The Intern: Enemies To Lovers

“I didn’t want to wait to have you. I asked if you lived nearby and you said that you lived as far from campus as I did.”

There was pain in his eyes as he gazed at me. “We were by the restrooms, and we were kissing, and I asked if you were adventurous. Your hand was on my dick. You were circling my fucking tip.” He exhaled so loudly. “I brought you into the alley behind the bar, and we had sex.” He put his hand up, stopping me from saying anything. “I wore a condom, Hannah. I took every precaution. But I didn’t know you were that wasted. We had all been drinking, yeah. But I didn’t think you were at the blackout stage.”

His hand, still up in the air, rose to his face, where he brushed it over his scruff. “If there had been any indication that you were that far gone, I wouldn’t have touched you. I’m not the kind of guy who seeks out women who are intoxicated. I’m not a scumbag. Anyone I sleep with, I want them to remember it. I want them to be a participant.”

He set his beer down, his hands clenching. “Jesus, the thought of that makes me fucking sick.”

He glanced all around my apartment, but his stare finally returned to me. What I saw made me breathless.

“I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t know how you’d react. And then time passed, and it got away from me, but the guilt still ate at me.” He paused. “I couldn’t let another second go by without you knowing the truth.”

He slowly walked over, kneeling in front of my chair, his hands staying in front of him, not touching me. “You have to believe me, Hannah.”

In his mind, this entire time, he’d felt guilty.

Because if I hadn’t been conscious that night, then he blamed himself for taking advantage of me.

For being that kind of man.

Oh God.

The spit burned as I swallowed it down my throat.

My heart was splitting in half.

Everything inside me shook.

“Declan …” I shoved my hands under my thighs to stop the tremors and tried again. “Declan …”

I hated myself.

I hated myself more in that moment than I’d ever hated Declan in the past.

I didn’t know how to say this.

I didn’t know what this was going to mean for us.

I didn’t know how he was going to respond.

But it didn’t matter.

He’d voiced his truth, and now, it was my turn.

My lips parted, my head slowly turning to the right and then lifting before I locked eyes with him. “I wasn’t that drunk.”

Small wrinkles formed at the corners of his eyes as he stared at me. “But you said-”

“I know what I said.”

He knew what was going to come next.

I saw the recognition come across his face.

Immediately in his eyes, followed by his lips.

His jaw tensed. “Hannah …”

“I remember it,” I whispered. “I remember every second of it.”

TWENTY-THREE

DECLAN

S

he remembered … everything.

How I’d kissed her in the hallway.

How I’d led her outside.

How I’d fucked her against the side of the building.

She’d been lying to me since the conversation we’d had in my office on the first day of her internship.

And the lies hadn’t ended there.

Because when we’d had sex in the conference room, she’d acted like that was our first time together. When we had spoken about kissing, she had known I’d laid my lips on her outside the restroom and again in the alley.

This whole time, in my head, I’d been this giant asshole who’d had sex with a woman who was too drunk to remember.Content protected by Nôv/el(D)rama.Org.

And this whole time-almost an entire semester later-she had fucking known.

She had known, and she had let me live with this tremendous amount of guilt.

I was still staring into her eyes, still kneeling in front of her, still keeping my hands at my sides because I didn’t dare touch her.

Then, I stood and backed up.

And I rested against the window’s edge, my teeth grinding together, my hands clenching the air. “Explain yourself, Hannah. Right fucking now.”

Emotion dripped down her cheeks, a stream so perfectly lined that it was as though her eyes were faucets.

Every drop that fell from her chin, I saw a little more remorse.

I didn’t fucking care.

I had zero patience.

I wanted honesty, and I had wanted that from the goddamn beginning.

“When I walked into your office,” she started, flattening her hand against her chest, the spot just below her throat, “I wanted to die. I never expected to see you again-maybe in the courtroom, but definitely not at my family’s law firm.

“You have no idea what it’s like to start a job you’ve wanted your whole life, only to find out your boss is someone you’ve slept with. Someone who’s going to be teaching you, mentoring you, spending countless hours with you. And what made that feeling even worse”-she stopped to fill her lungs, appearing like she was pushing against her chest to make that happen-“was that after the alley, you had stood me up. You had just left, and you’d made me feel like I wasn’t even worthy of a good-bye.”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “When I walked in, expecting to see Christopher as my boss but finding you, I panicked. I didn’t have the courage to tell you-my new boss-how shitty you had made me feel that night. I definitely didn’t have the courage to tell you how much it had hurt to see the picture of you and Madison. With your faces pressed together and her lipstick all over your mouth, I knew you’d kissed her right after we had sex in the alley. Honestly, it was like you’d punched me in the gut. I had felt disgusted and embarrassed at how little you thought of me. So, yeah, I lied. It felt like the only option at the time.”