Page 98

“I get it.” We could deal with all that later. “And you? How are you doing?”
“About as well as you’d expect.” She finally looked at me, her eyes tired and missing their usual sparkle, and the needle of pain pierced deeper. “Nik and I have been staying here overnight, but he went home to take care of some paperwork. He and Sabrina are postponing their honeymoon until Grandfather’s better.” She let out a weak laugh. “What a wedding present, huh?”
Yeah, it sucked, but I didn’t give a crap about Nikolai and Sabrina. I only cared about one person in the world, and she was hurting.
“Come here, princess.” I opened my arms.
Bridget hesitated for a beat before she finally closed the distance between us and buried her face in my chest, her shoulders shaking.
“Shh, it’s okay.” I kissed the top of her head and stroked her hair, a heaviness sinking into my bones at the sound of her soft sniffles. I’d weathered artillery fire, nighttime missions in subarctic temperatures, and more broken bones and near-fatal injuries than I could count, but Bridget crying came closer to breaking me than all those things combined.
“No, it’s not. I almost killed him.” Bridget’s voice was muffled, but her pain shone through loud and clear. “He had a heart attack because of me.”
I tightened my hold, her pain seeping through my skin until it became my own. “That’s not true.”
“It is. You weren’t there. You don’t know…” She pulled back, her nose red and her eyes glassy. “We were having an emergency meeting about the news of…you and me. I confessed the allegations were true, and when he told me to end things with you, I refused. I was arguing with Markus about it when he collapsed.” She blinked, her lashes glittering with unshed tears. “It was me, Rhys. Don’t tell me it wasn’t my fault, because it was.”
A deep fissure split my heart in half. Bridget already blamed herself for her mother’s death. To add the guilt from her grandfather’s heart attack on top of that…
“It’s not,” I said firmly. “Your grandfather has an underlying condition. Anything could’ve set it off.”
“Yes, and this time it was me. He was supposed to cut back on his stress, and I gave him a year’s worth in one day.” Bridget’s laugh sounded hollow as she stepped all the way out of my embrace and wrapped her arms around her waist. “What a great granddaughter I am.”
“Bridget…” I reached for her again, but she shook her head, her eyes fixed on the floor.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
Everything fell silent. My heartbeat, my pulse, the hum of the fridge and the ticking of the clock on the wall.
Could I still be alive if my heart wasn’t beating?
“Do what anymore?” My voice sounded strange in the vacuum Bridget’s words created. Lower, more guttural, like an animal ensnared in a trap of its own making.
It was a stupid question.
I knew the answer. We both knew. A part of me had been expecting this moment since our kiss in a dark hallway a lifetime ago, but still, I hoped.
Bridget blinked, those beautiful blue eyes shimmering with heartache before they hardened, and my hope died a swift, fiery death.
“This. Us.” She gestured between us. “Whatever we had. It has to end.”