Page 61 of What Comes After

“I don’t understand.”

My throat grew painfully tight. “It was Roy.”

“What?”

Beneath my hand, I could feel the tension coursing through Theo’s body. The worst thing about that was that I was sure once I explained this all a bit more clearly to him, he wasn’t going to feel any less stressed about it. If anything, I was only going to make things worse.

But since I’d already revealed enough to have him concerned, I couldn’t just act like nothing had happened.

So, I sucked in a deep breath before I decided to let it all out. “It was his birthday, so I’d decided to take him out. We went for dinner before going to the movie theater. Since we hadn’t gone anywhere in a very long time, I was looking forward to it. He’d been checking his phone regularly while we were out for dinner, which frustrated me a little, but I tried to ignore it. It was his birthday, and he said he had friends reaching out to wish him a happy birthday.”

I paused a moment, tried to take stock of the situation by reading the look on Theo’s face, and got nothing other than confirmation that none of his tension had eased.

I continued. “We made it to the theater, went inside, and grabbed seats. But no sooner did it seem we got there when Roy told me he wasn’t feeling well and needed to use the restroom. I waited a while for him to return, and when the previews had started, I decided to go and look for him. It didn’t take long for me to learn that Roy wasn’t in the bathroom, but when I looked outside, I saw him standing there with a group of guys. I had assumed they were buddies of his and that he’d just lost track of time. I was wrong.”

“He went outside the theater to meet up with the men who attacked the both of you?” Theo asked, surprise littering his expression.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Roy willingly went outside the theater that night, but he hadn’t expected to meet those men.”

Tipping his head to the side, Theo pressed for more information. “So, what was he doing? Why would he leave you alone inside the theater?”

This was the part I’d been dreading. It was the part of the whole experience I didn’t want to relive, the part that was mortifying.

Dropping my gaze from his, I murmured, “Roy left me alone in the theater, so he could walk out to meet up with one of the women he was cheating on me with.”

Even with my eyes focused off to the side, I could feel the profound shift in the energy surrounding us. That shift was the direct result of Theo and the reaction he was having to the news I’d just revealed. His voice, deep and murderous, demanded, “Tell me you are joking with me.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. When I opened them and met his, I said, “I wish I was.”

Anger and frustration moved through him. “What happened next?”

“I walked out and approached the group,” I began again. “Nobody had seen me there initially, and that’s when I managed to hear enough to know Roy wasn’t having a friendly meeting with his buddies. One of them was furious, because apparently, Roy had intended to meet up with his girlfriend that night. If that hadn’t already felt like a kick to the face, the next guy stepping forward and announcing he was angry with Roy for hooking up with his girlfriend earlier that afternoon would have done it.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Theo clipped.

“I’m not.”

For several long moments, Theo simply stared at me. His eyes seemed to roam over every inch of my face, and with each second that passed, something seemed to soften in his features.

Eventually, he urged gently, “Tell me how you wound up being attacked.”

“I jumped in.”

“Jumped in?” he repeated. “What do you mean, you jumped in?”

Shaking my head, feeling the disappointment with myself move through me, I promised, “Trust me, I never intended for it to go down the way it did. But when those four men started taking turns beating Roy, venting their anger and frustrations with physical blows to his face and body, I couldn’t stand there, doing nothing. So, I shouted at them to stop and jumped in between them and him.”

“Jesus,” Theo hissed.

I ignored his reaction and explained, “I just assumed they’d never take their hands to me, so I demanded that they stop. I told them to leave Roy alone and walk away or that I was going to call the police. I never even managed to pull my phone out before I went flying backward.”

I paused once more, recalling the final memories I had of the incident, and eventually shared, “The last thought I had was that my life had been filled with a lot of bad moments, things I’ve often wanted to forget, but that moment wasn’t going to be one of them. I wholeheartedly believed I was going to die in the parking lot of a movie theater for a man who had the capacity to cheat on me with multiple women.”

By the time I had finished speaking, I hadn’t realized tears had escaped from my eyes and started rolling down my cheeks. I only noticed when I felt the pad of Theo’s thumb swiping them away.

“I’m so sorry, Devyn,” he lamented.

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” I replied.

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