But even if that wasn’t what he meant, he’d put the thought in my mind that he was talking about Donovan. And then I wondered if that was really why I’d forced myself to come in. Because I wanted to see him. Or be near him. Or just feel his presence. And every time someone came to my door, every time there was motion outside the glass, I sat up, hopeful.
But Donovan never came down the hall. He never called or passed by, and eventually I darkened the glass so I could focus on my tasks instead of wondering whether or not my ex-boyfriend meant it when he said it was over.
By the end of the day, I’d given up on him altogether.
It was quiet, and employees left me alone until Roxie came in and said goodbye at five. She made me promise not to stay too late, and I vowed that I would finish what I was working on and then close down for the night. She’d been my only interruption all afternoon, so when there was another knock right after on the doorframe, I expected she’d forgotten something.
But when I looked up, it was him.
I wasn't prepared.
I was never prepared, and seeing him at my door—at Weston's door—asking for entrance, something so out of character, was like seeing him for the first time after a decade all over again. It felt like he was trying to prove we couldn't possibly have a personal relationship, one that would allow him to make assumptions or just walk in. Jesus, he couldn’t even allow himself to be my boss. Couldn’t exert authority over me. He had to knock like we had nothing between us.
Yet we had something.
The mere sight of him sparked a chain reaction of the things he did to the inside of me—the stomach drop, the heart race, the butterflies. Ah, the butterflies. Those reactions were strong and sudden and dramatic—the kind of intense reactions expected after being apart from someone you love for several years, and not several hours.
Did I not spark anything similar in him?
"Can I come in?" he asked, and if he were a vampire I still would've said yes knowingly.
But I couldn't look directly at him as he walked past me to stare out the windows. Not until he was behind me, facing away, could I look. He had his hands in his pockets and his stance was wide. He wore my favorite three-piece bespoke gray suit. It fit him like he’d been sewn into it. The fantasies I'd had with him wearing that suit. With him taking off that suit…
Would I ever stop being turned on by this man?
Would it ever stop hurting to be near him?
"I meant it when I said you look good in this office," he said his back still to me. "I can go back to Tokyo and you could have mine. Operations isn’t your thing, I know. Weston isn't attached to marketing, though. You could shuffle duties between you."
My heart had already been broken. Now he was just stomping on the pieces.
I wouldn't cry. I refused. "Is that what you're planning to do?" Somehow I managed to sound ambivalent.
He turned to look directly at me. "No. I'm not."
And now I didn't know what to feel. Was he playing games? And if he was, why on earth was I surprised? He'd always been good at that, slinging me back and forth and back and forth.
I opened my mouth to scream or yell or tell him to stop once and for all, goddammit. Tell him to go to fucking Tokyo at this point. I’d hurt less without him here to yank me around.
But he cut me off before I even started, his own anger more impossible to contain than mine. "Do you know why I waited to come out and help you that first night?"
“At The Keep?”
“Yes. Then.”
He'd taken his time before rescuing me from Theo. Long enough to notice what was happening and then fully lace up his boots. I'd always figured he couldn't decide if he really wanted to get involved. Theo, nasty as he was, still had a better pedigree than I did. He was the “right” kind of person, and Donovan had no loyalty to me. I had always understood Donovan’s hesitation.
Now he was suggesting there was more reason than that?
I shook my head.
"Because you were the one who was supposed to save me.” He let that settle on me like a heavy chain around my neck. “Don’t you get it? I was never good enough for you. All the days I spent in that classroom with you, you never saw me, and I just knew that if you did, you’d be able to fix everything that was wrong inside me. But you never looked up.
“And then there you were outside my door. Then outside my window. And it was you who needed someone. You who needed help, and I knew that once I played that role for you, there would be no turning back. You would never see me any other way, so I waited before coming down there. Waited for someone else to help you. Waited until it was almost too late.”
He paused, making sure I understood exactly how he’d struggled.
And I did. Somehow, I did.
“You saw me then,” he went on. “But it wasn’t how I’d wanted to be seen. I wasn’t a hero. I didn’t want to be your demon, but that was more accurate. The way you looked at me after that night—like you didn’t know if you wanted me to fuck you or forget you—I didn’t know what to do with that. What could I do with that?”
His voice was harsh and raw and his words impassioned, and I had no answer for him. Nothing to give him for this burden he’d been carrying for so long, nothing to offer in exchange for this weight that he was finally laying in front of me except to listen.
He crossed in front of the desk, his hands still safely in his pockets. “So I tried to be your hero, Sabrina. I tried to give you everything you needed. Tried to take care of you. I wanted to keep you from everyone I thought would do you harm, and that included me. Because I knew I could hurt you. I wanted to, even. You can't imagine the contradiction of wanting to hurt you and wanting to save you at the same time. Rescuing you from the frying pan meant throwing you into the fire. From Theo to me. But I was never supposed to save you, Sabrina. It's your name that means ‘savior.’ You were supposed to save me."
He suddenly became clear, like the signal from a radio station when the interference was removed. I could see him, and he was in focus and I understood him and I understood everything that had happened between us. He'd been so alone and desperate after Amanda's death, and he'd found me. And all I'd seen was the sun. All I’d seen was Weston, while Donovan had waited for me to find him in the dark. Waited for me to save him.
And, man, did I know what that was like, because when I finally saw Donovan, I thought he was the one who could save me.
And then he did.
And wasn't that what people did for each other?
I had a feeling Donovan's intent with his confession was to make me see how impossible everything was between us. But it did just the opposite.
"I guess I thought we could save each other," I told him.
His eyes widened, like he hadn't been expecting that. Like I'd caught him off-guard, which was hard to do with him.
He chuckled even—he was so surprised. "You always were smarter than me."
I would have made a big deal about his compliment because he rarely gave me credit for my brains, but I didn’t give a flying fuck about what he thought about my IQ at the moment.
I did care about what it meant that he’d said it, and I sat up, wary. Hopeful.
"I don't want to love you from afar, Sabrina." He stood in front of me, naked, vulnerable, and I was already lost to him. "I've done that already, and it's not enough anymore. And I've fucked up. But no one else can love you like I can up close. No one."