Chapter 29
A Deviant in Suit Pants
CORMAC
I've thought about having Brigit in my house probably a million times since just seeing her photo on my hidden desk.
And the reality of it is completely overwhelming.
I feel lost. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do if I'm not following her and teasing her.
And now, I have to leave her alone in a couple of days. How backwards is that? I finally have her here, and I’m going to be gone.
She’s been holed up in the guest room since her computer and phone were delivered by Skyler, and I’m not sure if I should be going in there to pop the bubble she’s built around herself.
But she hasn’t eaten since this morning, and that’s unacceptable.
Gently tapping my knuckles against the door, I wait and see if she’ll answer it.
Instead, the only thing I hear is a sniffle and a hiccup on the other side of the door.
Fuck.
“Brigit, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she lies, her voice shaky. “Well, nothing important. I’m fine.”
I feel the manic energy buzzing through my veins, bouncing on my toes to expel it.
Do I force my way in and make her tell me what’s going on? Do I relent and give her the space to work through it on her own?
I know she’s safe. There are no threats after her now.
But she’s upset.
And that’s something I have no clue how to work through.
“Do you need anything?” is the follow-up question I settle on. It’s a safe enough one. Not prying. Just offering Brigit whatever it takes to help her get through this, even if she doesn’t want to tell me what this is.
A few quiet footsteps, followed by the click of the door unlocking, and there she appears, peeking out from behind a cracked door, eyes red and swollen. This time, without any makeup smudged beneath them, I can see every little freckle she usually hides with a layer of something or other.
“Hi,” I offer in little more than a whisper.
She tries her hardest to smile, but her lips crumble into the saddest frown I’ve ever seen. Not scared, or angry, like I’ve seen her before. Just utterly devastated, bone-deep sorrow.
Before she can say anything else, I pull her into my chest, letting her rest her head on my shoulder as silent sobs shake her body.
Her arms wrap tight around my waist, and I do the only thing I can. I fucking freeze. With one hand around her shoulders and the other smoothing her wild waves down her back, I hold this strong, formidable woman who just needs to break down for a little while.
When the sobs stop, and she manages to pull back to look up at me, I swipe away the tears running down her face.
“What happened, Brig?”
She shakes her head, opening the door the rest of the way to let me in.
Draped across the messy bed, her phone and computer lay with a perfect representation of where she would have been settled all afternoon.
“My name and face are scattered all over the fucking internet,” she gestures towards her phone that won’t stop lighting up with notifications.
“Someone really did their homework. They found out about my internship and subsequent firing. They interviewed previous colleagues about my inappropriate relationship. They even fucking got a statement from Ian.”
“Who’s Ian?”
Her face, flitting between angry and sad, stares back at me, “You really want me to believe you don’t know everything? That Skyler didn’t tell you?”
Taking a confused step back, I try to think through what Sky told me about Brigit.
I shake my head, “Skyler didn’t tell me anything about you. Said the skeletons in your closet weren’t anything to worry about.”
Barking out an unimpressed laugh, she throws her hands onto her hips, eyes watering all over again, “They weren’t even my fucking skeletons, but he had no problem throwing them in my face.”
Slowly, I walk towards her, sitting on the bed to give her the space she needs to pace while she unloads.
“Babe, can we please start from the beginning?” I beg. “I can’t promise that I didn’t know these things before, but I can promise you that I don’t now.”
Walking back and forth across the floor, she throws her hands up in surrender. “Ian was my boss, for lack of a better term, at my internship.”
“Okay.”
“And towards the very end of my term there, we became involved,” she confesses.
“It’s very much not allowed, but he assured me it would be fine.
I was young and dumb and thought that’s what love and partnership were supposed to feel like.
I didn’t mind needing to be good at my job to earn his affection, ya know, it’s no different from the relationship I have with my mom.
I always had to be worthy of her love, too. ”
My stomach drops when I hear her talk about the people in her life who have made her feel she needs to do something or be someone to be deserving of love.
The only fucking thing she needs to be is her. That alone makes her worthy of every bit of goodness and love this fucking world has to offer.
“And then,” she sniffles, gesturing between us, “the night we met, she continues, “We were supposed to be there together.”
Good fucking thing you weren’t. I probably would have killed him just to get my hands on you.
“It was going to be our unofficial announcement of our relationship. We were going to show off how good and professional we looked together. Partners. Equals. And then he cancelled on me at the last minute, sending me alone.
“So I got a little too drunk and let a handsome stranger flirt and dance with me.”
I have to fight against the small smile pulling at my lips. She’s telling a story about what she calls the worst night of her life, but she's inserting details about us into it, proving that we are part of the story she considers important.
A sob slips from her lips before she continues, “And… and I don’t know if I was feeling guilty because I found you charming and hot. Or if I was just drunk and wanted to see him, but I went over to his apartment.”
“And?” I’m not sure I want to hear how this story ends, but it’s one that she needs to tell someone.
“And he was in the middle of getting bent over by his boss,” she drags her hands through her hair, still wearing a hole into the floor with her endless pacing.
“Shit.”
“So when he left and it was just me and Ian, he tried to explain, tried to make it seem like he really loved me and was just gaining leverage over his supervisor to keep us from getting in trouble when the truth came out.” She takes in a heaving breath before continuing, “But I’m not fucking stupid.
I could tell from the placating tone he used with me and how it echoed the way he spoke to his boss before he bolted.
Ian was using both of us to advance his own career. ”
What a fucking scumbag.
“And I don’t know if he felt like he needed to prove it to me,” she sobs.
“Or if it was to make himself feel more in control, to exert power over me, but-” her voice cuts off completely, leaving me breathless and begging the universe not to let this story end the way I can feel in my gut it’s going to.
“What did he do?”
A sad smile pulls at her lips, “He didn’t succeed, but he-he tried to use, umm, intimacy to show how much he really loved me. That’s what he kept saying, anyway.” Her voice cracks on the word intimacy and my blood instantly boils.
“I’ll fucking kill him,” I tell her, standing to go do just that.
I have no clue who this guy is or where to find him. Don’t even know his last name, but I do know my face is the last thing he’ll ever see before his world goes black forever.
She stops me, pushing me back onto the bed before I can even get a few steps away, not that I really had any plan anyway.
Shaking her head with her hands on my shoulders, she pleads with her eyes, silently keeping me seated so she can get all of it out.
With a slight nod, I concede, taking her hands in mine, giving her the only comfort I’m capable of right now when my body is vibrating, heating with a murderous rage I don’t know how to control.
“I stopped him before he got too far,” she assures herself and me. “Even a little bit drunk, I was able to throw a nasty punch and leave him with a bloody nose before I ran out the door.”
Hell yeah.
I shouldn’t be cheering on violence, but I think, given her circumstances, he was more than deserving of the punishment she doled out.
“I was so young,” she tells me, as if she needs to explain herself to me at all. “And so stupid.”
“I don’t think it’s stupid to believe someone when they say they love you,” I assure her, pushing her hair back over her shoulder, resting my palm against her pulse, either to ground her in this moment or myself…
or maybe both. “It’s not your fault people are capable of lying about something so monumental. ”
Her lips wobble, tears welling again, but she nods, hopefully taking in my words for the honesty that they are.
“Did you try to press charges?” I ask, knowing before she even answers that it’ll be a big, fat no.
“You’ve seen more of a courtroom than I have,” she releases a bitter laugh. Ouch. “You tell me what they’d say when I have no evidence, no character witnesses worth a damn, and he has both a busted up nose and the word of his boss?
“I didn’t even get a chance to talk to anyone about it.
My internship was cancelled before noon that Sunday.
And I tried to deal with it through the legal pathways I did have, but all I ended up with was a tainted reputation and one hell of a legal fee.
Oh, and a paper trail that documents all of it as my fault, according to Skyler. ”
Fucking Skyler.
“I’m sorry, Brigit.”
And I’m genuinely, so, so fucking sorry.
Sorry she went through it.
Sorry she had to then pick up the pieces all alone.
Sorry she rebuilt her life, only to have mine and Skyler’s twisted proclivities drag the past back up.
She offers a small nod, but doesn’t say anything.