5. Self-Destruct
5.Self-Destruct
~ brIDGET ~
I dreamed that his eyes were on me, watching from the shadows. But instead of feeling creepy, it felt like protection.
God, I’m a mess.
I logged onto the computer the second I got up, hurrying through the VPN and masking, humming with anticipation—only for every system in my body to slump when there were no messages from him.
Then it felt like I didn’t want to move. Like my body had already burned through the fuel for the day and my blood was thick and running slow.
I checked my email because I was expecting a package, but only found another from Jeremy.
---
FROM: Asshole (Jeremy Haines)
TO: Bridget
SUBJECT: Stop playing games
---
What the fuck? Two days in a row?
The first niggle of uneasiness started in my chest. If Jeremy wasn’t waiting for me to think, then something was going on that was going to spell trouble for me.
Once again, I sat there, staring at the email, biting my lip, the mouse hovering over it… but I shook my head and left it unread. Let him figure out that.
My message window pinged and my heart jolted with hope that it was Cain. But instead, there was an image of the insane purple monster puppet and a notification window.
---
***SYSTEM NOTE: CHAT ENCRYPTED END-TO-END. ENSURE ALL ACCOUNTS ARE LOGGED OFF BEFORE DISCONNECTING.***
PurplePeoplEater: You’re up early.
DeadGirlWalking: That’s my line. Since when do you rise with the sun?
PurplePeoplEater: Since I never went down with the dark.
DeadGirlWalking: Ooooo, new boyfriend keeping you awake?
PurplePeoplEater: No. New meds. New levels of insomnia. I’m bored and exhausted and procrastinating. Tell me your dreams.
DeadGirlWalking: I dreamed I had a normal day—gym, lunch, around the house—but every second there was a guy watching me. It was hot.
PurplePeoplEater: Sound stalkery.
DeadGirlWalking: Exactly.
PurplePeoplEater: You need therapy.
DeadGirlWalking: Already taken care of.
---
Shit. Shit.
I looked at the date on the corner of the screen.
Fuck.
How had an entire week passed already? I groaned and tucked my hair back behind my ears.
---
DeadGirlWalking: I gotta go.
PurplePeoplEater: Nature calls?
DeadGirlWalking: No, you pervert. I literally have therapy.
PurplePeoplEater: You’re shitting me.
DeadGirlWalking: I wish. See you tonight.
PurplePeoplEater: No doubt. It’s not like I sleep or anything.
---
I sent a GIF of an orange fluffy blob hugging a depressed looking purple fluffy blob, then logged out and went through the process of shutting everything down, my stomach dropping closer to my toes with every window that closed, or screen that disappeared.
When the computer had gone quiet, I reassured myself that I still had an hour to shower and brace. But it didn’t work.
That hour went all too quickly.
“Any progress on a visit to your father?” Gerald asked casually, keeping his eyes down on the papers in front of him so I was staring at the bald pate of his head.
“Going straight for third base,” I drawled. “Bold. Can we even pretend you’re going to buy me dinner first?”
He lifted his eyes to shoot me a look over the top of his glasses. “Deflection,” he said, enunciating each syllable perfectly, because that’s what Gerald did. He didn’t need to say more. We’d had this conversation dozens of times.
I stopped pretending. “My father is dead.”
“Your father is being housed in the State Penitentiary.”
“No, the monster that inhabits the body that was once my father is in prison. My dad died when I was seven.” He was the literal nightmare before Christmas.
Gerald pulled his glasses off and let them drop to the desk in front of him, rubbing his eyes and pinching his nose in frustration. “Bridget, we’ve talked about this. You cannot simply decide something is true. The man whose DNA is in your body is alive—and definitely un well, and has attempted to reach out to you several times. Whether you like it or not, he is your father. He might die. And this could be your last chance to speak with him before he does.”
“I don’t give two shits whether his body dies or not.”
Gerald sat back in his chair, staring at me with open frustration. “I have been on this earth more than twice as long as you and I’m telling you, the day will come that you will wish you asked your questions and got your answers before he was gone and there was never another chance.”
I sat forward, elbows on my knees and snarled through my teeth. “And I’m telling you just because you have daddy issues, doesn’t mean you can project them onto me.”
He shook his head and pointed at me. “Deflection. Again.”
I pointed at myself. “Fucks. Not given.”
I saw the corners of his mouth tighten because he was trying not to smile and got a tiny little warm fizz in my chest.
Gerald wasn’t bad when he wasn’t fixating on trying to solve me like a puzzle. He had a great sense of humor and could be extremely clever and cutting in his commentary on the world. It was my goal before our sessions ended to make him laugh outright—and to not let him know when I thought he was funny. I might have stolen a few of his better, intelligent insults to use in jousts against the trolls online. I thought if we met outside a therapeutic setting, we could have been friends. Or something.
But he was a respected Psychiatrist, and thought he knew everything about me. And because it was his job, he thought he had me figured out.
He knew nothing.
“You aren’t cute,” he muttered, all hint of humor dying on the crags of his aging face.
“So, now we’re listing traits we don’t aspire to? Okay, cool. You aren’t—”
“What happened this week? What are you so scared I’m going to notice that you don’t want to talk about?” he asked quietly.
I froze, then cursed myself when the triumph flashed in his eyes. Trying to play it off, I rolled my eyes and shook my head, sitting back on the couch as an excuse to look away.
“God, you’re like one of those irritating little dogs, yap yap yapping—”
“And you’re panicking. What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on! My life is boring.”
“You could get a job.”
“Why? I don’t need the money. Are you trying to tell me there’s some greater human experience in being forced to bend over and take it from a dude whose only outlet for his masculine rage is to lord the power of the swipe-card over the drones in the office?”
“How about, so you could find a purpose beyond your own impotent rage? Something to contribute to outside your own misery?”
“I have a purpose.”
“No, Bridget, you have an addiction to adrenaline caused by childhood trauma, erratic moods, and probably borderline anti-social personality disorder.”
“I’m not anti-social. I’m anti-dicks.”
“Oh, really? How many sexual partners have you had in the past month?”
I folded my arms and gave him a nasty grin. “Not those kinds of dicks, Gerald. But thank you for taking the cheap shot again. I’m keeping a log.”
“And that, right there, is exactly why we’re never going to get anywhere, Bridget. I am here to help you, to guide you, to offer insight and advice. I am not your combatant to be manipulated or… or forced into submission.”
I raised one eyebrow. “Is that how you like it, Gerald? Do you want to be dominated?”
He gave me a very flat look.
I smiled. But my heart wasn’t in it.
I kind of liked Gerald. He wasn’t intimidated by me. He was the eighth “therapist” I’d had since I was emancipated at the age of sixteen, and the first one to have lasted more than a year since I hit legal adulthood and could tell the Powers That Be where to shove their ass-puckered, pearl-clutchers that called themselves professionals but got wheezy at the first mention of blood play.
God, if they only knew.
But they didn’t. And neither did Gerald. But he got enough. He didn’t treat me like fragile glass that was going to shatter at the slightest push. Of course, he was also a right royal pain in the ass, and not in the good way.
He’d dropped his face into his hands and was rubbing his eyes again, which was a little concerning. I enjoyed the combative nature of our exchanges. He wasn’t going to pussy-out on me now, was he?
Then he dropped his hands to the desk and looked at me and his expression was grim.
“It was a joke,” I muttered.
“I know,” he snapped back. “But that’s the problem, Bridget. Two years of this… war. Two years and I don’t see you getting better and that’s not because I haven’t given you good advice.”
I pouted. “Awwww, is the doctor wowwied about his cwedibiwity—”
“Drop the fucking act, Bridget! You’re not a rebellious teenager anymore. This isn’t angst. You’re a grown woman who is on a path to self-destruction, and I am becoming more and more convinced that I’m the only one who cares—it’s certainly evident that you don’t!”
I blinked. Gerald had gotten frustrated with me before, but he’d never raised his voice. I stared at him, considering and discarding several cutting replies, and a couple of threats, too. I was unhappy about the sudden jangle of fear in my chest.
It wasn’t the good kind.
Was he giving up on me?
Did I care?
Gerald leaned on the desk, his entire posture bristling. “One thing, Bridget. I want you to tell me one thing you’ve done as a result of our time together to improve your mental health or wellbeing. Just one!”
“I wear the stupid heart monitor when I work out, and I usually avoid coffee,” I said quickly, because it was true.
But Gerald shook his head. “You do those things to keep our mutual friend off your back. I want to know what I’ve recommended that you’ve chosen to follow for yourself.”
I pressed my lips together and did some bristling of my own. “Are we suffering performance anxiety, Ger—?”
He shoved out of his seat and stormed around the desk towards me. Adrenaline shoved through my veins and I instinctively sprang to my feet, taking a defensive stance, assessing him—much taller and with longer arms so he could reach me easier. But there was some softness around his middle and—
He drew up short on the other side of the coffee table, his brows high and jaw slack. “Bridget, I’m not going to attack you… dear God.”
I blinked, realizing I was in a fighting stance and he was just standing there, gaping at me.
I dropped my arms immediately, shame and self-disgust rolling through me in a wave as the anger died in his eyes to be replaced with a deep sadness. His forehead pressed to lines and he stared at me like… like he was grieving.
Ugh.
“Bridget,” he said, then shook his head. “I’m not trying to bait you. I’m genuinely terrified that you’re going to get yourself killed,” he said quietly. “Every second you’re late to an appointment I wonder if you’re out there in a dumpster behind some dive bar where the local psycho stuffed your body. Every day I brace before reading the news in case I stumble on an article about the body of an unidentified female. I know you think you handle yourself—and I know you can. But… god… the risks…”
He kind of slumped, and my entire body ached with self-loathing.
“I don’t know,” he muttered, rubbing a hand over the smooth top of his head. “I don’t even know if I’m helping. I don’t know if—”
“I show up,” I said bluntly.
“Yes, but—”
“No, Gerald that’s… that’s real for me,” I said, folding my arms and avoiding his eyes that had snapped to my face when I spoke. “That’s a thing. That’s a… one thing that I’ve done that’s good for me. I show up. I never showed up for anyone before. So that’s… you did that,” I admitted, squirming, because I could feel him taking that all kinds of ways.
“Bridget—”
“I’m not going to tell you that I’m better and all is well. But… I hear you, okay. I don’t always agree, but I hear you. When you talk, I listen. Even when I deflect. ”
His head kind of eased back and he looked at me, a little stunned. “Well… thank you for telling me that.”
I shrugged, because I was very afraid he was going to want to hug me, and my skin felt too tight and I thought if he squeezed me at all my guts might actually burst out of my body and— ugh.
He watched me for a second, then sighed heavily. “Don’t worry. I’ll go back to my seat now.”
And he did. When he sat back down, I did too. But I didn’t know what to say, or do. I twisted my hands together in my lap and my skin itched. I wanted to run. It was the most uncomfortable I’d felt in months.
And the fucker knew it, and didn’t talk to break the tension, he just stared at me, challenging me to flee.
I kept my arms folded and crossed my legs at the knee as well, pushing out my lower jaw to meet the challenge, because maybe I wasn’t going to run, but I wasn’t gonna talk first, either.
A minute later, Gerald sighed again, then picked up his glasses and cleaned them with an old-school cloth hankerchief he got out of his pocket, them put them on as he began to scribble some notes on the paper in front of him.
“Same time next week?” he asked quietly.
I nodded.
He stopped writing. “There’s something I want you to consider between now and then.”
“Okay,” I muttered.
He looked at me and I looked back, wary, but waiting.
“I understand you’re not ready to talk to your dad. But… I want you to consider whether there’s anyone else in your life who’s there because they care about you. Who isn’t Court-ordered, or medically advised. Who doesn’t get paid to talk to you.”
“Like you?” I asked sweetly.
He shot me a look and kept going. “I want you to look for someone who… just cares about you. Anyone at all. An older person who maybe knew you when you were younger and has at least an inkling of what you’ve been through. Someone you could talk to. Even if it’s not about dark stuff. But just about your day to day life… someone who cares about you, just because they care about you. Do you know the kind of person I mean?”
I did, and I nodded, though I hadn’t had that kind of person in my life since high school.
“Before you come see me next week, I’m asking you to do something for me. I’m asking you to seek a person out. Maybe have coffee. Maybe lunch. Maybe just go for a walk. I don’t know. I just… Bridget, I think you need someone to prove to you that you’re worth caring about. Someone who doesn’t have any external reason to care. They just know you, and like you. Can you give that some thought? Call it a different kind of risk.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
He met my eyes evenly. “I mean, you need to realize that you can be loved, my girl. And the only way you’re ever going to believe that is if you let someone show you they care when they don’t have any other reason to be there.”
I frowned harder. “Okay.”
Gerald rolled his eyes, but then he smiled a little. “Just… baby steps. If it’s not easy, maybe just think about who that person might be, and how you might get in touch with them. That’s all. Let’s say you don’t need to take any action yet. Just… identify a target,” he said dryly, using language I often used.
I shrugged. “Fine.”
Then he fixed me with another of those stern gazes. “Bridget, you like to put yourself in situations where your body and wellbeing are in danger. I’m asking you to put yourself in a situation where someone could hurt your heart . Where you risk rejection. Where you might care, and they might let you down. That’s the kind of risk we’re looking for.”
“Whatever.”
“Avoiding these kinds of relationships is just one more form of self-destruction.”
I rolled my eyes then. “I’ve told you countless times, I’m not going to destroy myself.” I’m going to let Cain do it for me.
Gerald didn’t look impressed, but he also didn’t respond. “Just think about it. We’ll talk about it next week,” he said quietly.
“I will.”
But I don’t think he believed me.