"Well," he said as he tucked away his notes, "the good news is, we've got plenty to keep him locked away. No judge worth his salt would let this rat out on bail."
Good. That news didn't undo the damage done to Rowan, but at least now he could truly relax.
Charlie stood and picked up my phone. "I'll get what I need off this and bring it right back. Unless there's something on it you don't want me to see."
I shrugged. "If you find porn in my downloads, that's on you."
He barked a laugh and clapped me on the shoulder as he left.
Rowan
36
I had six tabs open, three different apps running, and no idea which one I was actually working on.
The cursor blinked at me from an email draft that I hadn't finished. My cloud drive was mid-upload with footage from the front door camera, and my text history with Marcus sat open just off to the side. I kept skipping around – back to the cloud folder, then to the most recent message from my solicitor, then to the file list from the camera app.
Nothing held my attention for more than a few minutes. Every time I thought I'd settled on a task, something else elbowed its way in.
Eli had airdropped some files to me that morning. Mostly voicemails and texts that he never told me about. I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that Marcus had been trying to get to him, too. And Eli never told me.
Part of me was a little angry at him for that. Just for a second. But it disappeared just as fast. Because deep down, I knew I wouldn't have taken it well at the time. Eli knew that, too. He was protecting me until I was in the headspace to deal with this.
Now I was sorting through everything I could find, trying to gather enough to bury Marcus ten times over. I had to believe this would help and it would keep him out of my life forgood.
I hit play on the next voicemail, and I froze. Not even at the words, really. Just at thetone. I dragged a hand over my face, stopped playing the file, and clicked over to a different folder. I couldn't listen to that right now.
Setting the laptop aside, I made my way over to my desk to find an old memory stick to store all of this so I’d have an extra copy of everything. After a minute or two of fishing around, I finally found one. Then my gaze landed on something else in the drawer, and I paused.
I'd forgotten about the folder.
It sat there in plain sight, unmarked and tucked on top of a stack of notebooks. I hadn't looked at it in months. Now, though, it occurred to me that I should probably get copies of the clinic results to my solicitor, too.
I pulled the folder out and flipped it open. The papers inside were a bit wrinkled from the way I handled them the last time. Back then, I'd barely been able to read them without shaking.
Now I was pissed off.
Marcus drugged me. Raped me. And he thought he could just walk away from it. He thought I wouldn't fight back, that I'd stay quiet and let him win. That might have been true a few months ago. But not today.
I dropped the folder onto the desk and sat down hard in the chair. My fingers hovered over the top sheet, then curled into a loose fist when I realised I never told Eli what happened. I meant to. But Marcus got here first and beat the hell out of me. After that, I completely forgot about the conversation.
But now Marcus was in prison. The case was moving forward. Eli deserved the full truth.
Even so... I hesitated.
Eli would lose his mind when he found out. Not at me. Never at me. But I knew how protective he was. I'd seen whathe was willing to do. If I told him about this, I wasn't sure what he'd do with that anger.
The sound of a key in the lock made me snap to attention. I threw the folder back into the drawer and shut it with a little more force than I meant to. The papers disappeared from sight just as the door opened.
Eli stepped inside a second later, juggling a canvas shopping bag and his keys. His coat was half-unzipped and his hair wind-tousled, face flushed from the cold. He seemed to be in a good mood.
I didn't want to wreck that. The folder could wait.
He dropped the bag on the counter, shrugged out of his coat, and glanced over at the mess that cluttered my laptop screen. "How's it going?"
"Slow," I admitted. "But I'm getting there."
He looked at the computer again, then stepped over to me without a word. He reached for my hands, wrapped his fingers around mine, and gently tugged until I was on my feet. Before I could ask him what he was doing, he pulled me in and kissed me.
