring me down.
With her having laid these particular seeds, anything I did just looked like retaliation or a cover up. Neither of which would be helpful in this situation. She’d backed me into a corner by being the one to draw light onto this sorry mess, and no Astley appreciated that.
As I scrolled through the images, of which there were dozens, scanned through the text, I asked, “Did you send Robert’s computer away like I asked you?”
“I did,” she confirmed, her voice slightly shaky with nerves.
I frowned. “Did something go wrong?”
“No. I, just—it was harder than you can know to let that out of my hands.”
Pity and resentment warred inside me. Pity for her, for Robert, resentment that Rhode was somehow still winning this war even if she wasn’t working for Astley anymore.
It was inconceivable to me that she’d come out of this unscathed.
There was goddamn video footage of her raping Micah—how did she think she could evade that?
Unless...
“You’re right. It’s about leverage.” I pursed my lips. “Well, two can play that game.”
“They can?” was Lizzie’s wary retort.
“Yeah. Inform the board I’m about to take a six-month sabbatical. That should allow things to die down. By that time, maybe her case wi
ll be up in court. If we’re lucky. These things take forever.”
“Is Micah willing to go all the way?”
I’d never actually asked him, had just assumed he would. Why wouldn’t he?
But then, I thought back to that horrendous night where I’d stood in a corner of a room in the clinic, watching as Micah was violated again, but by the law this time.
Everything he did, had done, had seen, said and touched, was up for question as he was tested and re-tested. All of that going down while he was still high on what Rhode had doped him with.
He’d been able to speak by the time the specially appointed nurse saw to him, but whether or not he’d been processing was another matter entirely. He’d answered her questions like a robot, all the while he’d broken my fucking heart. Not because of what his answers were, but because he’d been staring at me like I was the only thing keeping him going.
I swallowed at the thought, then reached up and rubbed at my eyes. Fatigue hit me hard, and I knew that there was a lot of shit I needed to admit to Micah. A lot we needed to discuss.
The Rhodes had a lot of clout in this city, and that made me question why the cops hadn’t been by to speak with Micah since the night of the attack.
“Devlin?” Lizzie prompted. “Is Micah willing to go all the way?”
“I assume so,” was all I said, not wanting to put words in his mouth. How many victims didn’t come forward because to prove what they’d been through was altogether too painful to them than the idea of their rapists walking free?
I wanted Micah to stand up and have his day in court where he saw that bitch in the dock where she belonged, but he might not want that.
In the interim, I had millions of dollars at my disposal, and I was about to use my own clout to secure the case against my ex-employee.
“Lizzie, I’m going to need you to bring Goldman, Berg, and Weiss onto this.”
“Your personal lawyers? Why?”
“Because they’ll do a better job than Mandelson,” I said grimly. “He’s grown soft. I’m sorry it took this to realize it, Lizzie.”
She cleared her throat. “Well, I’m sorry she hurt Micah, Devlin. I never wanted—”
“I know.”
“You really care for him, don’t you?” she asked carefully, like she knew she was walking through a field of land mines.
Until Robert, we’d never discussed her personal life or mine. But ever since, the floodgates had been drawn, and I wasn’t altogether sure I appreciated the new status quo if it meant she could ask me questions like this.
I grunted, but on the brink of a non-committal answer, I found myself unable to give her that. Maybe because she’d stood by me, maybe because she wasn’t bitter toward me when she rightfully could be, or maybe it was for another reason. One that escaped me right now...
“I barely know him, Lizzie,” I rasped. “It started out all wrong, and I have no idea where it can even go, but—”
“But?” She cleared her throat when I stayed silent. “I didn’t realize you were—well, bi. Of all the things I know about you, somehow, it pisses me off that I didn’t know that.”
I snorted. “You mean, you’re okay with knowing my inseam, but not who helps me out of the pants after they’ve been made for me?”
“Something like that,” she said with a low laugh.
I released a breath, and though it felt as if I was about to jump off a diving board into an empty pool, Lizzie, for all her loyalty, deserved to know the truth. Or, at least, some semblance of it, and how I currently felt.
“He makes me think love exists.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh, Devlin.”
From our various discussions over the years on romance novels, of which Astley Publishing released several dozen a year, she knew I thought love was fiction.
“I’m so happy for you,” she whispered.
It sounded like she meant it. “You are?”
“Yes!” was her grouchy reply. “After all these years of watching you zoom your way through all those bimbettes who only wanted you for your wallet and for your name? Bet your ass I’m happy that you’ve found someone you care about. Does he feel the same way?”
I thought about our unorthodox beginnings, the roots of which were still fresh because we hadn’t known each other long enough for anything else to truly have a chance to blossom, and I thought about his patience, his kindness, and his humor in the face of the weird reactions I’d had to simply looking at him.
Star struck would only make sense if Micah was famous.
But that was how I felt. Just in reverse.
Struck by a star... not overawed by someone’s fame.
If I could think such thoughts, bad poetry was evidently in the blood—thank you, Mother. I cleared my throat and simply said, “I hope he does.”
Twenty-Five
Micah
He makes me think love exists.
I hadn’t meant to listen into his conversation. Had only meant to trudge in and take a seat with him as he worked.
I felt a little like a lost soul right now. Wandering from room to room, drifting about like I was a living ghost. I guessed that fit with the strange memories that kept flooding my mind.
Of her triumphant smile as she shoved her pussy against my face, coating me in her arousal.
Of her laughter as she found my cock hard—against my will.
Of her moans, her pleasure, her joy in doing what she had to me.
I didn’t think I remembered it, until from the recesses of my mind, the truth had struck, and with it, the ramifications.
I’d been raped.
Even as a gay man, even as woke as I thought I was, I just... I didn’t think it could be done, and certainly not this way. Not with a woman. But from what I’d overheard, this wasn’t the first time Rhode had done this, and the company was well aware of her past activity.
The fact that Rhode had done this before was quite clear to me.
I could remember the slick smile, the way she’d encouraged me to ‘drink up,’ and that strange excitement about her that had me feeling totally not happy with being the last one left on the Marketing floor.
It was all practiced.
She had it down pat.
Someone else had gone through this. Someone before me. Whose voice hadn’t been heard.
Would there be another someone else after me? Because my voice wouldn’t be heard?
The questions plagued me, especially when Devlin said, “I assume so,” in response to Lizzie’s query of, “Is Micah willing to go all the way?”
Just as I started to think he might persuade me out of it, he talked of bringing in a law firm that had represented previous presidents, that I’d only ever heard about because they were rumored to have a fixer, and I’d been curious when that fixer had been brought up on charges that had miraculously disappeared.
The conspiracy had flown around on reddit for weeks and, fascinated, I’d read more about Goldman, Berg, and Weiss. Knowing that Devlin was a client shouldn’t come as a surprise. Knowing that he was going to mobilize them for me? Consider me shook.
When he hung up the phone, his conversation with her blurred in my already shaken head. My brain felt like scrambled eggs looked, even days after the drugging, and I knew I was more emotional than usual because of that, but also because flashbacks were beginning to dog my steps.
My family had never been all that emotionally available. Stoic, was how I’d describe us. Stilted, maybe? Something that had only worsened when my father had started taking his religion a lot more seriously. My upbringing was probably why I’d been so accepting of Devlin from the start. I was used to robots.
But he wasn’t an automaton. And neither was I.
Slipping around the corner, I moved into his office. His attention darted from his computer screen to me. Immediately, he stood. Not to move me out of there, but like he wanted to hover around me. To fix me—make me feel better.
I wished it were as s
imple as that.
“Do you want something to eat?”
I almost smiled—he was suddenly obsessed with feeding me.
“I don’t. But thanks.”
He eyed me warily, then slowly took a seat again. “Are you okay?”
“What did Lizzie send you?” I queried, not wanting to bullshit as I headed for the sofa opposite his desk and slouched in it. “Something bad?”
“You heard the conversation?”
Our gazes clashed and held.
Slowly, I nodded. “Most of it. The sound wasn’t always great.”
Instantly, his mouth pinched into a taut pucker. “Christ.” He released a heavy, exhausted sigh and scrubbed a hand over his face.
“Who’s Robert?” Then, when he didn’t answer again, I peppered, “Why are you going on sabbatical? Are you going to let her take you to court?”
“Robert was Lizzie’s brother. Lizzie is my EA.”
I frowned. “I knew that already. Her brother? What does he have to do with this?”
“He worked for Rhode.”
While I knew what had happened, it didn’t mean I didn’t want to hear it from his lips. “Go on.”
His jaw worked as his gaze danced from me to the screen, to his desk, over to the window, to the fireplace and back again. His eyes pretty much pulled some disco moves as he looked anywhere but at me, and as pretty as this office was, with its clean masculine elegance, and sleek lines, it wasn’t that nice.
Eventually, he grated out, “I hate myself already, and even that isn’t enough.”
If he’d shown any anger at me, or had blamed me for raking up what was clearly a sore topic, I’d have walked out the door.
As it was, the hatred was self-aimed and he wasn’t going to shower anyone in the vicinity with acid as he spewed it.
“What didn’t you do?” That might be an unusual question, but it wasn’t what he’d done that was the issue here. It was what he hadn’t.
“Enough,” he said simply, as he pushed to his feet, then moved over to the window to stare down at the city.
“Enough, what?”
The Intern: An MM Office Romance Page 18