I swiped my phone to off and sat at my desk. It was nine o’clock at night, and a few people were still milling around the office, but I didn’t give a fuck. I cried like a baby.
CHAPTER 33
* * *
Autumn
Just a week ago, I felt like a butterfly that had spent years inside some sort of cocoon. I’d been so afraid to venture out into the world on my own. But I flapped my wings a few times, and once I started to fly, the isolated darkness I’d been in for so long seemed more like a punishment than a place of protection. Now I desperately wanted to crawl back into that cocoon, yet it seemed I could no longer fit.
Over the last few days, I’d kept replaying this silly little moment Donovan and I had shared. We were at the hotel the night before my dad’s wedding. Because even crossing the state line from New York into Connecticut made me feel tense, I’d decided to take a hot shower. After, I’d sat at the desk diagonally across from the bed where Donovan was watching some baseball game on TV.
I’d been lost in my head, thinking about how long it had been since I’d been to my dad’s house, while drying the back of my hair. At one point, my eyes caught Donovan’s in the mirror. He smiled, apparently no longer watching the game, so I turned off the drier and asked what he was looking at. He’d shrugged and said he was just enjoying watching me. I went back to doing what I was doing—which was a pain in the ass since my hair had gotten pretty long. Donovan walked over and took the dryer and my brush from my hands. He looked completely out of his element, almost as if he didn’t even know how to angle the dryer with one hand and work the hairbrush with the other. But he stood there—still wearing a custom-made dress shirt from work that day, one that covered all of his badass tattoos—for ten minutes and finished drying the back of my hair.
And that’s when I knew. I knew that no matter how hard I tried, no matter how hard I fought it, I couldn’t stop myself from falling for him. And that’s why today, after spending days curled in a ball on my bed, I got up, looked up the address of a certain lawyer whose name I never thought I’d type into Google, and took the train to Hartford.
“Hi, I’m here to see…” I took a deep breath. “Braden Erlich.”
The receptionist smiled. “Of course.” She hit a few keys and then looked up. “Hmmm… I don’t have an appointment down for Mr. Erlich this afternoon. He must’ve forgotten to put it in the master calendar.”
“Actually, I don’t have an appointment.”
“Oh.”
“But we have some business that needs to be finalized. Could you just let him know I’m here?”
“Sure. What’s your name, please?”
“Autumn Wilde.”
I watched her face as she called back to Braden. “Hi. I have Autumn Wilde here to see you. She’s not on the calendar but said—”
The man on the other end had clearly cut her off. She listened before covering the phone and whispering, “Did I get your name right?”
I smiled. “You did.”
She uncovered the phone. “Yes, the name is definitely Autumn Wilde.”
The receptionist looked confused as she set down the phone. “Umm… He must be on the other line or something. I’m sure he’ll call back when he’s off.”
No sooner than she’d finished speaking, Braden came marching down the hall behind her. He had two black eyes, a bandaged nose, and one eye was swollen shut even though almost a week had passed. His face was hard as he stared at me, and I thought I might throw up. He walked directly around the reception desk and took my elbow.
I yanked it away and hissed, “Don’t touch me.”
Braden’s eyes jumped to the receptionist and back to me, and he held up his hands. “What do you want?”
“To speak to you.”
His jaw flexed. “Not here. Come into my office.”
“That is usually how it works,” I murmured.
Somehow I managed to put one foot in front of the other as I made my way into the inner sanctum of his fancy law office. When we arrived at his door, he extended a hand for me to enter first. I did, but stopped in front of him.
“The door stays open.”
“I would prefer privacy.”
“And I would prefer not to have to take drugs at night in order to sleep because I’m afraid an animal might come into my apartment and rape me. I guess neither one of us gets our preference, huh?”
Braden rubbed his face with his hand as he stared at me. “Fine. Keep your voice down.”
I took a seat on the opposite side of his desk. My hands shook, so I gripped the arms of the chairs with all my might so he wouldn’t see it.