43. There is No Choice
~ brIDGET ~
I watched him, but he was finding a reason to look out at the water.
“You can’t tell anyone the things I told you,” I blurted suddenly.
That brought his eyes back to me. “I won’t,” he said simply. “On one condition.”
That made my instincts scream. I went still and wary, but he brought his hands up as if to soothe me.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said quickly. “I meant… I meant, I want to ask you not to meet this Cain guy again without talking to me first.”
Everything in me deflated. I shook my head “I’m not going to do that, Sam. I barely know you and he’s… I don’t know if I’ll even see him again—” My head echoed soon, proving me a liar, but I ignored it—“but if I do… that’s between me and him.”
Sam sat back, propping up on his arms. It made his chest and shoulders pop, and his shirt cling to his flat stomach. “So… if we work this out… if we got together… you’d still see him?”
I wasn’t eating, but I choked like I’d inhaled the Fettucine. “No. Not like that … I mean… no. But I… you can’t… that’s not—”
“I like you, Bridget. I feel like we get each other. And I know I’d be a helluva lot better for you than some monster in the dark who’s indulging his fantasies.”
“That’s not what’s going on,” I croaked, still trying to clear my throat.
“Whatever, I just… If I learned anything in the past few years it’s that playing games and dancing around things can be fun for a time, but it gets old fast. I’m trying to get away from thinking that way. So I’m here. I’m telling you that I like you. But if we’re… if we become something, I don’t want to share you with some dude in a mask creeping around in the dark.”
All the protests and excuses rushed up my throat, ready to be thrown at him. But he was sitting there, just baldly staring at me, waiting to see what I’d say.
“Why?” I rasped.
“Why do I not want to share you?”
“No. Why me?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. But I can’t keep my eyes off you. And when you’re not around, I wish you were. It’s really that simple.”
I just stared.
“But… you’re good.”
He sat forward, shaking his head. “Depends on the day, honestly,” he said, clawing a hand through his hair. “But I try. I mean, more than I ever have before.”
Then he met my eyes again and I felt the light in his eyes. It crackled in the air and in my chest and made my heart beat faster.
I couldn’t remember what we talked about after that because my head was spinning, and I spent the whole time arguing with myself about whether I should take him seriously, or whether I’d destroy him.
At some point he got to his feet and offered me a hand to help me get up. I thought for a second he might pull me into his chest when I got up, but after a moment’s hesitation, he let me go and reached down to stuff the trash into the bag, then gather up the blanket that he slung over the arm closest to me as we walked back to the car.
I was confused.
He’d declared himself, hadn’t he?
But now he was walking along, staring at the ground and acting like we were just friends out for a walk.
He opened the car door for me, then drove me home.
But neither of us really talked, and I couldn’t decide if the silence was tense with awkwardness, or anticipation. Because I didn’t know what he was doing.
And apparently neither did he.
When he pulled up at my house, he got out quickly and trotted around to get my door, then walked me up the path to make sure I got in.
I unlocked the door with trembling fingers, then just as I turned the knob, I looked over my shoulder at him, about to invite him in to see if I could get a look at the rest of his tattoos.
But even though he stepped closer, when I swung the door open, he caught my elbow, and pulled me back from the stoop to stand in front of him on the porch.
“Sam… What are you doing?” I breathed.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “But it feels right.” And his eyes were gleaming.
I grabbed his arm, flashed him a grin and started to turn towards the door, pulling him with me. But—
“Bridget, no, I’m sorry.”
He held back and I couldn’t move him.
I turned to face him again, my breath coming fast and short. “For real?”
He scratched the back of his neck. “Not a priest, but… waiting for marriage now, remember?” he asked sheepishly.
I actually laughed. “You can’t be serious?”
His eyes flashed. “Deadly.”
Want pulsed through me, zinging in my chest, even though I was completely off balance and so unclear on what was going on here.
But I made myself hold his gaze, though I folded my arms across my chest because it felt stronger. “Okay then,” I kind of laughed. “So what is allowed?”
He sidled right up to me, watching me with a question in his eyes, then slowly lifted his hands to cup my face. And when I didn’t break his gaze, or pull away, he leaned in slowly and… kissed me. Softly at first, his lips barely brushing mine. Gently. His tongue barely sliding beyond my lip, but that tender need stole my breath.
I unwrapped my arms from myself and gripped his forearms, holding onto him not to stop him, but because I suddenly felt like I might topple over if I wasn’t holding onto something.
And then he groaned softly, tilted his head and deepened the kiss—still keeping it slow, but intense, his lips dancing with mine, his tongue flicking, our breaths mingling…
I got lost in that kiss. I hadn’t had a guy kiss me without grabbing me somewhere since I was in high school. But somehow… somehow the innocence of it only made it hotter.
I leaned into him, slowly letting go of his wrists to wrap my arms around his trim waist.
But just as I leaned in and began to press myself against him, he broke the kiss, but didn’t let go of my face.
We just stood there, a bare inch apart, staring at each other.
I discovered that I was half-blind with need, and half-terrified.
Then he muttered a curse and suddenly, I was pinned up against the house, his hands in my hair, his body pressed against mine from chest to knee, and his breath thundering on my cheek.
Every thought that had been spinning in my head just flew out. The world was suddenly made up of nothing but his warmth, his strength, and that tormented kiss.
Sam was shaking under my hands. As I wrapped arms around him and pulled him in, I felt him quiver. When he slid a knee between mine and pressed it right up high and firm at the apex of my thighs, I gasped and dropped my head back.
With a rasped, “Shit, Bridget!” he dove for my throat, and I clawed a hand into his hair, pulling him tighter against me as goosebumps washed down my arm and side.
I rolled my hips, pressing myself on his thigh, and it made my breath stop.
He shuddered again, and want exploded in my belly.
I reached down with both hands, scrambling for his belt-buckle, mentally mapping the route through the house to my bedroom, then deciding that was too far, and I’d tell him to hike me up on the sideboard in the hallway. But there was a couch in the living room that was closer and—
With a muttered curse, Sam suddenly tore away from me, and the night chill rushed into the gap he left as he stumbled away from me, practically fell down the step off my porch, rasping, “I’ll call you tomorrow,” then turned and fled to his car .
And to my shock, I was left there, panting and flustered, as the car screeched out of my driveway, then down the road, the gears grinding and engine whining because he was accelerating so hard.
I stood there, shocked and horny, for too long, still somehow convinced that he would come back.
But he didn’t.
When I finally accepted that he wasn’t going to, I turned on trembling knees and stumbled inside as the fierce disappointment and lingering sense of rejection slowly roiled inside me.
With a burst of spite, I almost left the door open, half-hoping that Cain was out there somewhere, watching all of this unfold. Half-hoping that he’d show up, pissed and needy, and finally take me.
But then, part of my heart screamed that wouldn’t be fair to Sam—who was being up front, and not leaving me in the dark…
And yet, I liked the dark. I liked it when Cain didn’t ask, just took what he wanted.
I wanted to be wanted like that.
But didn’t Sam want me like that? Wasn’t that what had just happened? He’d wanted so much, he had to flee? Or was it all just some weird religious thing?
I made myself close and lock the front door, but not without a look out into the dark in case a shadow moved and separated from the rest of the night… but there was nothing.
As I walked slowly back to my bedroom, the two men flickered through my mind… like yin and yang—one light, one dark. Both touched by the other.
Cain felt like my evil twin—dark, aggressive, dangerous, And yet… I remembered Cain putting me in that bath, and cleaning my wounds. There was a touch of light in him. Something that made me safe, just for the necessary moments.
Sam felt like sunlight—he brightened the day and made it safer. His quiet strength fed something in me that had been screaming and alone for far too long. And yet… he still possessed that edge that stole my breath. When he’d let himself give in to it…
Still, they’d both left me. Just left me, hanging in the wind.
Sam seemed like maybe he understood my darkness, but wanted to lead me out of it. And I knew that’s what I needed. I knew if I sat in front of Gerald and described these two men, he’d throw me bodily into Sam’s arms, and call the cops on Cain.
I knew I needed a man like Sam who wanted what was good for me.
But Cain…
Cain was what I wanted.
That tiny, distant voice in the back of my skull shrieked that Cain and I would destroy each other… While the part of me that needed danger sobbed that Sam would end up watching, helpless, as I tipped over the edge…
I was so confused.
Both men made my heart beat faster. Both made me nervous, though for different reasons.
How could I possibly choose?
I knew I’d have to, because neither of them was going to share.
But when I got to my bedroom and threw my clothes in the hamper, still feeling strange and off-balance, and horny, as I slipped between the covers and slipped my hand between my legs, it hit me.
Hard.
My eyes flew open and I froze, mind racing…
Visions of Cain in pursuit… fighting… winning.
Everything I wanted.
Visions of Sam, carrying the pain and darkness because he empathized with me…
Everything I needed, but…
I took a long, slow breath and started to grieve a little bit. Because there was no choice.
Sam wasn’t just going to lead me into light, he would fight the darkness in me—and I didn’t think that was a battle either of us could win. So what would happen when he finally figured out that I was always going to be dark?
I knew exactly what would happen.
Cain and I were mutually assured destruction.
But Sam… I would just destroy him.
Which meant there was no choice. It had to be Cain.
But the risk…
The risk with Cain was that he’d leave completely. Decide I wasn’t worth the risk. And then where would I be?
The panic that coursed through me at that thought was potent and terrifying… and left in its wake a sudden clarity.
Maybe that was point?
Maybe Sam had been asking the wrong questions all along. Maybe he’d been right that this was all intentional on God’s part—to show me the way to the end?
Maybe God didn’t bring me Sam to save me. Maybe he was just there to make it all clear. To point me down the path I’d been avoiding since the beginning with Cain.
Maybe I was just supposed to find the right way out. With Cain.
It had to be.
Something settled over me then and I thought of my computer.
I got out of bed naked, but I didn’t feel cold as I walked down the hall to my office and turned on my computer. Just sad. Really sad.
And kind of relieved.
It was almost time.