Whatever was happening, there had to be a perfectly natural explanation. Like, I was having a psychotic break. My mind was trying to change the terrible thing that happened to me by associating Donovan and pleasant feelings with that night instead of Theo and those awful ones.
Except these feelings weren’t exactly pleasant. They were sick and tormenting. They were fierce and turbulent. I had to cross my legs and uncross them at least a hundred times just to make it through his lecture, the whole time hating myself because I couldn’t settle down.
It all made me mad. And uncomfortable. And then mad again. For so many reasons. I was mad at Donovan anyway because of everything he knew. Not just about what Theo did, but those other things that he’d said about me in his room. Those things he’d perceived about me so easily. I didn’t like him knowing me like that. It felt invasive. Like a violation.
And I was mad about how he’d taken his time in rescuing me.
And how he didn’t even seem to really be sure he was glad he saved me at all.
Mostly I was mad about the thoughts I was having about him, even though they weren’t really his fault. Yet, if he hadn’t been so fucked up with the way he’d gone about dealing with that night, I wouldn’t probably be so fucked up with the way I felt about it now. So maybe it was fine to blame him for that too.
Whoever was to blame, it didn’t matter. I was the one who had to deal with it. It wasn’t like he cared about how I’d come out of the nightmare. I’d figure it out, somehow.
After what felt like the longest hour of my life, the class was finally over. I took off the second we were excused, careful to dodge Donovan by going up the stairs again instead of exiting below. I’d planned to grab lunch with a friend, but I had to run by my apartment first to change my panties before my next class. That’s how bad it was.
Once I was out of Donovan’s presence, I was sure the whole strange thing would blow over. I thought about Weston to clear my head. He was the guy I’d been into. He was the one that gave me butterflies to think about. Still. Even now.
The rest of the day, however, I found my mind wandering back to Donovan now and then, found myself imagining different endings to the night at The Keep. What if he had asked me back inside after Theo had left? What if I hadn’t left his room in the first place?
I was ashamed of myself.
But it’s where I got the idea of how to deal with the bad dreams I’d had ever since it had happened. That night when I woke up in a cold sweat with the ghost of Theo’s touch on my skin, I slid my hand beneath my panties and erased the memory with thoughts of Donovan.
“Did he hurt you too badly?” he asked, cupping my cheek as Theo hobbled down the street. His hand was warm against my skin, tentative without being gentle.
“Not too badly,” I whispered, looking into his hazel eyes. My escort pulled up at the curb and both of us turned toward it, but instead of walking away, Donovan pulled me into his arms.
“Let me take care of you tonight.” With a nod, he sent the car away. Then he bent to his knees and pulled down my pants, pulled down my underwear, neither asking permission nor apologizing for his eagerness.
But I wanted him there, so it was different than when Theo had forced me.
The air was cold on my bare legs, but soon all I felt was the heat of his tongue between my folds. He licked up and down my slit aggressively several times, then thickened his tongue to a point and inserted it inside me.
I came almost at once and slept soundly until morning.
Whatever it was that Donovan did to me didn’t go away but I got better at dealing with it. I learned not to look him in the eye. I stopped sitting in the front row in class. I did what I always did—I smiled, I nodded, I went on.
And at night, I continued to soothe my dreams with fantasies of him fingering and fucking me, usually in some strange version of my assault. Sometimes it would happen after he’d pulled Theo off me. Sometimes Theo wasn’t there at all. Sometimes I asked him to. Sometimes I begged.
And sometimes—a lot of the time—he was as callous and cruel as Theo had been.
Four
“Sorry about that.”
“No—” I did a double take at the guy who’d bumped into me as he was getting into the seat next to me. Weston King. “—problem,” I finished.
I sat up straighter in my own chair and glanced down at what I was wearing. Jeans. Sweater. Ponytail. Boring. Ugh. Well, what did I expect? It was kind of hard to hide from someone like Donovan while still trying to be noticed by someone like Weston. Both were impossibilities, I’d decided in the three weeks since the Theo incident, because it seemed I always saw Donovan and Weston never saw me.
Until today when, miracle of miracles, Weston happened to take a seat next to me.
My heart was pounding a thousand beats a minute, my knee couldn’t stop bouncing. Eep! Our elbows were practically touching. Then there was the added glee I had when he pulled out a spiral notebook from his bag. He was a boy who took notes old-school style! Swoon!
This was almost enough of a delight to distract me from the lecture Donovan had been giving before Weston had arrived. Unfortunately, the former still had a pull on me that I couldn’t deny. Especially when he was addressing issues that got me worked up such as the one he was tackling today—deregulation in the financial industry.
I’d come a long way on this topic in my short time at Harvard. While I could see the hurdles and obstacles that regulation put on investment firms such as King-Kincaid, I was still a girl who came from the other side. It wasn’t the billionaires losing their pensions during the Great Recession. It wasn’t the rich having their homes and cars and lives taken away from them. Regulation was how ethics were implemented, as far as I was concerned, and I’d said as much in as many ways as possible in my last paper.
As much as I believed in regulation, I knew that, as always, my annoyance at Donovan had less to do with what he was preaching and more to do with what he did to me in my thoughts on a daily basis in the bedroom. What he was doing even now, as much as I hated to admit it, drawing me to him. Commanding my attention. Demanding my focus.
Damn, I hated him.
“Fuckwaffle,” I said under my breath.
Weston shifted in his seat next to me. “What did you say?”
Oh my god. My face went red. “What?”
He leaned in close so I could hear him without disturbing the class. “Did you just call Kincaid a fuckwaffle?”
“I shouldn’t have said that.” But if that’s what it took to have Weston lean in to whisper in my ear then I’d consider saying it again. Maybe. After my embarrassment died down. Like, in the next century.
“Don’t take it back!” Weston exclaimed quietly. “That’s awesome! I love it.”
I spun my head toward him. “Aren’t you guys friends, or…?” Man, his eyes were even bluer this close up. And he had freckles—light ones—along his nose.
“More like family, and I love him like a brother. But he’s a total fuckwaffle.” His brow rose. “And I don’t think I’ve called him that yet. Do you have a pen I could borrow?”