Chapter Six
“Why did you fucking do that?” Bridger yelled and slammed his open palm against the steering wheel five times fast.
His shirt and his hat still sat in the passenger’s seat beside him.
He ran his hands through his hair and covered his face with them as he tried to reach memories of Amelia. The wolf was blocking them.
That had been different. That had been unacceptable. He could feel the changes in him and they were terrifying. He’d had a moment after he’d finished inside of Kit that he wanted to lift her up and turn her around and kiss her just to prolong the connection.
No. Hell no.
He fucked women. No intimacy, just fucking. He’d been making mistakes with Kit all day, and he had to stop the bleeding. He had to stop the changes happening inside of him.
He was betraying himself. Betraying Amelia. They’d always promised each other they would be the only for each other, no matter what, no matter if something happened to them, and he was the one breaking the promise.
She was so fucking lucky. He yelled. God, she was lucky.
She’d died and he’d been left here with this gaping hole in his gut that wouldn’t let him bleed out.
It just made him suffer. She didn’t have to be walking the earth pretending she was still alive.
She didn’t have to sink into the loneliness and try to convince herself that this was how it was supposed to feel.
She didn’t have to lose him! She had just… poof…disappeared.
“Fuuuuck,” he drawled out in a hoarse voice he barely recognized. His throat was all clogged with emotion.
Tonight, he’d felt something again.
That was it. That was where the guilt was coming from. The guilt was eating him alive! He’d felt something for someone other than Amelia, and he was breaking his promise. He thought about her parents and what he’d told them at her funeral. He would never love another.
Kit was dangerous, and now he had to dissolve this pretend pairing. He needed to call Amelia’s parents and explain before they found out about this stupid matchmaking thing. He didn’t want them to find out in some messed up way and think he’d hidden it on purpose.
Bridger pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. Those fucking tears better stay put. He hadn’t seen her parents in years.
This was going to hurt.
God, he was tired of hurting.
His phone vibrated in his back pocket with a text. Bridger pulled it out and read the message. It was from Kit.
I’m sorry. I would never try to replace anyone. We both lost our minds tonight. Also, I don’t do that. What we did. I’m not a one-night stand girl. I just didn’t want you thinking that about me.
He’d hurt her. He had. He’d seen it written all over her face when he’d been leaving.
She was staring at him through that mirror, and her eyes held such shock and sadness, and that’s how he’d known she didn’t usually do one-night stands.
She didn’t have to tell him that and he wouldn’t have assumed.
God, he felt ugly on the inside.
He’d really left her like that. Fucked her and left her, and this woman had a heart. He could tell.
Bridger heaved a sigh and wished it was him that died instead of Amelia. He wished it all the time.
He swallowed around the lump in his throat and threw his truck into gear and sped out of the parking lot. He needed to get away from here. Away from Kit. From the hotel. From Coeur d’Alene. From Idaho. From planet Earth.
He wished he could drive and not stop until his mind was washed clean of everything. He wished he could get rid of all his memories and start from scratch.
Amelia had escaped the pain, and he was stuck with his head underwater.
There were moments tonight that felt like he could breathe for the first time in years, and that was so scary.
It was so easy to get addicted to that air.
Kit wasn’t for him. She was just a way to resuscitate him back to life just enough to know how good things could be when he was pushed underwater again. Kit was a way to double his suffering.
He drove with the window down and no music the entire way back to Rogue Pack territory. When his headlights lit up the gravel road to his house at the back of the clearing, he could make out the kid of the Pack, Bay, working on his truck.
Bridger frowned and checked the clock. It was 3:30 in the morning. He pulled to a stop near his truck, and Bay looked up, and turned his headlamp off. He sauntered to the truck and leaned on the open window. “You okay?” Bay asked.
“Yeah, why?” Bridger asked in a harsher tone than he’d intended.
“You missed my game.”
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry, Kid.”
“It’s okay! Bridger, it’s okay. You just never miss them, and you didn’t answer my texts, so I was worried.” Bay frowned. “Where’s your shirt?”
Bridger twitched his head toward the passenger’s seat. He couldn’t lie to a werewolf. Bay might be a seventeen-year-old, but he could tell the truth in a tone just as well as the adult werewolves here. He was clever.
“Did we win?” Briger asked.
“Nah. The boys looked tired tonight. I tried to hype them up, but they were just dragging. We lost by one freaking field goal.”
“Brutal,” Bridger murmured.
“Yeah, my dad was pissed.”
Bridger huffed a laugh at imagining Tabian lighting up the team at halftime.
He was now one of the strength trainers for the high school football team.
Bay trained with them and acted as an assistant coach.
He was the hype guy. The humans wouldn’t let him play human sports yet.
Bridger kind of got it, but it sucked seeing Bay on the sidelines when he really knew he wanted to be playing on the field with his friends.
“Go to bed, boy,” Bridger said. “I’m okay.”
“Swear?” Bay asked, reaching out his pinky.
Bridger sighed and hooked his pinky with the boy’s. “I swear I’m going to be all right.” Whatever that meant.
“Okay. I’m glad you’re back home. Love you, Unc,” Bay said as he made his way back to his house he lived in with Tabian and Tru.
He was a good kid.
“Love you too, buddy.”
He watched Bay make it inside safely and then eased his foot onto the gas and made his way to the back of the clearing, to his home.
Big old fancy modular home with a big front porch with one chair, one table, one potted plant.
One shade umbrella. He got out and made his way inside.
One chair at the table. One recliner. One silverware setting on the table.
One coffee mug waiting for a single cup of hot joe in the morning.
One towel by the shower, one toothbrush, one person for all this space.
He missed living with someone. He missed having someone give a shit about how his day went.
He missed brushing his teeth next to a woman and teasing her before bed and chasing her around the living room when she tried to steal the last bite of ice cream sandwich on a hot day.
He missed the laughter. He missed the little stupid dog she just had to have.
He missed having something soft, sensitive, and feminine to take care of.
What an awful feeling to start admitting all of this to himself. This was the problem with Kit. One night with her, and she’d made him start to question everything.
He’d left her on read earlier. More guilt. More guilt. More guilt.
He opened his phone, and she’d sent him more money.
Tough woman. He had a feeling she’d been through it and had become hyper independent from whatever dynamic she had existed in while she lived in the McIver Pack.
He had this insane urge to learn more about her.
He wanted to know the meaning of every tattoo she’d driven into her skin.
He wanted to know where she’d learned to bartend like that.
How she still felt light and airy, even when she talked about hard things.
He wanted to ask her what she’d done to bewitch him.
She was too damn interesting for her own good.
He opened her text and sank down onto the couch. He reread it three times.
I’m so sorry. I would never try to replace anyone. We both lost our minds tonight. Also, I don’t do that. What we did. I’m not a one-night stand girl. I just didn’t want you thinking that about me.
She’d apologized twice now. One for asking about Amelia, and one for sleeping with him. That was on him. He’d made her feel bad. He hated that part.
She didn’t deserve to feel used like that.
He winced and shook his head. He hadn’t been using her though.
He had really wanted her. Fuck, he wanted her again right now.
He was ready again. He wanted to take his time with her body.
She was so pretty, smelled so good. She had an understanding soul that showed up in her pretty smoke gray eyes.
Freaking Vic and Lyric for drawing her here and ruining them both.
It was best not to respond and just let her think he was an asshole.
He was. It would be easier for her to go back to her old life.
He pulled up her social media page again just to look at the profile pic.
It was small, just a thumbnail sized pic, and he tried to zoom in on it and got frustrated when it didn’t work.
He tossed his phone to the couch and made his way into his office to print the paperwork from the email that matchmaker had sent him earlier.
He would take it by in the morning.
Why wasn’t he tired? It was going on four in the morning and he was wide awake.
Work was going to be rough tomorrow if he didn’t get some sleep.
Tomorrow would be the reset. He could do this. He could get the paperwork signed, Kit would go back to Alabama, he would get back to normal life and put this all behind him. His memories of Amelia would sharpen again, and he would talk to her parents and explain.
Everything would be fine once Kit left Coeur d’Alene.
Yeah.
Everything would be fine.