Page 73 of Getting Down to Business

Chapter 15

“What?” Gray pulled back to look at her face. Alyssa knew he hadn’t been expecting that. Who would? “Seriously?”

“His name was Donnie. We started dating as freshman at Syracuse. He was perfect. Very polite and caring. He did romantic stuff like plan a picnic in his dorm room, and walked me to class even if it meant he’d be late for his own class. Things like that.”

“I think I might vomit,” Gray joked.

“We moved in together and I wasn’t surprised when he asked me to marry him. We were engaged the summer before our senior year. We were busy getting good grades and making plans for our wedding. His family didn’t have much. His father was on permanent disability. His mother was overworked and trying to take care of his four younger siblings. We talked all the time about having a better life. Getting jobs in New York and being yuppies.” She laughed at the memory, but then turned serious.

“In January of our senior year, we walked out of class together, and the police rushed in and arrested him. They said he was being charged for sexual assault and rape.”

Gray pulled her closer to him, though his warmth barely fought off the chill of that memory. It was the exact moment when everything went from perfect to perfectly awful.

“Of course, I didn’t believe any of it. I knew Donnie wasn’t capable of doing something like that. If anything, he was boring in bed, always wanting it missionary. On special occasions, we might do it with me on top, but never anything wild. Never any place but in a bed. He thought oral was disgusting. He didn’t even make any noise during his release. There was no way he could have done it. I was sure.

“They set his bail fairly high because he had no real ties to the community. He didn’t have the money to post bail and his parents weren’t able, or willing, to help. I tried to raise the money, but I was only working part time at a coffee house. I had nothing to put up, not even a car. The money we had saved for our wedding wasn’t enough, so he had to stay in jail.

“I supported him and visited every chance I got. He told me repeatedly that it was a mistake and how they would release him soon. Every day I woke up thinking it would be the day they would clear up the misunderstanding and he would come home, but that didn’t happen.

“It actually got worse. A third girl came forward from his high school. I was so angry. I wanted to find these girls and scream at them for ruining our perfect life with their lies. That was until I walked into the courtroom and saw them sitting there.

“All three of them, with their long brown hair and big brown eyes, looked over at me. Their eyes were haunted and empty. They seemed hollow, and I knew someone had done something horrible to them. They had been victimized. It was clear on their nearly identical faces, but still I didn’t believe it could have been Donnie. He never so much a raised his voice to me.

“Day after excruciating day, the evidence stacked up against him. His DNA matched the semen found in all of them, which made no sense. He’d always worn a condom with me, even though I was on the pill. We knew we couldn’t afford a kid, so we took extra precautions. His attorney was arguing the accuracy of the tests to no avail. It was a positive match.

“When they were done with the scientific babble and pointing out his lack of alibi during the crimes, the women took the stand to tell their stories. It was atrocious. The person who had raped them was brutal. He’d beaten them and said violent things. Things Donnie could have never had said to anyone.

“Then the second to the last woman mentioned the rapist wearing a navy blue hoodie and gloves, and how his sleeve had pulled up showing a small section of skin. She had scratched his arm. The skin under her nails matched Donnie’s DNA, but that still wasn’t what finally convinced me.” She shook her head, still baffled by her ignorance.

“It was that stupid blue hoodie. I used to borrow it sometimes, and then all of a sudden it was missing. Every time I asked where it was, he told me a different story. He didn’t know. It had ripped so he’d thrown it out. He got bleach on it at work. I kept asking just because he kept making up something else each time. And I did remember that scratch on his arm.

“I had asked him what happened, and he told me he didn’t remember. At the time I thought it looked pretty painful, and wondered how someone could forget being scratched that badly.

“In the courtroom, I looked over at him sitting like a stone, wearing his orange jumpsuit and I saw the thin white scar on his arm. My world stopped.

“I left and didn’t go back. I knew then that he had done it. I didn’t know why or how, but I knew I didn’t know the real him at all. I never heard the last woman’s story. I just needed to leave.”

Grayson didn’t say anything for a very long time. He pulled her over to him and held her very tight. Maybe he thought she was going to cry, but she wasn’t. She had cried everything she had left to cry.

“The nightmares?”

“The man in my dreams does the things the women described. He’s wearing a blue hoodie, but I never see his face.” She took a quick breath.

“I can understand why you would be afraid to be close to someone after that,” he said.

“Everyone has secrets,” she said numbly. Of all the people she had met since finding out the truth about the man she had planned to marry, she felt the most comfortable with Grayson, but that didn’t mean she could allow herself to be happy with him.

He paused before responding, then nodded and pulled back so he could look in her eyes.

“Yes, everyone probably has secrets to some degree. But most people don’t have hideous secrets like that. Normal people have secrets like…they’re still using their roommate’s toothbrush or they did eat the last doughnut the other morning.”

She laughed, which was probably what he was going for.

“You can’t keep this bottled up inside of you, Liss. It will eat away at you until you’re hollow inside. You need to have a good life and find a way past this.” Except she didn’t deserve to have a happy life after failing to stop a monster from hurting other people. If she’d just paid attention to what was happening in front of her, instead of planning a wedding, she might have spared at least one of Donnie’s victims.

“It’s hard to move on when you’re not sure where things went wrong the first time. Obviously, he had this problem before he met me, but he seemed so nice. How could I have been so blind?”

“You weren’t blind. He was just very good at hiding who he really was.”