40. Jason
40
JASON
“ D on’t leave!” Bridget yelled as Melissa ran out the door.
Mel let it slam behind her as she hurried out, wiping tears as she went.
“Jason!” Bee screamed, whipping around to face me. “Go after her!”
I grabbed my sister’s shoulders to steady her, then pulled back, scared that I would have touched her somewhere she was hurting.
She was undeterred—hysterical—shouting at me that I had to chase after a woman who had done the lowest possible thing I could think of.
“The only thing I care about right now is making sure you’re going to be fine being here alone for the five minutes it’s going to take me to kill him.”
“Jason, you don’t understand,” Bridget sobbed as she clamped onto my arm and dragged me toward the door. “You can’t let her go. You have to go get Mel .”
I wrapped my arms around her shoulders to stop her flailing. “ You’re fucking hurt, Bee. You’re—you’re in shock,” I snapped. “You need to go to a fucking hospital.”
“No! You need to go to the hospital to go get Mel!”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. Stubborn women were going to be the death of me.
Only my sister would be covered in ten shades of purple and would be absolutely hysterical about my relationship status.
My voice was terse, the utter rage barely restrained as I said, “She lied to me, Bee. About…”
I couldn’t even look my sister in the eye. There were bruises beneath the layers of makeup she had painted on. Her lip looked like she had been sucker-punched by a heavyweight champ.
“She should have told me. I don’t care if I was still in the fucking Navy and would have been going AWOL. I would have come back the goddamn minute someone called.”
Bridget yanked herself free from my arms and stomped to the kitchen table, grabbing her car keys.
“Where are you going?” I asked as she blew back past me.
Her tears had begun to form rivulets on her cheeks. “If you’re not going to protect Mel, then I sure as hell am. It’s what I’ve been doing this whole time. It’s the least I can do after everything she’s done for me.”
“Whoa,” I said as I jumped in front of her and blocked the door. “What the hell are you talking about? Protecting her ? Bee, you—you’re in shock. Okay?” I tried to calm myself. To steady my tone. Matching her unhinged energy wouldn’t do any good. “Mel’s fine.”
“You dumbass!” she grunted as she shoved me out of the way. “She’s in danger . Okay? And it’s because of me. So either get your head out of your ass and help me, or get the hell out of my way.”
“Bee—”
She shoved past me, shoulder-checking me on the way out .
“Fucking insane women,” I muttered as I grabbed my keys, locked the door, and ran after her. “Get in the truck, and I’ll take you wherever you need to go,” I called out as I sprinted after her. How was she so fucking fast?
Bridget stalled. “You promise you’re going to do exactly as I say?”
I looked at her. She was so strong. Vivacious. I’d always been proud to have her as my baby sister. She was my Bumble Bee. How the hell had this gone on for so long?
“Within reason,” I said. It was all I could promise. Not when my world was crumbling.
Thankfully, that was good enough for her.
“We’ve gotta go. I’ve been here way too long.” She got in the truck and directed me to a little grocery store where she had parked her car. It was a vehicle from Kingsley’s dealership. All shiny and new. Not a speck or scratch on it.
Of course, he’d keep up appearances. Shiny cars. A perfect house. But it was all fake. A pretty fa?ade so that no one would ask questions.
“You walked to her apartment from here?” I asked as I parked the truck.
Bridget had used some fast-food napkins to dab her eyes on the drive. She wadded them up and stuffed them in the little compartment below the radio dials. “I cut through the woods. It’s less than a quarter-mile. Much faster than the road. This isn’t my first rodeo.” She got out and shut the truck door.
“Bridget, I need you to tell me what happened.”
She didn’t answer, just unlocked the car and grabbed her phone out of the center console. I didn’t miss the sigh of relief she let out when there weren’t any missed calls or messages.
“Wait here,” Bridget said as she pocketed her phone and grabbed her purse out of the passenger’s seat. “I need to run in and grab a few things.”
“Bee, grocery shopping can wait.”
“I have to go in. I’ll just be a minute, then we’ll talk.” She turned to walk into the store, then paused and looked back over her shoulder. “Maybe get Pops to cover for you at the airfield today.”
While Bridget was in the store, I sat in my truck and stared at my phone. Three numbers stood out on my screen. Pops, Chase, and Mel.
I needed to call Pops like Bridget said so that someone was at the office. I should also probably think about hiring some extra hands. I knew Pops lived and breathed that place, but I had no idea how he had done it all himself.
I almost called Chase the minute I opened the door to Mel’s apartment and saw Bridget sitting there with a hematoma the size of Rhode Island on her ribs.
I had gone by the apartment to grab my laptop and take it back to the airfield. But after one look at Bee sitting at the kitchen table, bruised and beaten, and nothing else mattered.
Chase would have responded a hell of a lot faster than 911. And like me, when it came to Bridget, he would be out for blood to settle the score.
I couldn’t even look at Mel’s number. Couldn’t open the thread of text messages that were littered with I love yous . I cupped my hand over my mouth as an anger-riddled breath escaped in a broken huff.
She fucking knew .
And given the calm, collected way she had been talking to Bridget when I walked in, it wasn’t a surprise to her.
It all made sense, though. Hell, the first night I’d been back, she took me to the bar to see Bridget. When I’d asked her if Bridget was happy, she simply told me that Bee and I had a lot to catch up on. A professional fucking non-answer.
All the times Kingsley had been around, Mel looked like she was going to rip his throat out and wear it as a bracelet. How she had artfully rerouted the subject matter when I asked her verbatim if Kyle was mistreating her.
I knew my sister could be stubborn as a mule, and she wouldn’t relent when it came to doing things her way. But of all the people I thought I could trust, Mel was number one with a bullet.
I got off the phone with Pops just as Bridget was leaving the store with two grocery bags in each hand. I made the quick decision to hear her out before I called in the cavalry.
The cavalry being Steve, Chase, and their badges.
Maybe I’d call Will and get him to summon whatever paramilitary mercenaries he had in his little black book. Hell, I was sure Isaac knew some shady people who wouldn’t mind their hands getting dirty. Maybe Luca’s grandma had some mafia connections he didn’t know about.
We’d have Kingsley roasting on a spit by noon.
I pushed Mel to the back of my mind.
I went to open my door, but Bridget shook her head. “I’ve gotta get going. He tracks my car. Follow me back to my house. We’ll talk there.”
Ten minutes later, I was seething as I pulled into Kingsley’s driveway behind Bridget.
I prayed that the fucker was here. I had been in fights before, but I’d never been a brawler. But right now? There was nothing I wanted to do more than see him pinned beneath me as I made him hurt worse than he hurt Bee.
Bridget got out, locked her car, and hurried to the front door. She had her phone pinned between her shoulder and her ear as she talked to someone. I held the grocery bags as she unlocked the door and let us in.
“Okay… Look, I’m sorry, babe. I’ll talk to him.” She paused, listening to the voice on the other end. Melissa. “I know,” she said as she looked at me. “I’m going to tell him everything. I promise.” She disarmed the security system and chucked her keys into a porcelain bowl by the front door. “I’ll call you tonight. But hey, when you leave the hospital, get one of the security guards to walk you to your car, okay?” She chewed on her fingernail as she paced the entryway. “Okay. Love you, girl.”
I set the grocery bags on the countertops in their state-of-the-art kitchen. Needing a distraction, I pulled out a gallon of milk and a carton of eggs from the bags and stuffed them in the stainless-steel refrigerator.
“Want some coffee? Tea?” Bee asked as she walked in and took over unloading the groceries.
“Bridge—” My voice cracked. I rested my forearms on the cool granite and closed my eyes. “I’m hanging on by a thread here, and you’re asking if I want tea. What the fuck, Bee?” I looked around as she balled up the grocery bags and stuffed them in the trash. “Is he here?”
“No,” she clipped. “He left for Charlotte this morning. Should be halfway across the state by now. Mel’s fine, by the way. At least that’s what she said. It sounded like she had been crying.” Her tone was judgmental as fuck.
The slow guilt of acting like an asshole this morning was creeping up on me, but I tamped it down. I wasn’t going to feel guilty for reacting the how I damn well pleased when I caught my fiancé lying to me.
She filled a kettle with water and dropped it on the stovetop. “I’m having tea.”
“How are you so fucking calm right now?”
Bridget eyed me warily as she pulled a caddy of tea bags out of the cupboard. “I’ve had years of practice, Jase.” After a moment of thoughtful perusing, she decided on a packet of chamomile and rose tea that promised to be calming and relaxing.
I’d need to snort the tea leaves straight up to be any kind of calm at the moment. I was three seconds from coming undone.
We waited in painful silence for the water to boil. When steam finally pulsed out of the spout, she poured the water over the tea bag she had set in a mug. It had little blue flowers and birds on it and looked so friggin’ dainty in her hands.
For a moment, her mask of indifference slipped as she said, “I don’t know where to start, Jase.”
“Why don’t you start at the point where he hit you?”
She winced.
“Shit,” I muttered. “Fuck… I’m—I’m sorry. I just…” I dropped into a chair and scrubbed my palms over my face. “I don’t know how to talk about this. I… I don’t want to talk about this.” I swallowed the lump in my throat that was choking my words. “But I love you. I’ll do whatever the hell you need. So if you want me to beat his ass, I’ll beat his ass. If you need a shoulder to cry on, I’ll be that too. But I’d really like to beat his ass.”
Bridget sat down beside me, turning her chair, so we were catty-cornered to each other. She let the first sip of tea hit her tongue, savoring the taste. “You and Mel are peas in a pod,” she said softly. “She gives me that speech every time I show up needing her help.”
“How long, Bee? ”
“Longer than I’d like to admit.” She set the mug down and trailed her fingertip around the rim. “It wasn’t all bad,” she began. “At least… Not at first. He was sweet to me. Took me on all these extravagant dates and little weekend getaways. Said all the right things. Showered me with gifts. I didn’t go into it looking for something serious, but I liked being taken care of. Having someone dote on me.”
I balled my fist beneath the table, but tried to stay calm above it.
“I should have seen the warning signs. He has a short temper. I knew that from the get-go, but I just chalked it up to him being passionate. I thought it was flattering that he wanted me all to himself. I made excuses for behavior that, in hindsight, should have been a big red flag. He’s possessive. In the beginning, I liked it. It felt good to be desired and wanted. To have someone be obsessed with me and make me their world.”
Her tongue darted out as she swiped it along her lower lip. She stopped just shy of the split in the skin.
“The first time it happened, he was drunk. We had gotten into an argument about me working long hours at the bar, and he shoved me into the refrigerator.”
I closed my eyes as my fist clenched on instinct. I pressed it to my mouth to keep from flying off the handle.
“He apologized immediately. Helped me get ice on it. Asked if I wanted to go see a doctor and get it checked out. Promised it would never happen again. He owned up to it and took steps to reassure me it would never happen again.”
She sipped her tea and let out a long sigh.
“Obviously, that was a lie, but things were good for a while after that. Really good. We settled back into our normal. My lease was up at my old apartment, and he asked me to move in with him here. It made sense. It felt like things were getting serious. I liked that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when you moved out?” I asked. “When I retired here and came back, I thought… I thought you were still living at your old place. I was going to crash with you and catch up, you know? But Mel—she told me you’d moved in with him.”
“I think deep down I knew that you would call him on his bullshit, and I would have to pick a side.”
“Took too fuckin’ long for me to call it,” I mumbled as I stroked the stubble on my jaw.
“Mel’s the only one who knows,” she said. “And it took me a long time before I ever told her.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?” I asked. “Bee, you didn’t have to stay. If you had called… Hell, I don’t care if I was on the other side of the world. I would have put you on a plane and sent you wherever the hell you wanted to go.”
“I loved him,” she admitted. “I really did. And I thought I could fix him. That if I just loved him enough, he wouldn’t hurt me. He had me convinced that I was what he needed. That I was the most important thing in his life. He’d tell me all the dreams he had for us—for our future. He had me so distracted by the possibilities of what could be that I didn’t notice I was sliding down a slippery slope.”
My heart clenched and I fought the tears that wanted to spill over.
“I didn’t argue when he bought me a car and convinced me to sell mine. Of course, only his name is on the title of the one I drive now. He talked me into joint everything. Bank accounts. Cell phone plans. You name it. We had been talking about getting married. It made sense. I thought it was sweet, you know? That he wanted to merge our lives like that.” She paused, swallowing as she shook her head. “But it was just more power for him. He controls those bank accounts. He sees who I call and text.”
There had been a point a few years ago when Bridget’s calls went from regular to erratic. I figured it was because I was on deployment, we were in different time zones, and my schedule was all over the place. I never stopped to think that she was in over her head.
“I kept telling myself that I could handle it, but I was in too deep,” she confessed. “I tried to leave him once.” A tear slid down her cheek as she glanced at the door. “Things had gotten bad. He’d lose his shit over every little thing, and he hit me more and more. When I’d finally had enough, he let me walk out, promising that I’d come running back to him, begging for forgiveness.” Bridget scoffed and added, “As if I was the one who had done something wrong.”
“What happened?”
She sighed. “It was a Monday, so I went to poker night. Hannah Jane was seeing Isaac at the time, but he was out of town, so she let me crash in her guest room. I was going to sleep it off and then ask Chase if he’d go with me to help me clean out my stuff the next day.”
“If Brannan said no?—”
She shook her head. “I never asked him.”
“Why? Chase… he would have?—”
“Pride,” she said as she dabbed a stray tear. “I was going to call him when I got settled for the night at Hannah’s, but I saw him on his porch. He had a girl over. They were…” She looked away. “What Chase was doing didn’t matter because Kyle texted me.”