I didn’t have the patience or energy to let him wallow, so I asked, “Did you do everything you thought you could at the time?”
He sighed. “I felt like I did, but I spent most of that time being frustrated. I wasn’t getting anywhere, and I’m not used to that.”
“I can imagine.” He was an Astley. No one dared say ‘no’ to him.
But it seemed there were other ways of saying that without uttering the word.
“I should have done more.”
“Yes, you should, but what’s done is done.”
“Do you hate me?”
“Right now, I don’t have the energy to hate Rhode, never mind you.” I blew out a breath. “Do you think my case will be thrown out of court?”
“What makes you say that? We have blood evidence, the samples taken that night, and video footage, Micah. There’s no way she can worm her way out of this.”
“I heard you mention leverage on the phone to Lizzie, but that part of the conversation wasn’t really clear. What has she done?”
His mouth tightened, and at that moment, even though he wore a simple wine-colored sweater, a black tee peeping out at the neckline, black slacks and no shoes, he was every inch the CEO.
“She’s painting me in a bad light.”
For the first time, emotion stirred to life inside me. “How?”
“When I dragged her off you, I flung her against the cubicle. She hurt herself, got bruised. But she’s put about ten tons of fucking make-up on her face and is claiming I beat the shit out of her. Obviously, it’s fucking bollocks, but I have to follow up with it.”
“Yes, of course,” I confirmed, my mind whirring at the implications of what she’d done. “Why would she think to leverage this over you? She didn’t know about us having any kind of personal connection. Aside from the fact you complained about my workload to her.”
“No, but she knows I have a bottomless bank account. Paying you off would be child’s play.” He sneered at the screen. “She isn’t to know that the Astleys have outrun all scandal and gossip.
“There isn’t a damn thing she can do to hurt me, but I don’t want her hurting you.” He plucked at his bottom lip, absentmindedly playing with it as he casually broke my heart and built it back up again with his words. “I’ve asked for my personal lawyers to get involved. They’ll put pressure on the cops.
“Once she’s indicted, we’ll head to the UK. I need to spend some time there anyway. Father’s not doing well, and I was only saying to you the other week that the amount of humanity in New York was starting to get annoying—”
“We’ll head to the UK?” I sputtered, taken aback at yet more casual talk of his affection for me, of where he saw us heading—in this instance, literally.
The craziest thing of all?
Nothing had me pulling back. Running away.
Not one ounce of me wanted to be anything other than here. I might be miserable. I might be lost and hurting, but he was here.
And I knew, if I let him, he always would be.
Funny how this situation had let things boil down to black and white.
I’d thought he’d be ashamed of me, I thought I might become his dirty little secret, what with his father’s insistence that he did his duty. Instead, Devlin was taking it for granted that I’d go with him to England, where, presumably, during that trip, I’d meet his family.
This was beyond confusing. Delightfully so, but still confusing.
Was this why I liked him?
Because he fit no standard pattern?
He was impossible to predict, and who the hell liked predictability? With his smooth charm that I’d yet to experience firsthand, a cut-glass accent that sent shivers down my spine, that British stiff upper lip that made him surprisingly witty, the disconcerting tendency to feed me foods we’d talked about out of context, and an uncanny ability to look at me once, just once, and I’d get a boner...at least, before.
No, definitely not predictable.
This wasn’t insta-love, though.
For either of us.
He might go goo-goo when he looked at me, and he might be okay with me sleeping in his bed when I knew his exes had all been tossed out when he was done with them, so I knew I meant something to him, but exactly what was difficult to figure out. Especially when I didn’t understand my own feelings.
I’d never felt this strange twist of excitement, anticipation, and acceptance before.
I’d never looked at someone and felt like the world could be going to hell outside these walls, but inside them, my comfort levels weren’t affected.
I thought back to the rape kit, when he’d stayed in that clinic with me, refusing to leave but agreeing to stay out of the way, stoic to the last, watching as I was violated again in the name of criminal justice just so that I could keep my eyes on him. And, without either of us uttering a word, he’d known that was the only way I could get through the dazed, befuddled moments where I was still drugged but trying to protect my future self.
Where looking at him was my only means of coping, where thinking of anything else than what was happening was how I survived. To remember the dark room, where my consent hadn’t been something to be stolen from me, to contemplate a gourmet carbonara eaten in a kitchen I knew he rarely used where we’d argued about the Nasdaq.
Then, I thought about these past few days. How he’d let me come to terms with what had happened without forcing anything on me—be it his opinion, his wisdom, or his presence.
He’d let me be me. Let me find my new balance, which was, to be frank, something I was still hunting down. But no one had ever done that. Had ever let me be me. Had ever not forced their opinion on me, had ever not let me decide how to move on in my own way.
Had let me be Micah.
He didn’t offer trite words of comfort—he was too stiff for that—but he was there when I needed him, which was more than anyone else had done for me.
So, while I couldn’t classify what I felt as love, I knew if there was some such thing as pre-love, I had that.
It went deeper than lust.
I just didn’t know what else to call it, and maybe something like this didn’t need words because it couldn’t be labeled.
Maybe, something like this was why, on social media, you could classify your relationship as ‘it’s complicated.’
In response to my spluttered question of, “We’re going to the UK?” Devlin merely pulled a face. “You won’t sound so excited when you meet my father.” He hummed. “Lizzie can look after your fish.”
Unable to believe he’d remembered my fish, I blinked at him, well aware that while my emotions had just gone through the wringer, he’d been thinking of the trip ahead. A trip where, in his mind, it was a done deal I’d be joining him.
And while that sounded as if he was making a decision for me, I knew it wasn’t like that.
For him, it was akin to holding out your hand when you met someone to shake theirs in greeting. Like putting one foot in front of the other to walk.
To Devlin, it was instinctual that I be there with him when he traveled overseas. Only that made any sense to him, something I instinctively picked up on because if he was questioning things, I knew he’d get stilted again. He’d turn awkward, and would start talking about stocks and shares—his go-to, conversational ‘get out of jail free’ card.