“What about the rest? What about the things you say?” I was happier with the word relationship, but this was so much more than just semantics.
“Like what do I say?”
I began pacing again. “Like when you tell me that you can’t work because you can’t stop thinking about me. Or when you go behind my back and tell Tom Burns to stick up for me at the job.”
“That was about keeping things running smoothly at the office. He could have caused a whole hell of a lot of trouble that we didn’t need.”
I stopped pacing and studied him. “I can’t tell if you’re only lying to me or if you’re also lying to yourself.”
“Oh, please. I’m not lying to anyone. I’ve been very truthful and forthright about what this is with you.” He took another swallow from the glass and set it down on the coffee table. Then he rested his hands on his hips and stared at me as though willing me to deny what he’d said.
Pulling my damp hair over to one shoulder, I tugged on it nervously. “You have. I won’t disagree.” He’d been forthright, if not always polite.
I just wasn’t convinced that he was facing the truth himself, which was most of the problem.
I dropped my hands to my sides. “But see, after you say that there’s nothing between us, you contradict it with actions that suggest exactly the opposite. You showed up uninvited at my apartment tonight when I didn’t answer a few texts! That’s not the behavior of someone who thinks this is just sex. It’s confusing and not fair, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do or believe anymore.”
We were face-to-face, both of us frustrated, and so far the conversation hadn’t gotten us anywhere at all.
With his eyes never leaving mine, Donovan sat on the arm of my sofa and seemed to let everything I’d said so far sit or settle or stir. The charge between us was a thick wall, and there was room to stand between his legs. I wanted to go there and lean against him. Wanted to smell him and touch him and fall into him like I had so many times before.
But I stayed where I was, my feet planted in the firm realization that it wouldn’t be enough anymore.
After what felt like forever, he asked the most important question of the night. “Sabrina, what is it you want?”
I closed my eyes briefly. It felt like déjà vu, but of course it wasn’t. He’d actually asked me that question before and then the answer had been so easy. I hadn’t known that the need and desire I had for him could take root inside me, could sprout into something bigger.
So I’d been honest when I’d told him then that I wanted him to touch me. And I was honest now. “I want what we already have.”
His shoulders relaxed visibly, and he reached out, grabbed my hand, and pulled me unexpectedly in between his legs. “Then I don’t understand what we’re arguing about.” He slipped a hand inside my robe and found my bare breast. Rubbing my nipple between his thumb and finger, he said, “Now is there anything else that you need to say?”
I gasped, arching with the pleasure. Another couple seconds of this and I was a goner. I had to fight to stay focused. “Yes. I want you to acknowledge that what we have is more than what you say it is.”
His hand dropped immediately, and he mumbled something incomprehensible under his breath.
He stared at me for several long seconds. “Acknowledge that it’s what exactly? We have a committed sexual relationship. Is that what you want to hear?”
“It’s a start.” Hope began to bud in my chest. He was listening, at least. He was talking. He was trying.
“And what else?”
I swallowed. “The ability to let it grow into more.”
“No,” he said adamantly. He pushed me away so he could stand and pace toward the fireplace and back. “Absolutely not. It can’t grow.”
I could feel the pain of his words between each of my ribs. How could he say that? It had already grown so much.
I tightened the belt of my robe around my waist and pretended that my eyes weren’t pricking. “I don’t believe that.”
He put a fist on his hip and stepped toward me. “You mean love? Is that what you’re asking for?” He said the word love like it was a disease or a piece of garbage to be held as far away as possible.
“If that’s where it goes,” I said meekly.
He scoffed. “This is not going there.”
I took a slow shuddering breath in, hoping he didn’t see how much his words hurt. Years of buried fears and insecurities came easily to the surface. A lifetime of not being enough.
If that’s what it was, he was going to have to tell me to my face.
“Why?” My throat sounded tight. “Just say it. Because I’m not good enough? Because I’m not the right girl? Because you could never love someone like me? Just say it. I need to hear it.”
His hand fell to his side, his posture softening. “Because I can’t love anyone, Sabrina.” His voice was softer, too. “I can’t fall in love.”
“You can’t?” I challenged with a trembling lip. “Or you won’t?”
“Both.” His intensity began to escalate again. “I can’t. I won’t. I don’t. I live my life so that it’s an impossibility. So that there is no chance that someone will get that close, and I’m not changing that for anyone. Not even for you.” He pointed an aggressive finger in my direction. “Especially not for you.”
It was another series of stings. This time, instead of just making me want to cry, it made me want to sting back. If he wasn’t going to blame this on me, I was going to blame it on her. “Because of Amanda?”
He shook his head, vehemently. “We’re not talking about Amanda.”
I’d honored his wishes regarding his dead fiancée for the most part and asked very little about her.
But those were his rules. Under his rules, I was automatically set up to lose. If I wanted a chance to win, I was going to have to challenge them.
Refusing to back down, I took a step in his direction. “You loved her, and you lost her so you won’t love anyone else now. Is that it?”
“I said we aren’t talking about Amanda.” He walked away, circling my sofa, seemingly going nowhere except to escape.
I followed right on his heels. “Are you just so afraid that if you love you might get hurt again? Is that what it is? It is, isn’t it?”
“Stop, Sabrina,” he warned. He wouldn’t turn around. Wouldn’t look at me.
I pressed on. “We lose people sometimes, Donovan. We can’t stop living when we do. Just because she died—”
He spun around suddenly to face me. “She’s dead because of me!”
His words echoed through my apartment, sounding ominous yet somehow hollow without context. How could he possibly say that Amanda was dead because of him?
I quickly went through what I knew about her death. She’d died in an accident the year before I’d met him. Another driver hadn’t checked his blind spot when he’d moved to her lane, forcing her into oncoming traffic.
That’s what Weston had told me. He hadn’t said Donovan had been involved at all. Which meant Donovan was just trying to scare me. And succeeding. But he hadn’t said anything I could truly grasp onto. “I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.”
“Amanda’s car accident happened because of me, Sabrina,” he said, struggling for his usual control and failing. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Were you driving with her? Were you on the road too?”
“No. It’s not like that.” He ran his hand along the back of his neck. “When I fall in love, I become so consumed, so preoccupied with the person I’m in love with that I do things I shouldn’t. I get involved. I intervene.”
“I don’t understand.” But I wanted to. The way he talked about being consumed—I wanted to be the one he talked about like that.
“I was so obsessed with her that I hired a private detective to follow her. I needed to know where she was—always. She found out, and we fought. She told me she’d call
off the wedding if I didn’t stop. But I couldn’t stop. For no other reason except that I was addicted to her. I was addicted to knowing everything about her.”
His eyes were wide and alight, like he was rabid. Like he was alive.
But wasn’t that what young love was? Feeling that passion? That preoccupation with another human?
“I told him to keep on her. Her death wasn’t an accident. She swerved into the opposite lane of traffic because she was trying to lose her tail.”
My hand flew up to my mouth. “Oh my god.”
“Exactly.”
“Does anyone else know about this?” I asked tentatively.
“The P.I. does.”
I nodded, taking it all in. Tugging on my hair, I made my way to the couch and sat down, trying to process. So the cops had called the incident an accident. The way Donovan spoke, he sounded like he believed he was culpable of murder.
And was he? What he described was…well, it wasn’t normal. It certainly wasn’t healthy. But who was I to be the therapist? I liked to play rape with the guy who’d saved me from being raped myself.
But hiring a P.I. wasn’t a crime. Whatever they’d fought over, whatever his jealousies had been or his insecurities were that had driven him to feel like he needed one—those belonged to a different Donovan. He’d been so young.
And even if there had been an investigator on the road that night tailing her, someone that Amanda had been trying to escape, wouldn’t it still be an accident? It wasn’t like the P.I. had tried to run her off the road. It wasn’t like he’d meant for this to happen.
Donovan was taking too much of this on himself.
And the more I thought about it, the more I understood how he felt—I really did. Death did that, skewed things, built nests of guilt out of twigs of misdeeds and neglect. When my father died, and I’d been across the country at Harvard, I’d blamed myself for not being around. If I had been there to help carry the burden of raising Audrey earlier, maybe he wouldn’t have felt so much pressure. Maybe he wouldn’t have had the heart attack that had killed him.
I did blame myself. A lot of the time, at first. It didn’t mean I’d actually killed him. And even though Donovan had been overzealous in his passion, he hadn’t actually killed Amanda.
Maybe no one had ever told him that before.
I looked up to find Donovan watching me with hawk eyes, probably trying to read my mind. “I know you feel responsible, but this wasn’t—”
He cut me off. “This wasn’t my fault? I paid that driver to be there. I told him not to lose her. I told him to be aggressive.”
My heart pinched. All these years he’d been holding this inside. Been carrying this weight himself.
I shifted so I was facing him with my entire body. “Donovan…” I said gently, tenderly, wishing I could take his pain away.
“And it won’t happen again,” he stated emphatically. “Do you see now? How I can’t let it happen? How I won’t be that person again?”
I couldn’t stand it anymore. I jumped up and ran to him. “You can’t do this to yourself.” I threw myself against him, running my hand over his chest. “You can’t keep holding yourself hostage over something that happened over ten years ago. It was an accident.”
He refused to hold me in return. Refused to even touch me. “It wasn’t an accident. It was my fault. She’s dead because I loved her.”
I reached up to cup his cheek. “You can’t spend the rest of your life punishing yourself for something that you didn’t intend to happen. You can’t spend the rest of your life alone.”
He stepped back, pushing me off of him. “I’m not punishing myself for anything.” His expression was hard, his tone harder. “I’m making sure that no one else gets hurt. I’m keeping yo—” He cut himself off. “I’m keeping others safe. Like I should have kept her safe.”
We stared at each other, unmoving. We were at a strange stalemate. In simple terms, I wanted something that he refused to give. If it were really that simple, I could walk away. I could recognize the futility of fighting for him and walk the hell away.
But it wasn’t that easy. It was thread upon thread of complicated, so many strands between us that wove us together. Even when he’d first taken my virginity, back when I’d been naïve and innocent, I knew that his broken fit my broken.
I ached for him now. I agonized for every day he’d let himself believe he deserved to be alone. I anguished thinking that he might walk out of my apartment without me changing his mind.
I couldn’t let that happen. I refused to let him leave without a fight.
But he’d already pushed me away, already withdrawn. There was only one way I knew to reach him.
“Donovan,” I said, untying my robe and letting it fall to the floor. “Touch me.” I approached him and wrapped one hand around his neck and rubbed the other over his cock, which instantly came alive under my palm. “Touch me,” I whispered again, as I pulled his mouth down to cover mine.
He hesitated only a few seconds before he tangled his fingers in my hair and yanked it until I moaned against his lips. Then he devoured my cries with his tongue, licking them up, savoring them.
Soon he began biting down my jaw and neck.
I pressed my mouth against his ear and told him what he needed to hear. “I know you’ve been carrying this weight around for so many years, and it’s hard to put it down because you don’t know how not to carry it anymore, but you have to put it down now. Put it down and let me make it better.” Let me love you.
His kisses slowed as I spoke, and by the time I’d finished, he’d completely stilled.
Then, suddenly, he yanked my head back again, hard. Harder than he had ever before. With his other hand at my throat, his eyes pierced into me. “Who could forgive a man for something like that? Who would want a man like that?”
“I would!” I cried, meaning it with everything I had in me. “I do! I forgive you!”
He searched my face, and for half a moment I thought I had him. Thought that he got it. Thought that we had a chance.
But suddenly the green flecks disappeared from his eyes and they turned dark.
“Well, I can’t,” he said roughly. “I’m not risking anyone, Sabrina. This is the life I’ve chosen, and I’m not changing it for you.”
Without another word, he pushed me away and walked out the door, leaving me naked and broken and alone.
Thirty-One
Monday morning I woke up with puffy eyes and a pounding headache.
Coffee and a long shower helped with both, but even though I knew makeup would fix the rest, I called the office and said I’d be in a couple of hours late so I could miss the operations meeting scheduled for that morning. I knew I’d have to deal with seeing Donovan eventually, but it didn’t have to be first thing on a Monday.
Though we hadn’t said it outright, I’d gone to bed knowing that the way our conversation had ended probably meant the end of our short-lived relationship. Even if Donovan intended to continue our sex-only situation, there was no way I could. I’d already fallen so hard. It already hurt so much to let him go. I couldn’t risk getting any more entangled if he wouldn’t give me anything in return.
In the morning light, however, I found clarity. While he’d been resolute in his conviction to not let anyone in, it was possible that Donovan could change his mind. I was pretty sure we’d already grown into something more than he’d intended, and now that he’d heard me—now that someone had finally told him that he didn’t need to keep punishing himself for Amanda’s death—maybe he could start to get over it. Things change. People change. I was mature enough to know that. After all, I’d been determined not to let him in my panties when I’d first started at Reach, and look how long that lasted.
Just.
I couldn’t wait for him to come around. I could hope, but I needed to be ready to move on.
Today was not that day.
When I did finally make it into work, I spent the day locked i
n my own office putting together summary reports for SummiTech. What better way to nurse a broken heart than to throw myself into work? Plus it was a surefire way to not bump into Donovan in the hall.
Late in the afternoon, though, I had to venture out to get Weston’s approval on a project and it required a physical signature.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, seemingly distracted as he flipped through the pages of the proposal, and two different people walked into his office to set things on his desk before he’d finished perusing it.
“It looks good,” he said finally, signing his name on the designated pages. “Can you email a copy of the projected expenses to Audra?”
“I already sent it to Barrett.” Barrett held a similar position as me, only he oversaw Operations and Finances. He reported to Donovan. “Is this a procedural change?”
“Just for the time being. We’re still trying to figure out how to reshuffle duties. I’m taking most of the load, as you can see.” Another employee walked in with a stack of mail and set it on Weston’s desk and then hurried back out. “But I’ll be out for the wedding and the honeymoon soon so I can’t take all of Donovan’s tasks.”
I was about to tease him for the millionth time about taking a real honeymoon for a fake wedding, but then I registered the rest of what he’d said.
My throat suddenly felt tight. “What do you mean? Why are you taking Donovan’s tasks?”
He wrinkled his forehead. “Oh, that’s right. You missed the meeting this morning. I announced everything then. Donovan left for France today.”
I could feel the color drain from my face even though my heart was all of a sudden working overtime. “What? Why?”
“To take care of the merger with Dyson Media. With the wedding approaching, he decided he should be there to make sure everything happened smoothly. I mean, he just decided last night that he has to be the one to go, and that it has to be now. He must have sensed a change in the economic winds or something.”
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