"Are you looking for honesty? Or do you want me to tell you what you want to hear?" It was remarkable how Donovan could be so obviously irritated and incredulous, and still retain a note of compassion in his subtext.
I didn’t want compassion. I wanted the truth.
"I want you to be fucking honest. For fucking once. I want you to fucking tell me that you made this fucking happen."
His jaw worked. But he stayed silent, and the silence told me everything. That he'd already been honest. That he'd been honest all day. That the truth hurt.
I shot up from my chair and crossed to the window. I bit my lip and folded my arms across my chest, hugging myself. It looked cold outside, like the temperature had dropped. The snow banks at the side of the road lit up as cars passed them, the exhaust slowly discoloring their purity.
I didn't hear him, but I felt Donovan move up beside me. His hands were tucked safely in the pockets of his pants. He wouldn't dare touch me. Not after everything we'd gone through today. All the disclosures and revelations had been laid out, but had yet to be weighed. Who knew which way the scale would tip—in his favor or not?
Still, I could sense his desire to connect to me physically.
Or maybe that was me.
"I've only ever thought about myself," I said, my eyes never leaving the road below. "I thought about what people would say about me if I called the cops that night. What it would do to my life. I didn't once, for a single moment, consider what he might do to someone else." My voice was steady, but inside I was cracked. Theo hadn't even had his dick inside me, and he'd wrecked my life. What had he done to this woman? What had I done to this woman by letting him go free?
"You couldn't have changed anything. The only reason he's behind bars is because Liz Stein had a good case and a good lawyer. And she only got the good lawyer because I had people monitoring Theo so I could be there in case he ever got into trouble like this." He wasn't just being kind. It was rational. Somehow, I understood that.
It didn’t relieve my guilt.
"I could have at least tried."
"I tried for you," he insisted, turning to face me. "I couldn't get the drugs to stick, even when he'd been caught with them. I had a better chance at that than you did with your assault case, and you know that. I'm sorry if it’s hard to hear."
It did hurt to hear, even though I already knew. I'd always known. It was why I hadn't pressed charges in the first place. Because I'd always known that a girl crying assault at a college party—a scholarship girl no less, accusing a rich, white prep boy—never went anywhere.
Knowing didn't make it any less painful. Not then, not now.
I turned toward Donovan. "Tell me what happened to her. Tell me what he did to her. I need to know."
"If I tell you, are you going to hate yourself if you’re turned on?"
Fuck you.
But I didn't say it. Because I couldn't promise either.
"Tell me how he did it."
Donovan regarded me briefly. "He worked on Wall Street. He met her in a bar that he frequented after work. Her friends abandoned her, so he volunteered to walk her home. He took the subway with her, walked her to her door, then asked to use her restroom before going home. Inside her bathroom, he saw her robe hanging on the back of the door. He pocketed the belt of the garment before joining her again. She offered him a drink.
“While she was making it, he came up behind her, secured her wrists with the belt, shoved her up against the counter, pushed down her pants and penetrated her. He held his hand over her mouth so she couldn't scream. And when she fought too hard, he covered her nose with his palm as well so she couldn't breathe, until she settled down. He untied her before he left and threatened to ruin her and her family if she told anyone. She immediately went to a neighbor and they called the cops. He didn't use a condom. He came inside her which made it easy to collect his semen in the rape kit."
I wasn't turned on. I was sick.
I moved to lean on the conference table. It was horrible, and horribly true. Hearing her story brought back all the things that I remembered from my own night with Theodore. How he'd pushed down my pants. How he'd covered my mouth and my nose with his hand. How I'd fought. How it had been hopeless.
Until Donovan had shown up.
"He took her robe belt. She might've even just offered if he'd waited." And she might not have ever been there with him if I'd done something first.
"He's a predator, Sabrina. He's not interested in an offer."
Right. He was a predator.
But what about Donovan? Was he a predator? Was he interested in my offers? Or was he only interested in what he could take from my life without my permission?
I stared at my hands, angry with him, with Theo, with myself.
I walked back to where I’d sat, closed the file and slid the file across the table. I didn’t want it anywhere near me anymore. I didn’t deserve the good deeds inside it, and I didn’t want to think about the mess that Donovan had cleaned up on my behalf.
"That wasn't so bad," he said, crossing back to where he’d sat, and I wasn't sure if he was saying that to me or to himself, but he did look a lot more relaxed than he had when we started.
Too bad I didn’t feel the same.
"I'm not done yet," I said. I had one more question to ask, the question I'd been wondering for weeks. It felt even more relevant now that I’d wondered about the exact definition of a predator. "Are there cameras in my apartment?”
Donovan’s skin seemed to sallow before my eyes. He paused. Then swallowed. “They’re rarely ever on.”
My stomach dropped like a boulder into the ocean. “But sometimes they’re on.”
“Sometimes they’re on," he confirmed, heavily.
I knew this. In my heart of hearts, I knew this. Too many times, he’d known things. Things he shouldn't have known. About how little I slept. About the details of what I was doing.
“What do you watch?” I asked, my voice surprisingly steady, even though my heart felt like it was beating in erratic waves.
“I’m sure you don’t need to ask that.” His voice was low and warning.
“I’m asking because I’m imagining what you could watch. You might as well just tell me so I’m not imagining something worse.” And I was very definitely imagining the worst, me at my most intimate. All the nights I'd used fantasies of him to lull myself back to sleep after being woken by nightmares from the past…
“You’re not imagining something worse.”
My skin prickled. My stomach twisted into knots. My skin got hot, and my blood felt like it was boiling. A low level of rage had simmered beneath the surface of my emotions all afternoon. Now it bubbled to the top. It had been one thing when his violations were in the past. It was quite another to find out he was still invading my privacy, even now, even when we lived in the same city, even when all he had to do to be with me was choose to be with me.
I pushed my chair into the table so hard the other chairs rattled.
"Sabrina," Donovan implored. "Don't make this more than it is.”
"Don't make this more than it is?" I echoed. "Which part? The part where you butt your way into every relationship I've had? Every job? Every situation I've been in—none of which you were ever invited to be a part of. That part? Or the part where you spy on me, like a common peeping Tom? Or did you mean the relationship that we have right now, the relationship where I actually wanted something with you, wanted something real with you? Where I asked you for it and I begged you for it, and you pushed me away? Is that what I'm not supposed to make too much of?"