Instead, he was plotting. His narrowed eyes, the clenched jaw, the way he was staring at the computer, the tension throbbing through him all spoke to one thing: Rhode was going down.
The craziest thing of all?
I agreed with him.
With everything.
Rhode was going down.
But more importantly, where he went, I was going.
Fuck school. Fuck my MBA. Fuck the law. Fuck rape kits. Fuck an uncertain future.
I’d let Devlin worry about tomorrow for me—I needed to embrace today and he gave me the freedom to do that.
Twenty-Six
Devlin
It had been too much to hope that our discussion, our plans would make him feel better. But watching his slow decline was torturous.
Together, we dealt with the ramifications of what happened to him. I was there when he spoke with the police, when he went through what had happened. I was there with the doctor who gave him the test results back—he was clean, thank God—and I was there with the lawyers as I started a ball rolling that should have been set in stone long ago.
I was screwing Astley Publishing, but I was okay with that.
We’d made this happen, and it was up to us to fix that. Only trouble was, my board of execs had, in the eyes of the shareholders, fulfilled their duties to the max. That meant making any changes to the running of the company was nigh on close to impossible.
I tried to prove to him that I was there for him, every step of the way, but he was struggling. And it killed me to see him that way.
From my desk, I watched him pace the length of the hallway. It was like he was a caged lion or something, but this lion held the key to his cage. He wouldn’t leave the apartment, not even to go to the gym in the complex, and I was tempted to buy a treadmill so that he could use it in here because I felt how stir crazy he was going like I was experiencing it myself.
Well, I guessed I was experiencing it by myself, because I wasn’t about to leave unless he did, and that had yet to happen. I’d made sure that everyone came here, to him. I wasn’t about to force another trauma on him.
For whatever reason, he was comfortable here. He hadn’t asked to go back to his apartment once, and from Gian’s descriptions, I couldn’t bloody blame him for being happier in my penthouse.
In that tiny shoebox, it wasn’t stir crazy he’d have been feeling, just outright lunacy.
“Micah?” I called out, unable to bear watching him pace much more.
He didn’t hear me, though, which made me wonder if he had earphones in, but to be on the safe side, I called out again.
When I still didn’t receive a reply, I frowned and got to my feet. Not even the spinning of the wheels on my desk chair roused him, so when I moved into the hallway and veered into his path, I wasn’t surprised when he nearly walked into me.
As my hands came up to steady him, his eyes caught mine at long last, but the bewilderment in his, the outright terror, and the sheer devastation within those beautiful moss green orbs that had entranced me from the start was more than I could bear.
Unable to stop myself, unsure if he wanted this from me, I pressed a kiss to his forehead, letting my arms move around him, letting them hang loosely so he knew I wasn’t forcing him to stand here and take my embrace.
For a second, he was still, then he pushed into me slightly, before lowering his head to my shoulder.
I took the weight of it, took the weight of him, just like I wished I could bear the burden of what he was going through.
God, if I could turn back time—
Of course, the thought was futile. Not only because I couldn’t control the hands of a clock, but also because nothing would have changed.
The threat of being sued, of a court case dragging the company’s reputation through the mud, the costs of fighting a woman of Rhode’s stature with precious little evidence? No way in hell would the board have ever gone for her being fired off the cuff.
Regret filled me, but it was proof enough that the company had to change at a molecular level.
I was proud of Astley’s ‘progressive’ label by the media, so proud that I cultivated it. Yet, here I was, holding a victim in my arms. I didn’t see him that way, he’d never be simply a victim to me, but to the company? He was more than that.
He was dangerous.
And I wouldn’t allow him to take Robert’s path. Would always be here to bring him back from the brink, and not just because he could bring the company to its knees in a way that Rhode could only do through longevity.
When he burrowed his face in my throat, I felt the wet prickle of his eyelashes, and held him tighter. “I-I can’t... I don’t know what to...” He sighed, impatient with himself and his inability to express what he was feeling. I felt that frustration like it was my own, and I’d have given my left nut to take it from him, to ease his pain. “I don’t know how to be.”
“Just be you,” I told him softly, happening to see my housekeeper in the corner of my eye as she drifted from the bedroom door into the hall.
Her startled gaze made me wonder if I was that terrifying, but I didn’t care. I just didn’t want Micah to think someone was witnessing this. He was fragile right now, in need of protection.
Even from my housekeeper.
She might have been with me for years, but everyone had a price. I refused for Micah to be fodder to hungry journalists who were desperate to break a story on the developing situation between me and Rhode.
However, her leaving the bedroom with cleaning products in her hand gave me an idea.
“I don’t know how to be me,” he whispered miserably. “And I know that makes no sense. It was one thing... one thing. How can I feel so fundamentally changed?”
The question broke me like nothing else could.
He was questioning this? Questioning why he couldn’t get over being raped? Not only that, but being drugged?
The horror of what he’d been through, and in his inability to accept that it was life-changing, made me want to shake him. Which was stupid. The last thing he needed was me trying to make him see sense, so I used words. Words when they’d never been my forte—selling, sure. I could sell shit to a horse farm. But this wasn’t a sales pitch. This was Micah’s life.
“This thing that you think isn’t fundamentally life changing? Well, if I’d had a knife in my hand when I found her raping you, Micah, I’d have stabbed her. I’d have fucking killed her. So, what you think isn’t all that important enough to feel down about, to be unable to come to terms with, was enough to make me want to commit murder.”
He tensed. “You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t I?” I said grimly. “I threw her off you, and though I didn’t hurt her, if I’d been armed, I swear to you now, I would. I almost regret that I didn’t, because she deserves to be suffering like you are.”
“If you’d done that, then you’d be in a jail cell too.”
And that would bother him?
His arms tightened around my waist. “I don’t want you to be anywhere other than here.”
“I’ve never desired to be elsewhere,” I told him gruffly. Feeling awkward, I patted his back before I whispered, “Can I draw you a bath? Let’s get you to relax, hmm? I have the new first draft from Trevelyan. You could read that while you chill out if you want.”