Page 42

41.Prove It

~ brIDGET ~

When I stumbled out of the courtroom and into the hallway, I made a beeline straight for the women’s bathroom, ignoring Jeremy’s calls from behind me. I plowed through that swinging door and straight to the first open toilet where I vomited over and over and over again.

Coercive control. Stockholm syndrome. Trauma bonding.

Heave.

Self-destruction.

Heave.

Get her naked in the park…

Heave.

Orgasm—sometimes more than once.

Heave…

My fault. My fault. My fault.

I didn’t breathe for so long I saw stars and my head spun. When I finally coughed, then inhaled, the next exhale came out as a sob.

Coercive control. Stockholm syndrome. Trauma bonding.

I hugged that toilet long after my body had stopped revolting. Long after Jeremy shoved his head in the door and called for me. Then sent a woman Bailiff in to find me.

Self-destruction.

I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe .

I was vaguely aware of being led down the hallway and out of the Courthouse, put in the back of a car and driven out of the building.

Orgasms—plural—because that was what she wanted…

Someone said that the media didn’t know I was leaving and weren’t waiting, so I didn’t need to worry.

I hadn’t.

My fault. My fault. My fault.

I closed my eyes and pressed my clammy forehead against the cool glass of the window. I didn’t open them until the car engine died and the door opened and I almost fell out.

It was Jeremy’s hand that caught my arm, and sat me back up.

“Shit, Bridget,” he murmured.

“Let me go,” I mumbled through numb lips. “I need to go—”

“Bridget, Gerald’s coming,” Jeremy said softly. At some point he must have squatted in the gap of the open door, because somehow his head was lower than mine.

“I don’t need fucking Geraldo’s commentary on my life!”

“That’s not why—”

“Let me go, Jeremy.”

“I’m not holding you, Bridget.”

I was about to argue when it hit me that he was telling the truth. He wasn’t touching me.

When I got confused and met his eyes, he looked sad. I wanted to slap him again, but there were other people here.

“Then get out of the way,” I said thickly, unclipping my seatbelt and turning to get out of the car. Jeremy straightened to his full height and stepped back to give me room, but as soon as I started towards the door of the building—because why the hell not? Everything else had gone to hell today, might as well crack my psyche and finish the job—Jeremy put a hand at my lower back.

I shoved him away and he stopped touching me.

“Bridget,” he said softly. “Please. I’m only trying to help you.”

I stopped walking and turned to face him, squinting because the sun was behind him and he was tall. “You know what, Jeremy? ”

He sighed and looked sad and that made me even madder. “What?”

“Sometimes, I’m only trying to help can be allllllllll kinds of wrong if you don’t understand what real help means,” I said, wishing the words sounded stronger. “And sometimes… sometimes you don’t know your ass from your eyeball. Please fuck off.”

Then I turned around and stormed into the building, shoving those knots in my chest down deeper and deeper, because whatever Gerald had to say I just needed to get through it, and say yes sir, and get home.

Security stared at me as I walked inside. And the reception lady, too. Everyone I passed on the way to the elevator, and the guys in the hallway and…

All these eyes thinking all these sick things about me made my skin burn. I was starting to blister. And it wasn’t going to be pretty.

But of course, it wasn’t that simple. Gerald wasn’t there yet, it seemed. He hadn’t expected me to leave the Courthouse before the festivities were officially over.

I screamed at Jeremy to leave me alone in the not-interrogation room and he did. At first. But he stayed right outside. And because there was a small window there, I saw it the moment that fucking clone of his came trotting up the hallway with a folder under his arm.

And I saw the way Jeremy’s face went tight when he looked inside it.

He turned and looked at me through the window and my entire fucking bloodstream went cold.

No.

No, don’t.

He looked away and for a second, I thought he’d heard me and he was listening for once. But then… then Gerald arrived and the two of them talked and Gerald looked at me too and what the fuck was going on?

When they walked in together, it was instinct to get to my feet and start backing away.

“What the hell is going on? ”

“Bridget, calm down. Jeremy needs to show you something and I just… I just want to be here so we can talk afterwards. I’m not sure this is… what he says it is. But—”

“What are you doing? That doctor wasn’t right! Those things she said— that’s not what’s happening!”

Jeremy’s face tensed, but Gerald lifted his hands. “That’s… I don’t know, Bridget. I really don’t. I thought you might be right about him, at least, that he wasn’t predatorial—but Jeremy’s got something and it doesn’t look good—”

“No! Stop! I’m not going to do this with you! I’m not going to sit here while you tell me my husband is an abuser, and-and-and a manipulator, because he’s not! He’s just fucking not!”

“What if I could prove it,” Jeremy said in the quietest voice I’d ever heard him use.

I froze. Staring. And he stared back. And he didn’t smile. And he didn’t tease. And he didn’t yell. And that was the most fucking terrifying thing of all.

“What do you mean?” My voice went too high and too thin and I backed away as he stepped closer.

But then Jeremy sat down on the couch with his elbows on his knees and put that folder on the table.

“I mean, what if I can prove it to you, Bridget. Would you believe me then?”

I stared at him and he sighed.

“Prove… prove what?”

“Prove that he’s been lying to you.”

“About what?!”

Jeremy took a deep breath. “You know what,” he muttered, like he was mad I was making him say it. “We told you they were inside at the same time. We told you we thought there was a connection there. Well… now I can prove it.”

Then he flipped open the folder and inside was a picture. In color, but kind of pixilated. A security camera photo showing a rectangular table, an old guy in prison scrubs and a young guy with tattoos on his arms and—

I leaped forward and grabbed the photo, yanking it away from Jeremy, but he didn’t even move. He dropped his head into his hands.

Sam .

Sam. At the prison. Sitting at a table, leaning over it, speaking intensely with the old man.

The old man whose face looked horrifically familiar and yet I almost didn’t recognize him.

It couldn’t be.

It couldn’t fucking be.

“Look at the date on the corner, Bridget,” Jeremy said, his tone so weary I wanted to claw out his tongue.

I didn’t want to look. I wanted to look anywhere except at that photo. At that date. But I did it. I made myself do it.

And my heart broke.

9:04am on December 13 th .

The day after the anniversary of my mother’s death.

Sam went to see my father the next day. Two days after I told him I never wanted him to contact anyone about my father ever again. The same day I missed him so much, I begged him to come to me. The day before he rushed to the cabin to see me, like the conquering hero then plowed me like a field. And told me he loved me. And told me never to give up. That we could beat this.

He’d talked to my father just hours before, and he never said a fucking word.

The screaming in my head would not stop.

And then I realized it was me.

Some time later when I could see again, I found myself sitting on the couch, that picture on the coffee table in front of me.

My head had stopped screaming, but it still spun. Gerald sat next to me looking haggard while Jeremy paced the space on the other side of the table.

“You’re making me tense,” I mumbled to Jeremy.

He raked a hand through his hair, but stopped pacing and dropped into the chair across from us .

He and Gerald started talking again, but I couldn’t hear them.

I kept seeing Sam in the witness box talking about those other women. The way he admitted that he used his Dominanceto build intimacy and trust… give them a place to be safe… regain their confidence.

But then he walked out of their lives.

And he’d been doing that with me. He’d been walking away. I forced him to come back. I’d never said the safeword. Had he been serious about the fact that he never intended to kill me, only come for me that night to help me? Not because he loved me, but because he hadn’t won?

This whole thing—the arrest, the case, the marriage… was it all just a manipulative man making sure he got what he wanted from me?

I knew Sam wanted to help me. And those other women. That was why I’d gotten so jealous. Because it wasn’t just me that he’d stalked, and stroked, and sexualized.

But I’d never let myself think about why. What if he wasn’t in love with me? Just driven by the need to be that guy. What if this was how his Dominance was satisfied?

What if he had to be the most important. The healer. The after-carer.

But then he was good. Time to move on.

Had I trapped him into a lie?

Had he married me to save himself?

Was he scheming with my dad?

He’d been ready to walk out of my life like he did with everyone else. Now he was here, my husband, and—

“Bridget.”

I blinked and looked at Gerald sitting next to me, his expression deeply concerned.

“Talk to me,” he said quietly. “Tell me what you’re thinking. This is a lot.”

I stared at him. “I don’t know what to think,” I said honestly. “I don’t know what to believe.”

“Believe that that fucker has known your dad all along,” Jeremy growled.

Gerald glared at him. “We don’t know that. ”

Jeremy’s brows rose. “You think he just decided to get to know the guy now?”

“If he was serious about a marriage… yes. It’s possible—”

“I told him,” I breathed. They both went quiet and looked at me. “Two days before that picture he told me he’d contacted people at the prison to find out if Dad was lying. I told him I didn’t even want him talking to the staff about my dad. I didn’t want… I didn’t want my dad to think I would contact him. I… I got really angry with him. I told him not to do it again, and he said he wouldn’t.”

I looked at Gerald whose forehead lines deepened. “That’s… well… Bridget if you drew a line and he crossed it—”

“This isn’t about fucking lines. This is about the fact that this dude is a fucking predator and he’s had you fooled since this started!”

Everything in my heart told me Jeremy was wrong. That Sam had never been a predator with me.

But then my eyes fell on that picture again and… what could I say? He’d lied to me. Defied me. Done the opposite of what I’d told him I needed.

Even if he loved me, he was clearly a liar.

Even if he wanted me, he was clearly in some kind of relationship with my dad that he’d hidden from me.

I had proof, like Jeremy said, that Sam knew my dad. And I knew my father was a manipulative, controlling, psycho.

So the only question left was, had this whole thing been a set up from the beginning? Or had Sam gone off the deep end when I got him arrested?

Was that why he’d never gotten angry with me? Because he knew he needed to keep me on his side to win this?

Was that why Sam had been so good to me? To keep me happy and on his side?

Had this all been exactly the set-up Jeremy had been trying to protect me from since day one?

How the hell was I going to find out?

I must have been saying the words, because Jeremy answered.

“I’ll show you. I told you, Bridget. I can prove it. ”

I looked at him, my insides shaking and quivering and heating up and freezing all at once. I didn’t want to listen to anything Jeremy thought about Sam. But if he was right…?

Then the words of that shrink swam back into my head and I felt sick.

“…we also see what is commonly termed, “Trauma bonding… it is observed when the victim comes to believe that only the perpetrator truly understands them… In the victim’s mind, they share intimate secrets that would turn others against them, so they protect each other. At it’s core, it’s a manipulative tactic, exploiting the victim’s need to tell themselves that they’re safe. But you can see how it would easily be twisted in a mind that is already injured.”

I closed my eyes and concentrated because I thought I might throw up again.

When I could breathe without feeling my stomach was going to revolt, I swallowed hard.

I need to know.

“Okay,” I whispered. I looked at Gerald whose expression was worried and a little dark. Then I turned back to Jeremy and nodded. “Show me.”