He hadn't been part of this.
It had all been Donovan.
And I’d been such a fool.
I needed some space to breathe. Needed to be away from the two pairs of eyes staring me down, watching my every reaction. I wanted off their chessboard. I brushed past Donovan, running from the room, no destination in mind except to get away.
He was right behind me, on my heels, as he always was.
"Don't listen to my father. Let's talk about this. Let me explain. It was better if you weren't there, Sabrina."
We were in the middle of the house when I whirled around to face him. "Better for who? For you?"
"For you. Always for you." His voice was thick with agony.
But his misery couldn't dare to compare with mine. His was a lie. A boldfaced lie.
"Better for me because I wouldn't ever have to face your family? Because you’d never have to bring home a scholarship girl to meet your folks? Because you thought I'd be ashamed to stand in the presence of the almighty Raymond Kincaid?" I'd believed him when he’d said he wanted me away from him because he was afraid he would love me too much.
Stupid, stupid me.
He wasn't afraid of loving me too much. He was afraid his parents would hate me too much.
"No, it's not true. What he said is not true. He's guessing. He thinks I give a shit about their opinion, and I don't. I never cared about that."
I rocked back and forth on the balls of my feet. I wanted to believe him. It could be so easy to let him take care of this—of me—like always.
Down the hall, Raymond stepped out of his study to watch us, and I knew I had to ignore “easy.” He was a visual reminder that he'd had Donovan first. I couldn't dispute that he was at Donovan's roots any more than I could dispute that my parents, and Audrey, were at mine.
I shook my head. "I'm finding it hard to believe you right now."
Before he could argue again, I turned away and ran upstairs to the room we'd been sharing and slammed the doors behind me.
He followed. I knew he would.
"What about trust?" he said, bursting through the doors. "You said we should trust each other."
I bent to pull the cord of my charger from the wall by the bed, then dropped it into my purse along with my cell phone. "Well, that was stupid. I was stupid to believe that someone like you could ever learn anything about trust."
"Don't say that. I've shown you parts of me that no one else has ever seen." He stood at the foot of the bed, his fist anchored on his hip as if that was the only way to keep it from reaching out to me.
"You mean I saw you vulnerable?" I spat. "So fucking sad. I'm sure it doesn't even compare to the parts that you saw of me."
"I was only ever trying to protect you."
"Bullshit. I am tired of the fucking bullshit. Just tell me the goddamn truth!"
"This is the truth," he yelled.
I tilted my chin up defiantly. "Okay. If it's all true, why didn't you tell me that day in the office? Why didn't you tell me when I asked you if there was ‘anything else?’ Why didn't you confess this when we decided no more secrets? What about that?"
His lids shut halfway, as though the things I said were too heavy and hard to bear. When he opened them again fully, they were glossy and deep green.
"Because I knew this would hurt you,” he said softly. “And I was done hurting you. I didn't want to hurt you anymore."
"You didn't want to hurt me. Of course.” My tone was thick with sarcasm. "Let me guess—you ‘didn't want to hurt me’ is the reason you snapped away my scholarship too. Just like the reason you didn't want a relationship with me. You didn't want to hurt me. It's the reason you always run. The reason you always fucking end up hurting me."
"It's not that simple." His body was tense with how complicated it was.
"It never is," I laughed sardonically, spotting a stray earring I’d left on the nightstand. I grabbed it and stuck it in my purse.
Donovan took two steps towards me but didn’t go farther when I put my hand up in protest.
"If you had been with me, I would have destroyed you,” he said emphatically. More emphatically than he would have if he were closer. "Look how close I came to destroying you while you were at school. Look what I did to you with my jealousy over Weston. With your grades. I couldn't have you at Harvard. You were better off away from me."
And there it was, spelled out. Finally. His reasoning. His confession. His truth. No better than the excuses Raymond gave.
"Do you have any idea how nearly you destroyed me by taking that away from me?" My voice was as unsteady as my hands. School had been the only thing I thought I had left to live for after my father's death, besides Audrey. "Harvard was supposed to have been our way out. It was going to be the future for my sister and me. And you took it away because you couldn't handle yourself around me?"
His shoulders sagged with the weight of this truth. "I took care of you. I tried to make it up."
I blinked back tears, but it was useless. They were coming anyway. Angry and hot. "Did you ever even really love me? Or was the decade that followed just a way to assuage your guilt?"
"How can you even ask that?" Deep in his throat, his voice broke. "I love you, Sabrina. All this time, I have loved you."
I bit my lip and tugged my purse up on my shoulder, hugging my arms around myself. "I don't think you know what love is."
With tears streaming down my face, I strolled past him out the doors. His mother had come out of her room at the other end of the hall, but she didn't try to talk to me. Just watched. A family of watchers and stalkers—none of them knew how to connect with people. None of them knew how to love.
I’d feel sad for them all if I wasn’t so busy feeling sad for myself.
I trotted back down the stairs. My luggage was already by the door, waiting for our trip back home. I waited in the foyer for Donovan to arrive, because of course he would.
And he did.
"You're wrong," he said, as he walked toward me. "I might not love you in the pretty traditional way that you're looking for, like some hero, like Weston might. But I do love you. Everything I did—everything I do—is because I love you."
I ached for him.
Every limb, every joint, every cell ached with the pain of his words. Because I loved the way he loved me. I preferred the way he loved me a million times to the way a man like Weston could—or any other man could even dare to try.
But I couldn't heal his hurt.
Because I hurt too much right then too. I hurt with my own pain, pain that he had inflicted with his lies and deceit and betrayal. Maybe he wasn't lying about why he sent me away, why he took away my scholarship. But at the very least he had lied by keeping the secret since we decided to be together.
He should have told me.
I couldn't say whether I would've forgiven him or not.
But he should have fucking told me.
"I’m going to call a cab," I said, not looking at him directly. "I can't be in a car with you."
"Don't be ridiculous."
I spoke right on top of him. "I'm not being ridiculous. I don’t want to be in a car with you for two hours. I can't stand to look at you. I can't stand to hear you breathe. I can’t be near you."