I was trembling with anger and hurt.
Donovan rounded the table to approach me, reaching his arms out toward me in the way I’d wondered if he wanted to earlier. "Sabrina," he said again, softer.
"Don't!" I said, backing away. “I don't want this."
He lowered his arms, but he didn't move away from me. "You don't want what? You don't want this?" He pointed to the file. "Or you don't want me?"
I shook my head, unable to answer.
"Because they’re one and the same, Sabrina. This file is who I am. You don't get one without the other.” His tone was sharp.
It cut at me where I was already bruised.
"You never gave me a choice.” The sum of everything I’d learned. My eyes were wet. I blinked to keep tears from falling.
"I'm giving you a choice now." He took another step toward me. "I fucked up when I pushed you away. But I'm here now. And you have to decide."
I shook my head again. He was so close I could reach out and touch him if I wanted to. And I had wanted to touch him for so long. The yearning and desire from the night before were still inside me, still layered just underneath my skin. Pressing at my edges, begging for his skin on mine.
But the wall that I had hoped would be gone after today was still there too, perhaps less thick than before, but a barrier just the same.
"I think this is enough for one day," I said, wrapping my arms around myself. "I'm ready to go home."
Whatever decision was going to be made, it was going to have to wait for another day.
Chapter 9
I let Donovan give me a ride home. His driver was already at the curb when we got outside the building, and it seemed petty to refuse and wait for a cab. Especially considering how cold it was outside.
We were quiet as we drove through town. I couldn't even look at him. Instead, I stared out the window, my thoughts lost in the overwhelming scraps of discovery from the day. There were too many new pieces of information; too many things that startled me in beautiful and amazing ways. Pieces of my past I now had to look at through an entirely different lens, stories that took on entirely different meanings. Some of them moved me in ways I never thought I could be moved. As if I’d been a boulder stuck in mud that finally had enough rain washed upon it to sweep it down the mountain.
But some of it was too raw, or I was too raw. Donovan's symbols of affection felt like lemon juice against paper cuts. He'd been well-meaning, maybe. But I never asked for that. I'd never asked for him. I'd never asked for his invasion.
The worst part was knowing how many times I would have wanted that invasion. How much of my life had been lonely? How many years had I longed for anyone, any man to love me? No, to get me. To understand. It wasn't fucking fair of him to love me in secret.
Dylan’s description of the way Donovan had loved Amanda echoed in my mind. Too much. Loved her too much.
And now when we were finally together, Donovan pushed me away over and over in every way he knew how, all the while watching me, invading my most sacred moments…
Could I forgive him for that?
I didn't know if I felt betrayed or hurt or violated or desired, or all of those things combined. But I was wound up; my insides a whirlwind, a tornado.
Too much.
And next to me, Donovan sat still and quiet like he was in the eye of the storm. Like it didn't matter that I wasn't talking to him. Like it didn't matter that I had just put him on trial for the last several hours. Like it didn't matter that the jury was now out deliberating, and that the verdict didn't look good.
I was jealous of his ability to remain stoic. Of his ability to have no emotion.
Except it was a lie, and I knew it now. I had seen a whole file that proved how much emotion he had where I was concerned.
And yet sitting together in the backseat of his car, I felt further from him than I had in days.
I didn't know how to fix it.
I didn’t know if I should even try.
When his driver pulled over to the curb in front of my building, I didn't wait for him to get out and open my door for me. I bolted. As if I could run from these volatile emotions within me. If I could just get far enough away from him, from Donovan, from the way he invaded and possessed and obsessed and cared…
Halfway to the front door of the building I came to a halt.
What was I doing? I was mostly angry because Donovan had kept himself away from me for so long, and now I was pushing him away further? How did that help things?
I didn’t care anymore about what he’d done. As long as he didn’t drive away. As long as he kept loving me too much. Maybe too much was just enough for me.
"Sabrina?" Donovan called from behind me.
I spun around and found his car still at the curb. He had slid across the seat. The back door was open; he was half out of the vehicle. "What's wrong?" he asked, his expression etched with concern.
"I don't care," I said testing the words out. Finding them true.
"What?" The note of hopefulness was unmistakable even in that one word.
"I don't care," I repeated, stronger.
He shut the door of the car, and in two strides he was at my side.
"Sabrina?" He said only my name, but I heard what he was really asking. I heard how eager he was for me to give him the words that I was feeding him.
"I don't care. I really don't. About any of it. I know I should. I should be mad. And I am, though not for the right reasons. I'm only mad because it took you so long to invite me in."
I had more to say, more to explain. But he cut me off, pulling me into him, his mouth crashing against mine. His lips were hot, his kiss desperate. Or maybe it was my kiss that was desperate. My hands were already all over him, wandering up inside his coat, stroking along planes of his chest, my hips grinding against his.
Too soon he pulled away. "I'm coming inside with you.” Confident. Sure. As if it was his decision.
"I know."
There wasn’t anywhere else I wanted him to be.
Donovan nodded to his driver, then laced his hand in mine and tugged me toward the building. We breezed past the doorman and caught an elevator that we shared with a father and his teenage daughter, the latter as distracted with her phone as I was with the heavy curtain of sexual tension between Donovan and me. I couldn't even look at him. I was certain that if I did, I would end up ripping off all my clothes despite the other people in there with us. Even the slight touch of his thumb rubbing up and down the length of my finger was almost too much, enough to make me wet and fully aroused. Ready to explode.
When we arrived at my floor, I stepped out, appearing calm and collected, despite the torrent of urgency inside me, with Donovan right behind me. But as soon as the elevator doors shut, I was rushing down the hall, swollen with need, my hand still laced in his.
At my apartment, he dropped my hand so he could move my hair from my neck. With his body pressed up behind me, his erection pushing into my ass, he kissed along my skin, nipping at the spot where my shoulder curved upward while I dug in my purse for my key. A door opened down the hall, and he stepped slightly away from me. He grinned politely at the elderly lady as she passed by us in the hallway, but under his breath he whispered to me in a low rumbling voice, "If you don't stop fumbling with that lock and get the door open, I'm going to fuck you in this hallway, and I don't give two shits about who watches."