11. Inside Her Head
~ SAM ~
I woke to find her standing next to the bed, her eyes red and puffy from crying, but dry now and a little too wide. She had the journal in her hand.
I sucked in and sat up, but she didn’t move. “Bridget?”
“This is stupid,” she breathed.
I thought she meant the idea of her giving me the story and my heart sank. I reached for her hand, but she shook her head.
“I trust you, Sam. Of course you can read this. It’s just… please… read all the way to the end before you talk to me?”
I swallowed hard and nodded. “Only if you’re sure?”
Her breath hitched, but she nodded quickly. Then, in a quick movement like she was making herself do it before she lost her nerve, she held the journal out.
Suddenly, I was afraid. Not of the contents of that journal, but of how she might react to me reading. I took it as she swallowed audibly.
“I’m going to take a shower then go for a walk on the beach,” she said quietly as I reached for the journal.
“Okay.”
She started to turn, but I caught her hand and pulled her back. “Bridget, it’s going to be okay. I promise,” I said quietly, then tugged her closer for a soft kiss.
She took a long, slow breath as I kissed her, but she didn’t meet my eyes as she turned away and walked into the bathroom. I gave her that vulnerability and sat back against the headboard of the bed, praying as I opened that terrifying book that I could find the way through this that wouldn’t scare her further. Then, just as the pathetic shower turned on in the little bathroom, I started reading, and the first line gutted me so much I was glad she wasn’t there to see the way I had to swallow tears.
Why didn’t my mother love me enough to leave my father and keep us both safe?
Why wasn’t I worth that?
I had often had similar thoughts about my mother, though for very different reasons. I couldn’t imagine looking back from a child’s perspective and seeing what she saw.
If only her mom had found the courage to leave.
If only she’d cared more about protecting her daughter than staying with a man who terrified her. But I also knew men like Gordon Reynolds, Bridget’s father. The chances were that her mother tried to leave. Probably more than once. And that fucker didn’t let her.
When I talked to her dad, I’d made the observation that the anger of his actions told me that Bridget’s mother had probably cheated—or at least, Gordon thought she had.
Gordon never responded to that query, but his eyes had gone very cold.
I hated that Bridget felt like that about her mom, but I understood it too.
I kept reading… and what I found made me ill.
A few minutes later, while I was still reeling, Bridget walked out of the bathroom and to the front door. She met my eyes and squeezed out a tiny smile, but she obviously didn’t want to talk, so I nodded and let her go while I went back to reading. When the screen banged behind her, it startled me because I’d just read about her parent’s fight from the eyes of seven-year-old Bridget, watching in horror as her father pulled a gun and put it to her mother’s head.
That poor, little girl watched her mother’s head explode—that’s how she described it. Except, it was the side of her head. She watched her mother’s eyes roll back and her face turn into a really scary expression, but there was blood and black pieces everywhere.
And the only comfort the adult Bridget had when she remembered that moment was that her mother didn’t have time to feel herself die. It was instantaneous. She twitched, and slumped, and twitched again, hanging from Gordon’s grip on her hair… then that bastard let her crumple to the floor while Bridget stared and screamed. And wet her pants.
As a child, she was fixated on that point for years.
Her mother died, and she wet her pants. A mortifying embarrassment for a seven-year-old who was too big a girl to be doing that.
That’s what her cunt of a father told her. She was too big for that shit.
I’d felt anger towards the man before this, but the rage that coursed through me when I read that… I was glad Bridget wasn’t there to see it, because it would scare her. I had to get out of the bed and pace because if I didn’t move, I’d end up breaking something.
Half an hour later, Bridget returned from her walk and I was still pacing the bedroom, still reading. She looked alarmed when she saw me. I realized I was gripping tight and clenching my teeth, and generally looking angry. I fought for a moment, struggling to access the tenderness she needed. I needed to react to this story, but I couldn’t scare her.
For a moment I felt trapped.
Help me not to make this worse, God. Because I want to go do some murder myself right now.
Good thing Gordon was already dead. And yet, a part of me was furious that he’d died earlier this year. I wanted to get my hands on his throat and watch his eyes roll back in his head—
I shoved those thoughts away and cleared my throat, focusing on the very alarmed looking Bridget who was standing next to the dining table watching me like I was a prowling lion.
I took a deep breath and stopped moving. “Don’t worry, babe. I’m angry at him,” I said gruffly, then walked to her and took her in my arms. “I’m so, so sorry for what you’ve been through.”
“Sam, I—”
She was stiff in my arms, and I remembered she didn’t want me to talk about it until I was done. So I released her immediately and stepped back nodding. “Sorry, sorry. I’ll let you go. I just wanted you to know—I’m moving to keep myself calm. But I’m fine.”
She nodded, but looked uneasy and I cursed myself for not thinking. I let her go make herself some coffee and I went back to the journal. But fear and rage were crackling down my spine.
I’d been eager to get into this, to see into her mind and understand the demons she fought every day. But the more I read, the more I prayed I could get through it without hurting her further.
Was I strong enough for this?
It was a strange, strange day.
Bridget was tired and quiet, but we reversed roles from the past two days. I got lost in the story, seeing every moment she described play out in my mind.
And strangely, the hardest parts were the pages when she stopped talking about events and started reflecting. On herself.
She recounted the first time she got her period and for some reason the blood triggered her. She didn’t understand why she had a panic attack. Her aunt thought she was freaking out about her period starting and didn’t click that she’d been triggered.
For years, Bridget was convinced there was something wrong with her because she had these strange reactions to things.
Christmas was ruined for her from the start, but as a kid she still wanted presents and to talk to others at school about what she was given. But she couldn’t enjoy it like she had before. And over the years, the Christmas blues turned into outright anxiety. She started drinking to keep herself sane during the holidays when she was fifteen.
Richard, the old chaplain at her fancy private school, and the man who’s death had brought us into contact with each other, came into her life around that time. She got upset with this sweet old man when he was kind and caring because it made her feel fragile. She grew angry with him for warning her against sleeping around and drinking, but then she also got mad when she “flipped out” on him, and he stopped asking about what she’d been doing.
Life was very confusing for the teenage Bridget.
When she turned to talking about how she met Jeremy, the fucker who’d almost put me back in prison, it made my skin crawl.
Bridget and I had talked about Jeremy so many times in the past year. Sometimes those conversations made me bitter because her memories of him seemed so skewed. He was a controlling bastard. And sure, I could be grateful to him for keeping her safe for so many years… but that was only because he knew her from when she was a teenager. Knowing she was so alone in the world back then and he was the one watching over her… it made my skin crawl.
Then later, after she turned twenty-one, she’d dived deep into the dark web and developed a sexual penchant for the dark side of life. That fucker helped her use herself as bait for the psychos she found there. Eventually, before I met her, one of them almost killed her. Even though he got her out of there just in time, he was half-responsible for putting her in that position to begin with. One wrong step, just a few more minutes and I never would have met Bridget.
I could never forgive him for that.
But Bridget had. She took responsibility for all that bullshit on herself.
I shook my head and tried to focus on something other than Jeremy.
I didn’t miss that Bridget’s handwriting grew erratic over the following pages.
She’d jump between telling stories and talking about how she felt, or what she feared—her anger towards her father, her frustration with Jeremy’s control, and yet also the co-dependence she felt with Jeremy because he fed something safe into the reckless self-destruction that was growing in her.
It was stunning to read that even back then, somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew she needed a protector. She knew she needed someone who would jump in and save her in the moments she might not understand that she needed saving.
She knew it, but she fought it as well. And according to this journal, she still didn’t know why.
I read all day. My head spinning. More than once my body tensed as I instinctively wanted to jump into those page and pull the younger Bridget back from the precipice of the newest danger or wound.
To my relief, Bridget grew more relaxed as the day wore on. She came to sit close more than once. Laying down and sleeping alongside me when I lay on the bed, sitting food in front of me and just leaving it when I was out on the deck—like I’d done for her when she was writing.
There was only one moment when I broke free of the book and met her eyes.
She’d come outside to take away my dinner plate, and as she leaned over the table and reached for it, I caught her wrist and made her look at me.
I was reading about how alone she had always felt.
Her mother wouldn’t leave for her.
Her father threatened to kill her, then went to prison.
Her aunt took care of her, but only for the money.
Her aunt’s boyfriend violated her.
Her teachers got frustrated and gave up on her when she became too out of hand.
Even when she had friends, their lives were so different to hers, she always felt isolated from them. And she never told them the truth about her life.
I held her wrist and stared at her, and Bridget’s eyes grew wary.
“What?” she breathed.
“Babe,” my voice was deep and rough from lack of use. “You’re never going to be alone again. Not as long as I’m alive.”
Tears spilled over immediately. I put the journal aside and pulled her into my lap, holding her and fighting my own wave of tears as she sobbed.
I don’t know how long she let me hold her, but by the time she crawled off my lap, she’d stopped crying and she gave me a brief kiss, then took the dishes inside.
Hours later, it was dark. I had been reading by the light of the citronella candles for an hour when I finally reached the end of her story—and to my surprise, Bridget started writing about me.
I’d never seen myself as part of this story, but as part of her new life.
But as Bridget reflected on her life, her family, and where it had all brought her, she turned her thoughts to me. With an aching chest I read how, from her eyes, I had helped her, listened to her, and didn’t give up on her.
She recounted in detail that moment when she demanded that I sign the plea deal that would have sent me back to prison. And for the first time, I learned that she’d done it because she was so in love with me and so desperate to take me back, she’d been convinced she wasn’t seeing me clearly. She thought she couldn’t trust her own heart, that she was fooling herself again.
She thought challenging me would prove to herself that I was full of shit.
But I did as she asked. And in her words, she’d never felt so loved before.
She wrote that three times.
And then, when I was already swallowing a pinch in my throat, she skipped to a fresh page and wrote to me.
~
Sam,
I don’t know what will happen when this is done. I don’t know whether this is going to work. I’m not even sure I’ll have the courage to let you read this—or maybe you’ll give up before you get this far.
I don’t know.
What I do know is, if you get here, I need you to know that I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. And I still wake up every day terrified that you’re going to realize what a waste of space I am, and leave me.
I’m not saying that to make you rush to me and tell me it’ll never happen. I’m saying it because it’s true. I feel that. If I met myself, I wouldn’t want to be close to me.
I’m a basket case.
I’m erratic.
I’m a mess.
I’m unreliable.
I panic about stupid things like Christmas lights.
Everything about me ruins life.
But you look at me like I’m a prize. You treat me like I’m precious. When I’m with you, I feel like I’m worth something. I know it’s not fair to put that on you. You already carry your own shit, but now you’re carrying mine? It’s not fair on you. I know that. But I need you.
I have needed you my whole life. And now, here you are.
If this ever goes wrong. If I ever ruin this, I need you to know NOW, while it’s still good, that I see what you do, and you amaze me.
I have never loved anyone the way I love you, and I know I never will. You are one of a kind, and you’re the perfect kind for me.
Thank you.
Thank you for being willing to love me even when it isn’t easy. Thank you for putting up with my crazy, and still finding me hot. Thank you for hunting me when I need it, and holding me when I don’t. Thank you for not letting me push you away.
It’s been almost a year, and I understand it now. You sacrificed yourself for me. I didn't deserve it, and you did it anyway. You also helped me face my father. Now that he’s gone I can see how important that was for me to do. I’m still working on that forgiveness thing, but I wouldn’t even be halfway here without you. Hell, I wouldn’t be here at all without you.
I know you say that was God, but I don’t see that. I see you. Thank you for loving me the way you do. I don’t know how to love like you do. But I’m going to try.
And also, you are hot as fuck.
Damn, I’m the luckiest woman alive.
I love you,
Bridget
~
My breath rushed out of me. I closed the journal and lay it gently on the table, staring in stunned silence. Then I dropped my face into my hands and gave myself a minute, just one, to weep for her.
It was so much. She carried so much. How the hell was I going to get it right? How was it possible I could see ahead for her and make sure she stayed safe?
Help me God. I can’t get this wrong!
But as soon as those thoughts were purged, I knew there was only one way forward: Together. I had to see her.
She’d gone down to the waterfall earlier. I didn’t know if she was swimming or just sitting in the cooler air near the water, but I stripped off my shorts and ran down the ramp to find her.
I reached the bank of the swimming hole as she popped up out of the water with a splash.
I watched her emerge, her head back and hands up to push the water back from her hair—then she caught sight of me at the edge of the pool and she stilled, her eyes going round with fear.
For a split second I saw every version of her—the child convinced she didn’t matter, the adolescent certain no one cared, the young woman who felt used and threatened, and the adult woman I met who had decided she was worthless and life had no point…
“You’re worth so much,” I rasped. “You have no idea, Bridget.”
Her eyes widened further and she pressed her hands to her belly. “What are you—is it too much? I don’t mind if you—”
With a desperate growl, I plowed into the water, splashing, running to her until it became too deep, then I forced my way through it, stroking with my arms until I reached her and could take her face in my hands and pull her into a deep, desperate kiss.
Bridget sucked in when our lips met and her hands went to my wrists. She gripped me tightly, but didn’t pull my hands away.
I looked down on her and whispered, “I love you. I will always love you. I’m not going anywhere.” Then I kissed her again as she sobbed into my mouth and clung to me. And it was such a relief. Such a relief that she didn’t push me away, I almost did a little sobbing myself.