Chapter 16 #3
She doesn’t look away, her lips pursed. She knows I'm lying. She always knows when I'm lying.
“For someone who is so serious about me seeing doctors—” Bridget begins.
“Who else has been in?” Valentina asks, interrupting, glancing around the room with mild curiosity, like she's simply taking stock. “From the family. I want to know who I should thank for the flowers.”
“Seamus. Ashland. Cavin was here most of yesterday.”
“And the others are—where, managing things at home?” Why does she care?
“Aye. Colm's holding down the fort.”
She nods. Just nods, like it's nothing. As if she isn't noting exactly who is where, who is distracted, and who is sitting in a hospital room instead of paying attention.
“Right, then.” She smooths her jacket, looks at me, and very clearly not at Bridget. “I won't rearrange anything. You'll be on your feet soon enough.”
She has not, I notice, touched a single surface in this room. Not the doorknob. Not the bed rail. Not me. She is still holding the tissue she arrived with. “I'll be going. Nice to see you again, Bridget.”
The tone in which she says this makes it absolutely clear that it was not nice at all.
When she leaves, Bridget exhales a long, careful breath, then sets the surviving ice cream on my tray with both hands, as if it requires more concentration than it should.
“I'm sorry,” she says. “I shouldn't have just walked in like that. I shouldn’t be here—”
“It's fine.” My voice is steadier than I feel. “We're not doing anything inappropriate.”
“Right.” She clears her throat. “It's just—how would you feel? If you found her with a man who was her best friend, and she'd never mentioned him?”
God, why does she have to be all compassionate now? Jesus.
“I'd understand it. We barely know each other.”
“Yet,” she says. “Your mother was telling me she didn't know your father before they married either. Look what happened there.”
“That’s different,” I say, running a hand through my hair. I know, as I say it, that it isn't. Just because it’s two people who made it work doesn’t mean it’s different at all.
Silence sits between us, and Bridget lets it, which is either mercy or something she's learned to do around me. I decide to change the subject.
“Have you heard back from Rosenberg?”
A look passes across her face, but I can’t decipher it.
“I have,” she says. “And I have very good news. I am not flaring up. My labs are strong.” I watch her face. “He also told me the only reason he reached out at all—while he was on holiday—was because of you and Cavin.”
I release a breath and look at her for a moment.
She’s not flaring up. She’s fine. I can breathe again.
I note every single vivid detail like I’m seeing in full color again.
I note the loose thread at her cuff. The color still high in her cheeks from Valentina’s visit.
The way she came through the door talking, absolutely certain of her welcome, then caught herself and recalibrated in the space of half a second without a word of complaint.
God, Bridget. It hurts worse than the fucking gunshot wound.
“Go shut the door.”
She looks up. “Why?”
“You know why.”
“I actually don't.”
My voice goes hard. “Shut the fucking door.”
She does. She comes back to the edge of my bed and sits, careful of the IV line, and I can feel her heart pounding from here—or maybe that's mine.
I'm not sure anymore, and I'm not sure it matters.
She's looking at me with that expression she gets when she's already decided something and is waiting for me to catch up.
“I'm not married yet, am I?”
“Declan. We shouldn't—”
My shoulder screams, but I reach for her because it’s too painful not to. I frame her face in my hands and bring her mouth to mine. She tastes like sunshine and something I have no right to want when she kisses me back—resting on the bed, careful of the stitches, careful of everything.
Not ten seconds ago, my fiancée walked out that door. If she saw this… If she understood what this means, what it has always meant…
I can't help it. I won't. I love her. I have loved her in the particular, agonizing, carefully managed way of a man who has spent years believing that love, in the right hands, can be made to behave itself. I have spent years being wrong about that.
But we can’t. We shouldn’t. If we’re found out and we break this deal…
She makes a sound I barely recognize, low and broken, and then we're pulling apart. She’s on her feet before I can reach for her again.
“We can't ever do that again,” she says. “Declan, please don’t make this any harder than it already is.” Her voice is steady, but her eyes aren't. She wipes at them quickly, like she's hoping I won't notice. “Never again, Declan. I—” She rests her hand on her belly protectively, as if to hold herself back from me. “We can’t do this ever again. I have to go.”
Then she turns and walks out the door.
The room is very quiet as I lie back against the pillow. I stare at the ceiling until the shapes stop moving, then I reach for my phone.
Cavin picks up on the second ring.
“You alright, brother?”
“No,” I say. “Get me the fuck out of this place.”