Reservation (Preservation Series) Read Free Page A

answer’s still no.”
    “No, what?” I played dumb.
    “I don’t want to know. Anything.”
    “Kate...”
    She sighed, cupping my jaw with a gentle hand. “Ry, I’m not going to change my mind. So, please, just leave it alone.”
    “I want them to pay.”
    “I know.”
    “But I respect your choice.” I kissed her forehead, resigned. I didn’t say what else I’d been thinking: That I’d absolutely lose it if I ran into Burgess or his scumbag partner, Eric, on the streets of Seattle ever again.
    I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d bump into them at a coffee house one morning, after they’d been released from prison or probation. If they’d somehow find their way back into the publishing business and try to take advantage of another young, attractive client. But I was certain Kate had thought the same things through plenty of times, and so there was no use bringing up what she clearly didn’t want to discuss.
    She’d remained adamant about not pressing charges, not attending any court hearings, and avoiding any further involvement. She didn’t even want to know how long they would be sentenced, the amount of possible bail, or any other details that the officer and case worker had offered to discuss with her on more than one occasion. She wanted no updates, no nothing. Had wiped her hands of the incident entirely. And although I didn’t like it, I understood it. I understood her , and the desire she had to leave the past alone while she focused on the present.
    Still, a part of me was even more enraged at what had happened because I knew that Kate had been abused before, both emotionally and physically, by some piece of shit ex-boyfriend. I’d learned this from one of her first writing assignments in my class, and only recently had she decided to open up to me about it at all. It was a detail I’d initially wondered about, whether it was fictitious or drawn from real-life experience, and she’d finally given me the answer. Although her writing couldn’t quite be called a memoir; she’d added in some fiction, too. Her dad hadn’t really been absent from her life because he was in jail, but he did abandon her and her mother, and that didn’t sit well with me, either. How could it?
    So I couldn’t deny it—the knowledge of her mistreatment before the Mark and Eric incident only added salt to the wound. I couldn’t fathom anyone hurting a woman like that, let alone anyone hurting Kate.
    “Thank you,” she whispered, placing a feather-light kiss on my chin. “By the time I return to Seattle, this will all be behind me. I won’t wander the streets afraid to see their faces. If I do see them some day, so be it. I’ll hold my head high and keep walking. Anything else just gives them too much power. Besides,” she looked at her left hand as she played with her ring, “I doubt I was the first one...the only one they tried that on. I know it doesn’t make it right, I mean, I know it’s disturbing to think about, but it’s the truth. Who knows how many more there were before me. Given their solid reputation in the business, I think it’s pretty clear they knew how to play their cards well. Either they got away with it more than once, or there were other victims like me who fled and never looked back. They must have been good at covering their tracks.”
    I clenched my molars together and gave her a stiff nod, knowing she was probably right. I hadn’t told her, but when I’d spoken to one of the officers on the phone one afternoon, he’d confirmed that Eric was, in fact, married. With two kids at home.
    Sick.
    And upon doing my own research on Mark, a man I used to consider a close acquaintance in college, I’d discovered a couple sexual harassment complaints filed against him at work—a secretary and some woman from accounting. Nothing ever came from them, though, so I’d assumed he’d paid to have the charges swept under the rug, rather than fighting them in the courtroom. It seemed to be a