Page 233 of The Doctors Will See You Now

Detective Santos sighed. “We got an anonymous call as soon as it broke. She claimed to be scared to come forward personally, but strongly suggested the allegations against you were factual in nature.”

My face felt clammy in my hands. The urge to bury myself in them had been pressing all day, but at this bewildering and shittacular news, I couldn’t fight it anymore.

“Oh God.”

“Scott.”

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” I muttered, head still firmly in my hands. “Never. I would never do anything with a woman without consent. Hell, enthusiastic consent. If I’m touching a woman, you better believe she’s told me she wants me to. Period.”

“Look, we’re going to look into this.”

“Can you…I don’t know…trace the call from today? Find out who this woman is?”

He looked at me with wrinkled eyes and a slightly downturned mouth.

“Sorry. You’re the detective here.”

He smiled then.

“I know this is not how you planned on spending your day today.”

I laughed, completely devoid of humor. To say the fucking least. The last week with Harlow had been perfect. Literally everything I’d never known I wanted. Everything I’d distinctly thought I didn’t want.

But Christ, it was good.

Finally, some of what she’d been so vehement about this morning broke through. “She says she didn’t write it,” I whispered, mostly to myself.

Detective Santos didn’t think anything I said in an interrogation room was to myself. And he was right.

“Yep. I heard that too, and it’s worth looking into. You’ve been an upstanding member of the community long enough that I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt until something proves to me I shouldn’t. You stitched up my daughter’s chin when she tripped and fell into the coffee table, for shit’s sake, Scott.”

He sighed.

“I don’t want to see you here any more than you want to be here.”

I nodded, bit my lip, and turned to the side.

“So, here’s the plan,” he declared, sinking a hip onto the shiny metal table in front of me and leaning into his thigh. “You’re going to be released. You’re not going to leave the city, and you’re not going to go out to the clubs or the bars or whatever.”

I snorted, and he narrowed his eyes.

I straightened up immediately. “Sorry. Just…yeah…you don’t have to worry about that. Pretty sure I’m going to lock myself in my apartment and sleep until this nightmare is over.”

He smiled. “Good plan. We’ll look into everything, and if no one comes forward with serious evidence, something we could take to court on this, we’ll release a statement that you’ve been questioned and cleared.”

I shook my head and then nodded. I knew it was a confusing mess of opposites, but I couldn’t help it. That was what I was feeling. Because everything he said was great. I knew I hadn’t actually committed crimes against women. In a perfect world, I’d be cleared, they’d make a statement, and that would be that.

But in the real world, I had someone falsely accusing me, my girlfriend was at the center of this shit, my job security was questionable at best—even if they cleared me—and no statement to the media would ever completely clear my name.

Innocent in the eyes of the law and innocent in the eyes of the public were two different things, and it was a pretty short trip from Dr. Erotic to Sex Offender in the world of reality TV.

“Come on, Scott,” Detective Santos said, pulling me from my seriously depressing thoughts. “I’ll walk you out.”

I nodded and stood, following him out of the room and through the bullpen as he led the way to the front doors. There was a set of stairs that led down to the entrance, but the doors were glass. I could see pretty well that it was a goddamn media circus out there just as it had been outside of my apartment when we came here.

I groaned. “Great.”

Detective Santos followed my gaze. “Ah, shit. All right. You can go out the back entrance. Come on.”