The Spark by Vi Keeland
CHAPTER 35
Donovan
I woke to the shake of a subway car at six in the morning. Shit. I lifted my head. Where the hell was I? The woman across from me gave me a dirty look and put her arm around her kid.
“Sorry.”
She looked away.
What the hell happened last night? I remembered the partner announcements at the office, and going to visit Bud. But everything after that was a bit blurry.
Oh, wait. I’d gone over to Autumn’s place, but she hadn’t been home. Then I’d wandered into some bar.
The train pulled into a station. It wasn’t mine, but I needed some fresh air, so I hopped off and walked up the stairs about half a mile from my apartment. As I reached the top, a homeless guy was sitting next to the entrance. That jogged my memory some more.
Fred. I’d downed disgusting bourbon with a guy named Fred at the bar for a few hours. Then there was a belligerent stop back at Autumn’s apartment, which ended with me giving the finger to the security camera. After that, on my way to the train station, a homeless person had asked me for money. He’d been sitting outside a liquor store, so I went in and bought a bunch of those small bottles they serve on planes and proceeded to take a seat next to the guy. We drank every single one of the bottles together. No wonder I feel like shit. I couldn’t be sure, but I think I might’ve cried at one point. Great. Just great. You’re really pulling your shit together when Autumn needs you, Decker.
On my walk home, I stopped at a deli and picked up some orange juice and Motrin. By the time I made it to my apartment, I was ready to crash for a few hours. I had no idea how long I’d slept on the train, only that it wasn’t enough. It felt like I could pass out and not wake up for days. I even leaned against the elevator wall as I rode the car up to my floor.
Happy to be close to crash landing on my bed, I stepped out of the elevator with my head down and my mind in a thick fog. But a few steps down the hall and it felt like someone had put the paddles on my chest and jolted me awake.
Had I fallen asleep in the elevator and I was dreaming?
My stride, which had been lumbering at best, suddenly picked up as I made my way down the hall. And my heart followed right along.
Autumn sat on the floor next to my door looking down at her phone, but she stood once she saw me.
“Hey, sorry for stopping by without calling,” she said.
“You never need to call first.”
She looked me up and down. My clothes were a wrinkled mess, and I’m sure my face was covered in stubble. “Were you…out all night?”
I nodded. “I went by your place. You weren’t home, so I stopped at a bar a few blocks away and had a little too much to drink. I woke up on the subway.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
I blew out a deep breath. “Apparently I haven’t been acting like myself a lot lately.”
Autumn nodded. “I stayed at Skye’s last night.”
She looked tired, even though she was still absolutely gorgeous. Her green eyes were puffy and had small streaks of red in them, and under her eyes was dark and hollow.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. Do you think we can talk?”
“Of course.” I unlocked my apartment door and opened it for her to walk through first. She went straight to the living room.
I tossed my keys on the adjoining kitchen counter. “You want coffee?”
“I’d love some.”
I took the grounds from the cabinet and grabbed the pot to fill with water. But I had to wipe my palms on my pants in order to open the canister because I was such a clammy mess from nerves. Once I pushed the button to start brewing, I told Autumn I’d be right back and went to the bathroom to wash up and brush my teeth before returning to fill two mugs.
“Here you go.”
She’d sat on the chair, not the couch, which I overanalyzed in my head as a bad sign. In law, the seat a client or attorney selects often tells you a lot about the person or their power position. Autumn sitting to keep distance between us troubled me.
We were both silent as I sat. She stared down at the floor, while I watched her intently. Eventually, I couldn’t take it and spoke. “Are you sleeping? You look tired.”
Her eyes lifted to meet mine. “Off and on. I stopped taking the Ambien completely a few days ago. I looked it up, and insomnia is common after you stop. My body is basically going through withdrawal after years of use.”
“You slept pretty good the night I stayed over and you forgot to take it.”
She smiled sadly. “I think that was because you were in my bed.”
I smiled back. “Well, if I can be of any assistance… Sleep is important, you know.”
Her smile was more genuine this time. She sipped her coffee and set it down on the table. “I want to tell you some things about what happened six years ago. I told you the parts I thought you needed to know, but I wasn’t exactly open about how I handled things afterward.”
My brows furrowed. “Okay…”
She took a deep breath. “I didn’t actually go to the police two weeks after Braden raped me. I mean, I did speak to them, but it didn’t happen the way I might’ve led you to believe. They actually came to me.” Autumn looked up and met my eyes. The pain swimming in hers caused a stabbing pain in my chest. “They came because I’d attempted suicide. My father found me unconscious and called 9-1-1. After they got the drug out of my system and my vitals stable, a policewoman coaxed me into telling her what happened.”
I tasted salt in my throat and swallowed. Reaching out, I took her hand and squeezed and didn’t let go.
She tried to force a smile before continuing. “I’d gone to my regular doctor and told her I had trouble sleeping, and she gave me a prescription for Ambien. I’d researched that it would take a lot of pills to overdose—more than I had, unless I chewed them and forced them into my bloodstream all at once.” She took another deep breath. “So I put the contents of the bottle into my Magic Bullet and then snorted the powder.” She laughed, but not in a funny way. “I’d never done cocaine in my life. My first white lines were Ambien.”
Jesus Christ. I just wanted to wrap her in my arms and hold her, but her body language told me that was not the right thing to do. I also suspected this revelation wasn’t the only thing she wanted to share…
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter how you reported it. What matters is that you’re healthy and you made it through.”
“I thought I’d made it through, too. I was honestly beginning to feel like I was moving on and the past was behind me. But it wasn’t. A few days after we ran into Braden, I started to spiral again. That animal was walking around like nothing had happened, and here I was unable to sleep and eat again, and you’d been arrested. I felt really low. One night I took the bottle of Ambien into my hand and sat with it for an hour, staring at it.” Autumn looked down. “I never really contemplated taking them again, but it hit me that I had a lot to deal with. Not fully dealing with things last time had only made things worse. I needed to get myself in the right headspace. I didn’t want to wind up in a bad place again. So I went to my therapist a few times. We talked a lot about closure, and then…” She took another deep breath and looked into my eyes. “I went to see Braden.”
When my eyes grew wide, she shook her head and her hands.
“No—don’t panic. I went to see him in his very full office and made him leave the door open. I was always safe.”
While I was relieved, I still couldn’t breathe very well. “What happened?”
“He was snide and thought I was wearing a wire trying to record him admitting to something—pretty much what I expected. But I didn’t go there to get anything from him. I went for myself, because I needed to say some things to him.” She shook her head. “I don’t even remember everything I said, but I wanted him to know he’d ruined many years of my life and made me not trust anyone or myself, how much damage he had done—not that I think he cares. But I needed to look him in the eyes and call him a rapist.” She smiled. “I also told him to rot in hell, which, surprisingly, felt more cathartic than the rest of the stuff I said.”
I smiled. She’d been carrying the weight of other people’s choices on her shoulders for too long, and I was damn proud of her for unloading it. “Good for you.”
“His face was a mess. You fucked him up good.” The corners of her lips twitched up, but she quickly looked down again. “I hate violence. Not only because of what happened to me, but also because of all the kids I work with. It never solves anything. It just makes new problems.”
“I know. And I made a shitload of new ones. I’m sorry, Autumn. I really am.”
She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “Can I tell you another secret?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
“I’m not that sorry, so you shouldn’t be either.”
My heart leaped, but I was still afraid to get my hopes up. “Really?”
She nodded. This time, it was her who squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry I pushed you away. I just needed some time to work through things. Actually, that sounds like I’m saying I’ve finished working through them. I’m sure I haven’t, but I think I’ve finally started. I can’t promise you that getting closer won’t scare me, or that I won’t do something stupid like run away again. But if you’ll have me, I’d like to try.”
“If I’ll have you?” I reached over and yanked her out of her seat and onto my lap. “Sweetheart, just try to get rid of me.”
She smiled. “Did you mean what you said in your voicemail?”
“What did I say?”
Autumn bit down on her lip. “That you love me.”
“Would it freak you out if I did?”
“No.” She leaned closer so we were nose to nose. “You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I love you, too.”
The biggest, dumbest smile took over my face. “I fucking love you.”
She giggled. “Fucking love, huh? Is that equivalent to a lot?”
I took her cheeks into my hands and smashed my lips with hers. When we came up for air, I smiled. “Totally enough.”
Her brows dipped. “Enough? You don’t want more kisses?”
I grinned. “Oh no, I want more kisses. Does your doorbell, by chance, keep the videos it records when someone rings it?”
She nodded. “For a month or until I delete them, why?”
“You can watch it later and figure out what I meant by enough.”
I went to kiss her again, and then it hit me that I hadn’t just professed my love to her on that doorbell video and told her she was enough. I’d come back drunk and belligerent. Shit. “Actually, can I borrow your phone a second? I need to see that app…”
***
That afternoon I’d run out to get us some dinner and made an unexpected pit stop. I’d texted Autumn so she wouldn’t worry when I was gone longer than the fifteen minutes it should’ve taken me to grab Chinese food two blocks over.
“I was getting concerned.” Autumn looked up from her laptop when I finally returned. She was sitting bare legged with her feet up on the couch. “You’ve been gone almost two and a half hours.”
I set the takeout bag on the kitchen counter and walked over to kiss her. “Sorry.”
She closed her laptop. “I thought talking to plants was an old wives’ tale. It’s an actual thing.”
I smiled. “Deep dive on talking to plants while I was gone?”
She shrugged. “I thought you were making it up.”
I walked back to the kitchen and unpacked the cardboard containers of food. “Nope. But I admit, when Bud first told me he talked to them, I thought he was nuts. I looked it up myself.”
Autumn came into the kitchen. She took a seat at the island across from me. “I watched an entire episode of Mythbusters about it. They set up a bunch of greenhouses next to each other. The silent greenhouses actually showed the least amount of plant growth.”
“Oh yeah?”
She nodded and took an eggroll out of a bag. “I’m starving.”
I laughed. “I could tell. You didn’t even wait for me to get plates or utensils.”
She grinned and covered her mouth. “Sorry.”
“I’m teasing. Let’s just eat out of the cartons and share.”
“Okay.” She finished chewing and extended the eggroll to me. “So what took you so long, anyway?”
I shrugged. “Had to get something fixed.”
Her brows drew together. “Vague much? And take a bite and give me back that eggroll.”
“Wow, you’re bossy when you’re hungry.”
She held out her hand. “Bite or give it back.”
I took a bite and handed it off.
“What did you get fixed?”
I pointed to my left arm. “A tattoo.”
She laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”
I pushed up my sleeve and showed her the bandage. A piece of gauze was stretched over the area, followed by a clear plastic covering. “Nope.”
“You just randomly decided to get a tattoo fixed on the way to pick up our Chinese food? What tattoo?”
“The bird.”
“The one in the cage that you got when you were sixteen? I love that one. It was so meaningful, and I could relate to what you were feeling at the time you got it.”
“I could, too. But things change.”
“I don’t understand.”
I slowly peeled the plastic back from my forearm, then lifted the gauze. The original tattoo was a single, small, black bird alone in its cage. Jimmy at Dark Ink had done a few of my tattoos over the years, so I knew what I wanted would be an easy fix. He’d modified one of the bars and turned it into a door, and now the cage was open. I’d also had him add a second bird just outside the door.
“It’s in color!” Autumn smiled. “I thought you said you didn’t think anything was important enough to put in color.”
“It wasn’t. Until now.”
“Wow. Well, it’s beautiful. Before it was so lonely, one bird locked in a cage. But now it almost looks like the little red bird is leading the other one out.”
I smiled. “She is.”
“She? The red bird is a she?”
I nodded. “She’s you, Red.”
I watched Autumn’s face as she stared down at my arm. She’d been smiling and teasing, and her face suddenly fell. I wondered if maybe it was too soon and I’d freaked her out. When her eyes filled with tears, I thought I might’ve really fucked up. But then she got up and walked around the counter.
Autumn leaned down and kissed just above the top of the bandage that was still partially in place. “I love it.” She looked into my eyes. “And I love you, Donovan.”
My head dropped as I let out a loud rush of air. “Jesus. Thank God. I thought I’d upset you.”
“Upset me? God, no.” She placed her hand over her heart. “I just got a little overwhelmed with emotion, that’s all. I love it, and I love what it represents to you, though I think you have it backwards, Donovan. You’re the red bird who helped open my cage and set me free, not the other way around.”
I leaned my forehead against hers. “This was meant to be, Red. You know what else I realized earlier?”
“What?”
“You have to sign a release form when you get a tattoo—at least in the legal places I go to now. I had no idea what the date was, so I asked the guy behind the desk. Today is September thirtieth. It was one year ago today that you stole my luggage.”
“Really?”
I nodded.
“Are you sure? I know the bachelorette party was after Labor Day, but I don’t remember exactly when.”
“I checked the date on the picture I took of you. It was the morning after we’d stayed up all night. The date was October first.”
“Wow. So a year ago today. That seems like a lifetime ago.” She smirked and wrapped her arms around my neck. “You’ve been crushing on me a long time, then.”
I smiled. “Damn straight. You might’ve disappeared on me, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you. For a long time I couldn’t understand why that was. But it all makes sense now. I couldn’t let you go, because I wasn’t supposed to. We were meant to be.”
