Page 99 of A Little Bit Reckless
I swallowed. He was older than my parents, but I hadn’t thought about that when he’d been kind to me. Hindsight told me now he only let me know what I wanted to hear. He used me. And he tried to kill me.
“Come back to me, Bow. It’ll be different this time.”
Some of Professor Donovan’s final texts had been after we had sex. They slowed down significantly after I started being seen with Wells more. I hung out with Wells in public places I knew Professor Donovan frequented.
“Just let go.”
Professor Donovan had kept saying that during sex. He saw how painful it was for me, awkward. As soon as we started, I wanted to stop, but he convinced me to keep going.He didn’t stopeven though I clearly hadn’t wanted to continue.
They had Professor Donovan gagged, and, when he saw me, he tried to speak around the fabric in his mouth. He was trying to use his voice, which I realized now was his most powerful weapon. The gift of persuasion he used to make me do things I didn’t want with him.
I clutched my stomach again. I felt empty, hollow. My lips pressed together. “We were pregnant. You and me…We were pregnant,and I lost it.”
Professor Donovan stopped trying to talk around his gag. In fact, he bit down on it, and his eyes widened. His head shook, and I realized I was happy now for the gag. He’d done all the talking now up to this point, the manipulation, but he wasn’t now.
My voice was a powerful weapon too.
“Ilost itbecause of you. You tried to kill me,” I said, and he winced. I nodded. “You tried to kill me and my friend and youmurderedour baby.”
The camera tilted then to Wells, who looked broken. His jaw was clenched tight, and Bru was still beside him. Bru’s expression was just as tense. His nostrils flared, but when I mouthed to both guys that I was okay, the camera tilted back.
I sat up in my bed. I held my waist for strength. I was giving my child a voice too. Theirs was also taken, stolen. I swallowed. “I want you to hunt him down. I want you to chase him andbreak him downlike he did me.”
Again, hindsight was something else. Professor Donovan’s manipulation came so easily to him. It was soeasyfor him to get to me, find me. He knew how to find weak and vulnerable girls.
But I wasn’t weak anymore. He hadn’tbrokenme, but he would break.
He would break.
Right away, Professor Donovan started pleading through his gag. His voice was muffled, strained, and I was so happy Iwouldn’t have to hear it again. The camera left him, and I was happy for that too.
“We love you,” Bru said before the call ended abruptly.
I didn’t wonder why he said that on behalf of both him and Wells because I saw what Wells was doing in the background. Wells’s attention had been on Professor Donovan. Wells had gathered my professor to his feet and even took the gag off him. He unbound his arms too, and I heard Wells say one word to my professor before the call cut off.
He told him to run.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
Jax
“Dorian Prinze.”
Knight’s son, Thatcher, and my son, Wells, stood up as their friend Dorian took the stage. They’d done the same for Ramses’s son, Ares. Three of our kids were graduating college today. Dorian was Royal’s son, and Sloane, Ramses’s daughter, had already walked the graduation stage.
Royal, Knight, Ramses, and I stood up too, as well as LJ, who’d flown out for this. He was god-dad to my kid and all my friends’ kids. He and his wife, Billie, never had biological children of their own. They had ours though, and we were all so fucking proud of our children.
Dorian saluted all of us from the stage, and in the distance, I noticed Ares standing up too. That was probably frowned upon, one of the graduates getting up from their seat, but he wasn’t alone when his twin sister, Sloane, stood as well. That was her boyfriend up there, her fiancé.
None of us parents were surprised to see those two getting engaged so close to graduation; I think we were all blown away they hadn’t done so sooner.
It was crazy how our kids were grown and moving on in life. I still had a year until Wells graduated, but he’d be moving on too, growing up.
I watched him applauding Dorian with a strong clap. Honestly, I think his was only drowned out because of how loud Thatcher’s—Knight’s son—was. Thatcher had the loudest applause, but he was a huge fucking kid like his father.
Knight stared at Thatcher with pride. He was proud of the man Thatcher had become. Thatcher’s girlfriend, Aspen, was by his side and clapping too. She was a celebrated cellist if one could imagine, and Knight bragged all the time about that. My friends and I did all we could to one-up each other over the years.
