20. Bridget
20
brIDGET
“ M ornin’, sexy.” Chase’s sleepy timbre sent shivers down my spine. Usually, I woke up with his thick arms wrapped around me, cradling me against him.
This morning, he was using my breasts as a pillow. His face was wedged between them, and I wasn’t quite sure he could breathe.
Chase didn’t seem to mind.
I bit back a laugh. “You’re saying that to my boobs, aren’t you?”
He arched a dark eyebrow and peered up at me. “Mornin’ to you too, darlin’.” His smile pulled against the fabric of the t-shirt I had thrown on before falling asleep.
I snorted. “Nice to know how I rank.” I raked my fingers through his short-clipped hair, massaging his scalp. “Just below warm tits.”
He nuzzled his face even further into my cleavage, inhaling deeply. “Nah, I just love a woman who happens to have my favorite breasts in the whole world. ”
My feelings about Chase were both complex and rudimentary. I loved him. Easy as that. But was love enough? Would loving Chase hurt him? Would loving him hurt me?
I didn’t intend to fall into Chase’s bed, just like I didn’t intend to fall in love with him.
But, here I was.
Last night changed things for us. It was more than Chase telling me he loved me in the hospital. I chalked that up to fear. He was my best friend and had been afraid he had lost me.
Last night, the two of us had met in the middle. I didn’t know what I was ready for. But, for a moment at least, I had been brave enough to try again.
And Chase… He had been so patient with me. So gentle.
I still felt sated and satisfied after the orgasm he had pulled from my body. It wasn’t just that it had been a long time. Sex had never been that good. That selfless.
Chase didn’t coax me into falling for him. He came in like a bulldozer, flattening everything in his path. Then, he whipped out a jackhammer and drilled away at the layers of concrete packed around my heart.
But it wasn’t like the callouses had magically disappeared, and we could move on. Waking up this morning had me feeling raw.
Chase had seen all of me. My body. My heart. My weaknesses. My fears. My broken mind. He had shattered my walls, and now I felt exposed.
One of the doctors in the hospital told me that I’d feel like a wounded animal for a while. That I would lash out in aggression to protect myself.
I wanted to believe it wouldn’t be true, but the notion that I might go on the offensive had me scared to make a move at all.
I wanted to be with him, but I couldn’t trust myself not to hurt him .
“Stop thinking,” he muttered. The vibration of his words against my breasts turned my nipples to points. “It’s too early to think.”
“You have to be at work soon,” I reminded him.
Chase groaned and reluctantly lifted his head to glance at the clock. “Fuck.” He let out a bellowing sigh. “You working this weekend?”
“Friday and Saturday. I’m off Sunday and Monday.”
“Can I take you out?” He rolled onto his back and looked at me.
I raised an eyebrow. “Like, on a date? Or like…”
“On a date,” he said, carefully maneuvering me into his arms. “Get all dressed up. Eat somewhere other than the couch.”
“I like the couch.” And I wasn’t sure how I felt about going out in public for more than a quick errand.
Chase sighed. “You’re making this harder than it needs to be. We’ll have a good time. You’re my girl. I want to take you out and show you off.”
He tilted his head and kissed behind my ear as he slipped his hand beneath the shirt I was in. He avoided my torso and went straight to my tits, rolling my nipple between my fingers. I keened and arched into him.
“Mine,” he growled, teasing my nipple. “And I want everyone to know it.”
Bile burned my throat as I pushed him away. “No.”
Chase sat up, looking at me like I had sprouted a third ear. “Bee?—”
I threw the covers back and peeled out of bed. “I’m not a trophy to be displayed on a fucking shelf, Chase,” I snapped.
I heard the thump of his feet as they hit the floor. “Darlin’, I wasn’t?— ”
“Stop, okay? Just stop.” I held my hands out. It was a pitiful line of defense, but it was all I had.
Luna whined from her crate, pawing at the latch.
My lip quivered. Words jumbled in a logjam between my brain and my tongue. Retorts came in faster than I could process them. I stammered as tears flooded my eyes.
“Bridge…” Chase approached me slowly like he was stalking a wild animal, careful not to spook it.
I held my palm out to stop him, but he just kept walking toward me.
I was radiating with anger. How dare he talk about me the same way Kyle did? Was that how Chase saw me? As a prize to be won? A pet to be kept in a cage? An accessory to be flaunted?
“I’m done with this,” I clipped, turning toward the door. I was about to say that I’d see him when I got off work, but I didn’t know if I could do that without losing my shit on him.
He didn’t deserve anger, but it was the only defense mechanism I had left.
“This doesn’t end the way it did on the beach that night.” There was a ferocity in his voice. A finality. “I’m not walking away.”
My knees buckled.
That night on the beach with Chase had been harder than all the nights Kyle was drunk. It was the night I lied to him and told him I loved Kyle. The night he told me that he would be good to me. The night he demanded to know why I would agree to marry someone like Kyle.
When I went back to Kyle’s house after poker, I locked myself in the bathroom, turned on the shower, and cried.
But I was free of Kyle.
I was with Chase.
Why did I still feel trapped ?
“I’m not him, Bridget.” Chase stopped a few feet away. “Don’t paint me with the same brush.”
Tears slid down my cheeks. “Then don’t trap me in the same painting he did.”
It was such a stupid thing to panic about.
Mine.
I could say the same thing about Chase, and he’d stand ten feet tall.
“Call me Bridget. Call me Bee. Call me darlin’.” I choked on the last word. “But please don’t call me something that doesn’t give me a say.”
“I’m gonna touch you now.” His tone was steady. I almost argued but, before I could, he was scooping me up in his arms and carrying me back to the bed.
Chase took my hands in his and upturned them, dropping a chaste kiss on the center of my palms.
Instead of pinning me down or teasing me with his sexual prowess, he lay beside me and placed my palm against his heart.
“You’re mine, Bridget.”
That asshole.
Before I could give him a verbal reaming, he cupped my cheek and kissed me. “Let me explain what that means.”
His heart ramped up, thumping hard against my palm.
“You’re mine to support and to cheer on. You’re mine to pleasure. To provide for. To love.” He dotted my forehead with a kiss. “But you are not mine to control. You have your own thoughts, reactions, and emotions, and you should express them however you feel you need to. You are not mine to dictate.”
“Chase—”
“You are my partner, my equal, and the love of my life.”
I stared into his eyes. Deep pools of brown and onyx overflowed with tenderness .
“I’ve been chasing you for a long time, Bee. And I don’t think I’ll ever stop running. I don’t want to.” He tucked my hair behind my ear. “You’re not the trophy at the end of the race. You’re the one I’m running with.”
I pressed my fingers to my eyes, desperate to hide the tears.
“Come here, darlin’.” Chase was pulling me into his chest, shielding me from the pain and the hurt. He stroked the back of my hair, careful to stay away from the tender stitches. “I will love you with everything that I have. I will protect you with my last breath.” He paused. “But I can’t heal you.”
I stared blankly at the penlight as Dr. Lewis checked my eyes. I had been poked and prodded within an inch of my sanity. Constant questions of do you feel safe in your current situation had me annoyed and on edge.
No matter how many times I said yes, they kept asking.
The irony of it all was that very few people asked twice when I actually wasn’t safe. They took my smile and paper-thin excuses at face value and left me alone.
But now that I was safe, I was marked as the girl who had been abused.
Such a shame what happened to Bridget McGrath.
Sweet girl, the poor thing.
Bless her heart.
It was all anyone had to say about me. What a shame it had been. How well I looked.
Well, the joke was on them. I was more of a mess now than when Kyle knocked me around.
That girl kept a tight lid on everything boiling inside. But now that Kyle was gone and I was free, it was like someone had opened a valve on a pressure cooker.
The heat and strain had to go somewhere.
“Apart from your headaches, have you had any other symptoms?” Dr. Lewis asked as she scribbled something on a clipboard. “Any discomfort?”
Only every conversation ever.
“Just the headaches and my ribs.”
I rolled my wrist back and forth. There was a dull ache, but it was lessening by the day. As long as I didn’t overdo things at the bar, I was golden. This was my last check-up, and I didn’t plan on coming back anytime soon.
Her nails clicked against the laptop keys. “I’m looking at the X-rays we did a little bit ago, and everything looks like it’s healing nicely. It’ll be a few more weeks until the pain is gone, but you’re on the right track.”
I looked down at my feet as they dangled from the exam table. I had seen Dr. Lewis since I was a child. That made it all the worse.
Such a shame what happened to Bridget McGrath.
Sweet girl, the poor thing.
Bless her heart.
She was a great physician and knew her stuff, but a head full of knowledge didn’t block out the small-town rumor mill.
“How are things going with Detective Brannan?”
Fucking clockwork. “I, um… I’m just staying in his guest cottage for the time being.” I twisted my fingers nervously. “Chase and I have been close friends for a long time.”
She let a coy smile slip. “I ran into him at Queen’s Coffee a few weeks ago.”
Ah, shit.
I nodded, playing it cool. “It’s a, uh, popular spot with all the cops. Close to the police department and all that. ”
“He asked me for therapist recommendations.”
My face turned red. Heat flashed across my skin like lightning.
I was going to kill him. How fucking dare he think he had the right to?—
“For himself,” she tacked on with a smirk. Apparently, my poker face had turned to shit. “I’d never divulge patient information, Bridget.”
“You just did.”
She pointed her ink pen at me. “Chase isn’t a patient at this practice.” She stuffed her pen into the graying bun on top of her head before yanking a pair of nitrile gloves out of a box. “Let’s take a look at your stitches, and then we’ll get you out of here.”
Dr. Lewis left me to stew on why Chase would see a therapist while she parted my hair and examined the stitches on the back of my head.
Chase didn’t need therapy. He came from two fantastic parents, had a stable job, and a good life.
He probably told Dr. Lewis a white lie, I decided. He probably told her that he wanted the recommendations for himself and, in a few days, I’d find brochures from the practices stuffed under the cottage door.
“Speaking of mental health,” Dr. Lewis began as she yanked off the gloves with a snap and tossed them in the trash. “Have you been seeing anyone? A therapist? A counselor? A support group?”
I would rather clean the floor at Jokers with a pair of tweezers than sit in a circle and say, “Hi, my name is Bridget McGrath, and I have terrible taste in men.”
Dr. Lewis sat down in the chair across from the exam table. “I’ll take that silence as a no .”
“I don’t want to be the town’s poster child for domestic violence,” I said softly. I just wanted to be left alone. Was that too much to ask ?
“No one is asking you to do that. You don’t owe anyone your trauma.” She plucked a few brochures out of the stack she had hidden under my chart. “But what you can offer them is hope. Hope that things will get better. Hope that starting over isn’t as scary as it seems. Maybe they’ll give you a little of their hope, too.”
Begrudgingly, I took the brochures. I knew I’d toss them in the trash the minute she walked out. “I’ll look into it.”
“Acknowledging pain isn’t the same thing as weakness.” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees like we were old friends chatting over sweet tea and biscuits. “No one laughs when someone shows up to get a broken arm put into a cast. There’s no stigma around resetting a dislocated shoulder.”
She gestured toward my shoulder to make her point—the one that had been reset while I was unconscious. I had no memory of it, only an uncomfortable ache when the weather changed.
“The brain is a complex organ. But unlike the rest of your body, it doesn’t just serve the function of keeping the body alive. It provides thoughts. Houses emotions. Stores memories. Even the memories we try to bury. Those things are just as much a part of you as your arms and legs. And they deserve attention and care, too. Just because we can’t see emotional damage on an X-ray doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
“How’d your appointment go?” Chase asked as he wolfed down a burger.
I popped the top on his beer and slid it down the bar. “Fine.”
He caught the bottle and tipped it toward me before taking a pull. “Just fine?”
I shrugged. “To my dismay, ribs don’t magically fuse back together overnight.” I paused and shifted my weight between my feet, easing the ache in my knees. I was getting way too fucking old to be slinging beers seven days a week. I had no idea how Wanda did it all these years.
Granted, I’d been running the joint for about the last five. Hence why the door hadn’t been fixed. I’d get around to it eventually. It was on my to-do list—the list that was buried in boxes and suitcases, long forgotten.
Chase patted the top of his head. “Stitches?”
“Still there. Dr. Lewis said they’d dissolve on their own.”
He nodded and inhaled a handful of fries. “Headaches?”
I shrugged. “It just is what it is for now. She told me to come in if they got worse, but I guess it’s to be expected after what happened.” I balled up the bar towel and chucked it into the bucket of sanitizer. “ Apparently, stress can exacerbate the headaches ,” I mimicked in a high-pitched falsetto.
He smirked. “That, or you’re a shitty patient and won’t stay home and rest.”
“We had a very interesting conversation about you, though.”
I took pride in the way Chase choked on the sip of beer he had just downed. “What, uh, what about?”
I rolled my eyes. “Just get it over with. Where are the business cards? All the brochures? I bet you have a PowerPoint presentation and everything.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You asked Dr. Lewis for therapist recommendations.”
“For me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t bullshit me.”
Without another word, he yanked his wallet out and tossed a white business card my way. I glared at him as it landed in front of me.
“That good enough proof for you, darlin’?”
Warily, I snatched the card and looked at it. But it wasn’t a business card. It was an appointment card. The date said next week.
Chase wiped his mouth with a napkin and shoved his plate aside. Lacing his hands together, he said, “I ran into Dr. Lewis the morning you got out of the hospital. Jase was helping you get discharged, I hadn’t slept in days, so I went to Queen’s to get coffee before I had to go on duty. And yes, I asked for therapist recommendations.”
“Oh…” I handed the card back, catching a glimpse of an old photo of us in his wallet as he shimmied it back in.
Chase stared at the bar, scraping his thumbnail across his lower lip. “I had to talk to someone.”
“About what?”
He looked at me, pain lancing through this gaze. “You.”
“Oh.”
“I go every other week.” His brow was furrowed as he stared hard at a scratch in the bar top like it held the answer to his turmoil. “I saw them unload you from the ambulance. Your hair was bright red. I’ll never forget that. You’d lost so much blood that it looked like you got a bad dye job. Mel was covered in blood. Jase was, too. I held your hand as they wheeled you in. You were cold, Bee. Barely had a pulse.”
The noise of the bar faded behind us. It was a slow night. The dance floor was empty, and the only other patrons were in the corner shooting pool. Somehow, this dingy little hole-in-the-wall had turned into a sacred confessional.
“I never wanted you to see me like that.”
“I know.” He reached across the bar and held my hand. “When I was at your bedside, praying you’d wake up, all I could think about was that the last time you and I talked was when we danced at Hannah Jane and Isaac’s wedding.” He looked up at me, eyes full of remorse. “You cried while we were dancing. ”
The memory burned. “And you asked me what was wrong.”
“Do you remember what you said?”
Instead of answering, I made my way around the bar, took Chase’s hand, and led him to the dance floor.
Like so many times before, he took my hand in his. Instead of planting the other on my waist, he pulled me flush against him and slid his hand to the small of my back.
Brad Paisley crooned out “Then” on the jukebox while we swayed back and forth. As if life decided to give us a do-over, tears sprang to my eyes. Chase rubbed soothing circles on my back as we froze in the middle of the empty bar.
“Why are you crying, darlin’?”
I sniffed as I looked up at him. The words I had whispered to him while we shared a dance at Hannah Jane’s wedding rolled off my tongue. “Because I love you. Don’t ever doubt it.”
Chase pulled me into his arms, not caring that I was still bruised and sore. He held on to me like the roles were reversed. Like I was his rock. His shoulders shook as he wept into my shoulder, shedding tears over the tragedy that could have been.
“That night at the wedding—you knew you were gonna leave him.”
“Yeah,” I whispered into the crook of his neck, shaking as the tears racked my body. “And I knew if I didn’t tell you I loved you that night, I didn’t know if I’d ever get the chance.”