1. Bridget
1
brIDGET
T he day I decided to leave Kyle Kingsley was the day I was no longer afraid of dying.
I was afraid of living.
He turned my mind against me. Turned it into yet another villain.
I couldn’t trust my thoughts. Couldn’t trust the people I loved.
Contrary to what Mel believed, it wasn’t the earthly possessions that kept me from leaving him. It was the belief that I wasn’t worth saving.
He spoon-fed me words like sugar, lacing in just enough poison that, with each bite, I became immune. Blissfully unaware of the bitter toxin creeping through my veins.
He was death dressed in the trappings of life.
All my needs would be met. I didn’t have to worry about a thing. Never would.
That was his promise, at least.
I just had to continue tolerating the poison.
And the day I pushed the spoon away, he pushed back.
“I’m not leaving her,” a voice said in a pained rasp. It sounded like…
No, I couldn’t think about him. Not yet.
Not until I got out and got settled.
I couldn’t let myself hope that he would still want me. Who would want a stupid girl who was blinded by the idea of the good life?
Some good life.
A steady beeping persisted. Had I set an alarm? Maybe it was my phone. Why couldn’t I turn it off? Was I dreaming?
“C’mon, man. You look like shit. Grab a cup of coffee or something. Get some fresh air.”
Now I knew I was dreaming. Why could I hear my brother’s voice? He was in the Navy. He hadn’t visited in years.
Right?
My head felt like a VHS tape that had been fast-forwarded and rewound one too many times. Everything was a jumbled mess.
I did what I always did when Kyle had gone too far. I tried to play through the events that had led up to the first blow.
But I couldn’t remember them.
Not all of them, anyway. Bits and pieces floated through my mind like photos that had gone through a shredder. The sick feeling I got whenever I was forced to question my own sanity returned. I hated the reminder that I couldn’t trust my own mind.
Stupid bitch. You always were so fucking gullible.
I had tried to fight, tried to pull away. Tried to run. But I couldn’t move. He had me in his grasp. There was no escaping it. I felt the moment that the life started draining out of me from his grip.
“Everyone’s out in the waiting room. Someone probably needs to give them an update.” The other voice paused. “Will you go with me, Jase?”
Was that Mel? Why was Mel here? I didn’t want her to see this.
Why couldn’t I open my eyes?
My mind swam with a collage of memories, playing out like a sick movie montage.
Flared nostrils. Gritted teeth. Snarling as his hand closed around my throat. Lifeless blue eyes glazed as he stared into mine. Watching as I faded at his hand. My vision tunneling into near-blackness. Driving my knee into his groin in a last-ditch effort for breath.
Air.
Sweet oxygen. One gasp, then two.
Scrambling for the steps. The front door wide open at the bottom of the stairs. A hand snagging my hair like a vise, yanking me backward.
Away from the stairs.
Away from freedom.
“This is the last time you get away with not staying in your fucking place.”
It felt like I was in the middle of a rockslide. Tumbling down a mountain. Blinding, searing pain.
Then nothing.
My throat felt like sandpaper, and my eyelids weighed a modest half-ton.
Everything hurt.
It felt like I had been put in a high-speed cement mixer full of anvils and bowling balls. Whatever damage Kyle had done this time, Mel wouldn’t be able to patch up with medical tape and gauze.
Great. I was gonna have to take time off work again .
It took every ounce of strength left in my body to raise my eyelids enough to peer through my lashes. Piercing pain blinded me, forcing me to close my eyes again.
I tried to stay quiet, but I couldn’t help the whimper that escaped.
It would upset Kyle even more if I sounded hurt. I needed to stay quiet. Needed to keep from attracting attention to myself.
I tried to pull in a full breath, but filling my lungs with air took more energy than I had. My chest ached as I shifted. My ribs radiated with splitting pain, making my head swirl.
I didn’t feel like cleaning up vomit on top of all this.
Against my better judgment, I tried to open my eyes again. I needed to get up from wherever Kyle had left me and get to the bathroom. It was the only time he left me alone to nurse my wounds.
But when I peered through hooded lids, it wasn’t our house. His house.
I was in a bed.
Crisp white sheets covered my legs. There was a TV mounted on the wall near the ceiling. It was on, but I couldn’t hear anything. I peered to the right. My vision was blurred, but it looked like there was a brown TV tray off to the side. A styrofoam cup with a straw sat on top. There was a vase of flowers beside it—tulips in shades of pink, orange, and yellow.
I tried to turn my head and look to the left, but a sharp stab of pain radiated through my collarbone. I grimaced and laid back against the pillow.
“Bee?”
There was that voice again. His voice . The voice I played in my mind while I went to sleep at night. It was so soothing; a balm for my tormented mind.
I played his voice in my mind like it was my favorite record. The memory of his warm baritone was the only thing that provided any sort of comfort in my upper middle class prison.
I hadn’t attempted to move my arms or legs yet, but a gentle pressure began to warm my left hand. I tried to peel my eyes open, but every time I did, the drowsiness grew heavier.
“Where am I?” I rasped.
Something was blocking my ability to speak. It felt like I was talking into a Tupperware container. Groaning, I tried to raise my right hand to move whatever was on my face, but I couldn’t. An anguished cry escaped my lips, and tears stung the corners of my eyes.
Whatever had happened, this was the worst it had ever been.
I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. I was trapped. A sitting duck.
Bait.
Kyle didn’t like it when I looked hurt. He’d just give me more if I limped around or didn’t cover my injuries.
“Hey, hey, hey—” his husky timbre soothed me again.
If I was dreaming, I didn’t want it to end.
A warm hand pressed against my forehead, smoothing my hair away from my face. “Can you hear me, darlin’?”
I tried to move my arm again, but it hurt too much. Tears leaked from my eyes, burning my skin and making me acutely aware of how cold I was.
“You’re safe,” he said. “You’re safe, darlin’. I promise.”
Something soft replaced the hand on my forehead. Lips against my skin, pressing gently, soothing me.
“God, Bee—” he choked out, leaving another kiss on my forehead. “I’ve been sitting here praying for you to wake up.”
Something hot stung my temple, and I realized that I wasn’t the only person crying.
I wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating. He really was here.
Chase .
I wiggled the fingers on my left hand. They moved with only a dull ache. Slowly, I raised my hand to my face and felt smooth plastic over my nose and mouth. Whimpering, I tried to pull it off.
His hand closed around mine, thumb brushing against the IV on the back of my hand. “Darlin,’ you need to leave that on until the doctors say you can take it off.”
I shook my head and regretted it at once. I felt like I had gone nine rounds with a wrecking ball. I pulled at it again, but he stopped me. His hand engulfed mine. Pressure released from my mouth as he pulled the plastic shell off.
My lips were cracked and dry. My mouth was a sandbox, and my throat was a desert.
“Where am I?” I asked. My voice was hoarse and barely audible to my ringing ears. I couldn’t quite open my eyes enough to make sense of my surroundings. Everything was slightly hazy. Every beam of light stabbed at my brain, making me flinch and cower away.
“You’re in the hospital.” Chase’s baritone rumbled like distant thunder as he brushed my hair away from my face. His fingers scraped against something rough.
Carefully, I reached up with my left hand and gingerly touched the bandage on my head. I wanted to ask what happened. How long I had been here. Where Kyle was and how Chase knew where to find me.
But every syllable was pained, so I settled for, “Water?”
He grabbed something off the table. Slowly, he raised a straw to my lips. “Small sips. Alright, darlin’? Just take it slow.”
Swallowing seemed like the hardest task in the world. My neck felt like it had been wrung out like a washcloth. The soreness in my throat was agony. Still, the cold water tasted like heaven. I cursed when he took it away .
“Why…” I sucked in a labored breath. “Why can’t I...” My voice faded as my eyes grew heavier. Why can’t I keep them open?
“They’ve got you on some pretty heavy drugs, darlin’. Just rest.”
Then why did everything hurt so much?
“My arm,” I rasped. I was determined to roll onto my side to look at him.
“Least of your worries.” Chase sighed. He sounded tired. Depleted. “Your shoulder was dislocated. The doctors reset it and put it in a sling to keep you from moving it too much.”
I resigned myself to temporary blindness and stopped trying to push my eyes open. “What happened?”
He let out a long, heavy sigh. The chair squeaked, and his clothes rustled as he hunched forward. “Dunno. I think you’re the only one who knows that story.”
Tears streamed down my cheeks. I couldn’t hold them in. I couldn’t fight the pain, nor did I want to. They rushed in like tidal waves, sending excruciating tremors through my body.
“Chase—” I cried.
He was out of the chair in an instant, sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, holding my good hand in his. He hovered over me while I cried. Gently, he cradled my head to his broad chest. My tears soaked into the rough fabric of his shirt.
“Darlin’,” he said roughly, voice breaking as he wept. Heavy tears fell on my head. “I’ve been praying to anyone who would listen for you to wake up. Begging whatever higher power is out there not to take you from me. I’m not ready to let you go.”
He smelled just like he always did. It was one of my favorite things about him. There was a comfort in it.
The acrid hospital air burned my lungs but, when he was close enough, I caught the familiar spice of his cologne mixed with the crisp fragrance of his soap .
The heaviness that floated in and out of my head began to lift. I opened my eyes as best as I could and took him in.
Chase’s eyes were closed, thick lashes drawn together in pain or frustration. I couldn’t decipher which. He always kept his dark hair buzzed short on the sides. It was a little longer on top and was mussed like he had been running his hands through it for hours.
I could make out his new tattoo peeking out of the sleeve of his shirt. I’d been meaning to ask him about it when we had poker night, but I never got the chance.
We hadn’t exactly been on speaking terms lately, and it was all my fault.
He was wearing a Beaufort Police Department polo. It was wrinkled, as were the jeans he had on. His gun and badge were on his hip.
It made me feel both safe and uneasy. Chase was here, but I didn’t know where Kyle was. I didn’t know how I had gotten here. Or why my shoulder was dislocated. And I wasn’t quite sure about the events that led up to this moment.
Some things were clearer than others. I remembered packing and calling Melissa and Jason to come pick me up.
The two of them had been fighting earlier in the day after Jason walked into Mel’s apartment and caught her checking out my injuries.
I remember being in the bedroom I shared with Kyle. I had finished packing my clothes and took the suitcase downstairs. I went back upstairs to get my burner phone and cash out of their hiding spot in a pad box under the bathroom sink. I was on the phone with Mel and Jase when I heard the door open.
But it was too late. I already made the mistake I promised myself I wouldn’t. When I took my suitcase down the stairs, I thought about Chase.
Blocking him out of my mind was often more painful than anything Kyle would do. But I had to. I knew that if I let myself think about him, I’d slip up, and Kyle would give me hell to pay. The only time I let my best friend invade my thoughts was when I closed my eyes at night.
Chase arm’s were the ones I imagined were around me when I fell asleep at night. Not the monster I shared a bed with.
The revelations were too much for me to handle all at once.
I couldn’t reckon with the onslaught of warring thoughts that invaded my mind. It was like Kyle had planted a small voice in the back of my head that destroyed everything good.
He wasn’t even here, and yet, he still controlled me.
Chase was too close as he hovered over me, holding me in my pain. I didn’t want him to see me like this.
Unstable. Untrusting. Unworthy .
I didn’t know why he kept fighting for me after I pushed him away time and time again. Didn’t he know it had to be this way?
It was the only thing keeping everyone safe.
Monitors started chirping all around as wave after wave of tears racked my body. Chase grabbed the oxygen mask and moved it back toward my mouth.
“No,” I whimpered. “Please—please don’t.” I couldn’t control the tears. I hated crying in front of anyone, but especially him.
“Darlin’, you’ve gotta calm down and be still. Catch your breath.” Concern was etched all over his face. He was so handsome it hurt to look at him. His eyes were red. His cheeks were damp. There was a day or two of scruff on his jaw, though he usually kept it shaved.
“Everything hurts,” I sniffled.
“I know,” he soothed as he returned to sitting on the edge of the bed. Chase kept my good hand safely tucked in his, careful of the pulse monitor on my finger. “But you need to stay still. You hear me? You’re?— ”
He looked away from me. Not because he didn’t want to look at me, but because he couldn’t.
I could see the hurt. The disgust. It physically pained him to look at me.
“Bee, you’re really fuckin’ hurt,” he rasped. “And I’m trying to be real calm right now, but inside I’m a goddamn mess. When they brought you in on that stretcher yesterday?—”
“Yesterday?” I touched the bandage on my forehead. “W-what? I don’t…” I closed my eyes, trying to make sense of it all. “I don’t understand.”
“You hit your head or…” He looked down, pressing his fist to his mouth. “Or he hit your head… You were unresponsive. Mel and Jase got there before the ambulance did. She did CPR…”
Memories collided into me like a freight train. I flinched as a wrecking ball slammed into my brain as I forced the memory to play out.
“Stairs,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Stairs.” I closed my eyes, trying to piece together the fragments. “I think… I fell. Or he pushed me. He—he was choking me. I kicked him. I—I tried… And then…” It was too much to think about. It felt like an overload to the circuits of my brain. Too much.
“Rest.” His body was rigid as he leaned forward and dropped a kiss on my forehead. His lips were so soft. Warm. Gentle and kind. “When your mind is ready to tell you what happened, it will. Just don’t push it.”
“How long have I been here?”
He glanced at the clock on the wall. “You came in last night around nine. It’s four in the afternoon now.”
I wanted to ask if he was here alone or if my brother was here, but I didn’t. I hoped that Jason and Mel had begun to mend what I had destroyed. It was my fault that their engagement was probably on the rocks.
Some sister I was…
A dull ache throbbed at the back of my skull. I squeezed my eyes shut and grimaced, trying to block out the pain.
“Do you want me to get a nurse?”
“Yeah.” I licked my lips, cursing the sting where my lip was split again. “Is Mel working?”
“No, but she’s here. She and Jase went down to the lobby a little bit ago. Everyone’s camped out down there.”
His thumb stroked gentle circles on my hand. I craved his touch. I hadn’t felt something like that in a long time. It felt good.
For a moment, I indulged the comfort of his skin on mine. But the more I allowed myself to fall, the harder I would crash.
I pulled my hand away.
Chase sighed. “You want me to grab her, too?”
“Please.”
I’m sure the nurse would have eventually come in herself. Truthfully, I just needed space. Room to breathe. To try and sort through my thoughts. To figure out which ones were true.
He pressed another kiss to my forehead. It was probably the only spot on my body that wasn’t wrapped in tape and gauze, so I tried not to read into it.
This was new for him, but not for me.
For him, it was a horrifying revelation. For me, it was a relatively normal Friday.
He rested his forehead on mine. Our noses bumped against each other.
Chase and I had always been comfortable with each other. Hell, we had been friends since middle school.
We erred on the side of touchy-feely , but it had always been in a platonic way. We had our fair share of bonfire snuggles, movie theater heads-on-shoulders, and falling asleep on each other after one too many drinks. But not once had he ever held me like this.
I couldn’t push him away. I didn’t want to, but I needed to. One arm was in a sling and useless. The other was pinned between our bodies.
“Chase—” I whispered as I closed my eyes and turned my head away from him. “I probably smell like a hospital, and I haven’t brushed my teeth in like, two days.”
He shook his head, refusing to back away. I could feel the feather-light brush of his eyelashes against my skin. He trailed the tip of his nose against my temple, dotting my hairline with kisses. “I love you, darlin’.”
Tears pricked my eyes, and it took every bit of willpower I had to keep from saying it back. Saying it would only hurt him more than I already had. It wasn’t a quick “love you” or a best friend kind of “I love you.”
It was so much more, and we both knew it.
With tears streaming down my face, I whimpered, “I know.”
His thumb stroked my cheek. Maybe Chase finally accepted that I couldn’t bring myself to look at him.
“When I was praying that you’d wake up, I promised God that if he brought you back to me, I’d tell you that the first chance I got. I’ve loved you for a long time, Bridget. And I will keep on loving you. Don’t ever doubt it.”
A new ache racked my body, but this time it wasn’t my head or my shoulder. It wasn’t from the ribs that I was pretty sure were broken.
It was my heart.
The worst pain I had ever experienced was the moment when he said those four words.
Words I had been craving. Words that had only been said between us once before .
I love you. Don’t ever doubt it.
I had never once doubted it. But that didn’t change the fact that I could never be his.
I had been pumped full of poison. Tainted and marred. Chase was still in love with the girl he thought I was.
It was only a matter of time before he discovered that the girl he used to love didn’t exist anymore. And the broken woman left in her beaten body? She wasn’t worth his love.
The sooner he realized that, the better.
“I’m gonna go grab a nurse.” He kissed my temple, then the peak of my cheekbone before wiping away a stray tear. His lips on my skin were better than any sedative. “Don’t worry, darlin’. I’m not going anywhere.”