I had to grit my teeth. Fuck him. Fuck him for knowing what I’d tried to do. Fuck him for saying something so shitty. Fuck him for the compliment he’d buried underneath.
Double fuck him for what his compliment implied. He couldn’t make me feel guilty for hiding. I wasn’t his to find.
With a gleam in his eye that said he knew he’d hit his mark, he said, “Anyway. What is it you wanted to talk about?”
I dabbed at my mouth with my napkin. “Well. A of all, I’d like to make it known that misogynistic and sexually inappropriate comments like that one are not appreciated.”
He paused with his forkful of madai in midair. “Even when it’s just the two of us?”
“Especially when it’s just the two of us. Which I’m sure means nothing to you. You’ll do as you like and there will be no repercussion because you own the business and that’s the world we live in.”
“How terribly dour of you.” He brought his food to his mouth, the translucent fish sliding between his lips.
His perfect, amazing, kissable lips…
No, not perfect. Not amazing. Definitely not kissable. “I’m a realist,” I said, staying on task. “In my experience, reality is dour.”
“I’m not going to argue with you there.” He lifted his wineglass as though to toast the sentiment.
One item down. One left to go. The major one.
“B of all.” I focused on my turbot, unable to meet his eyes. “You and I have a past that needs to be addressed.”
God, I was chickenshit. We’ve had sex. I couldn’t even say that. How ridiculous was that? It was just sex.
Except it hadn’t just been sex. I’d just had sex with Weston and there was no need for a dinner to discuss how things were different now.
But there weren’t words for what had happened between Donovan and me, so I had to rely on the vocabulary that I had.
And now that I’d mentioned it, acknowledged it, the weight of the air between us felt twice as heavy.
I looked up from my plate and found his eyes trained on me.
“A past,” he repeated now that he had my gaze. “Yes. I was essentially your teacher.”
In more ways than one.
He knew that too, knew that I’d been a virgin. His statement was filled with the innuendo.
I took a hurried sip of my wine, hoping that I could use that as the excuse for the blush in my cheeks.
With the wine in my hand, I felt bolder. The door was only open a crack, but I meant to go all the way inside. There were things I never understood about what he’d said and done to me, and I wanted answers.
“You gave me a bad grade,” I said, giving him a place to start.
“And then we fixed it.” His grin was as wicked as it was distracting.
I scowled. “You were cruel to me.”
“Was I?” That twinkle in his eye was another distraction.
“Why?”
“Probably the same reason I’m cruel to you now.”
His answer made my insides feel sloshy, but I wasn’t backing down. “Which is?”
“If you haven’t figured it out then hell if I can explain it to you.”
I held his stare as I sat back, my arms resting on the sides of the chair. “Was it because of Amanda?”
I was going out on a limb with this one. Everything I’d heard about Amanda had come from Weston when I’d still been at Harvard. She’d been engaged to Donovan and had died in a car accident before I’d arrived at the school. Rumor was that Donovan had taken it pretty hard.
Was that the reason he’d been a dick to me? Because he’d still been mourning his first love? I liked that reason. It was easier than believing some of the alternatives.
“I don’t talk about her,” Donovan said, in a way that made it clear the subject was closed.
Admittedly, it was probably shitty to bring her up. But so much of what Donovan had done to me had been shitty. Wasn’t it fair game?
“Then I’ll assume it is because of her,” I said. Things would be resolved tonight whether or not he participated in achieving that resolution.
“You know what they say when you assume.” He’d lost the playfulness he had earlier, and something about that made me feel like I’d won, but the victory was hollow.
“You’re already an ass, so what are you worried about?” I didn’t let him answer. “You must have really loved her.”
“You didn’t ask me to dinner to make assumptions about my dead fiancée.”
He was right. I didn’t.
I looked out the window, unsure of what I really wanted from him. To say he’d loved the woman he’d been engaged to? Of course he had. Hearing him say that he had wasn’t going to shed light on anything else.
Besides, this wasn’t really about what I needed to hear from Donovan. It was what he needed to hear from me.
I turned back to him. “There was more about what happened between us back then, and I think there might be an impression of me that has lingered that is not accurate.”
“Oh, really?” He cocked his head. “I’m intrigued.”
“It didn’t help that I stayed on the phone with you the other night. I should have hung up, but I’d been drinking.”
He rolled his eyes dramatically. “You should have hung up on a friend?”
“One who was making sexual comments, trying to get a rise out of me? Yes.” I pointed a finger at him. “And don’t say that sexual harassment used to be our thing, because that’s what I’m talking about. That impression of me, that that’s what I want—it’s wrong.”
“That’s not what you want?” The way he looked at me—looked into me with those brown-green eyes and that intense gaze—it was hard not to second-guess myself.
But I barreled on, committed to what I knew was true about myself. “It’s not. Back then, when I was at Harvard, I developed somewhat of a fixation with you after you rescued me from being raped by Theodore Sheridan.”
He dropped his fork on his plate with a clang that made me jump. “A fixation. That’s what you’re calling it.”
He sounded pissed, and even though I couldn’t figure out why he’d be angry about my issues, it made me even more defensive. “It sounds silly, but it happens. It’s even got a name—it’s a form of transference. It basically happens when a person falls for someone in an effort to erase or change a past trauma.”
“Did you see a therapist to figure out this bullshit?”
“No.” I shifted in my chair, uneasy with the conversation. “I’ve read books and done a lot of online research. Anyway, it was a phase, and it’s over. I was complicit in the inappropriate activity that occurred between us, but I’m not that girl anymore.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Sabrina,” he said sharply.
His condescension stung, but more, he’d missed the point. “I’m telling you.”
Leaning forward, he practically growled. “Why?”
“Why am I telling you?”
“Yes. Why?”
“So that you’ll know.”
“You mean so that I’ll stop. So that I’ll stop saying things and doing things, things that maybe make you feel uncomfortable, but also make you feel alive for probably the first time in years. But you know what the problem with that is? The problem is that the thing you really want to stop isn’t me, it’s how you react. And that’s not going to go away with research or alcohol or stern conversations. And no matter how many times you tell this story to me, or yourself, it’s still never going to change that it’s exactly that—a story.”