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~ brIDGET ~

“You went to see him?!” Gerald looked genuinely shocked. “Bridget, we talked about this!”

“I had to,” I muttered. It was the next day. I sat on Gerald’s couch, arms crossed, legs crossed, heel tapping. Everything in me wound so tight I was surprised I didn’t pop through my skin. “I had to see his face. I had to see how he reacted.”

Gerald took a deep breath and rubbed a hand over his head. “Okay then… how did he react?”

I frowned. “Exactly as I expected.”

“And that’s… a bad thing?” he asked carefully.

I chewed my lip. “Yes.” I think.

“Can you explain why?”

I almost couldn’t say it because I was afraid of it. But if this week had taught me anything it was that I didn’t have a fucking clue. I’d been wrong… wrong, wrong, wrong.

Hadn’t I?

That was the problem. I couldn’t sleep because my mind kept going back over it all. One second I was convinced Sam had played me. The next I was certain it was Jeremy playing chess with the pieces to make Sam look bad.

But it always came back to the same thing: Jeremy told him about the picture and Sam didn’t explain it. He couldn’t. Because he’d done it. And that made everything before that a lie.

Unless he was telling the truth when he said it was panic because I disappeared.

But the timing though. And he never told me about it…

And so I entered the roller-coaster again. I was exhausted. I wasn’t sleeping. Barely eating.

In any given moment my head said one thing and my heart said another. I didn’t know what was upside down or sideways. I hoped Gerald might have a clue.

“Bridget?”

He’d asked me a question and I hadn’t answered.

Gerald looked very worried. “You said Sam did what you expected. And that was a bad thing. Why?”

I blew out my breath. “Because… because it means… it means there’s a part of me that still believes him,” I admitted.

Gerald looked very thoughtful. “Explain.”

I tucked my arms tighter against my chest and let my heel keep tapping because if I didn’t move I would explode.

“He said everything I expected—all the clarity, all the fucking reassurance, even though he’s the one in trouble. He’s always like that. More concerned about how I feel or what’s going on for me, than himself. I attacked him, G, and he didn’t hit back. He stopped me from hitting him, and that was it.”

“How did that make you feel?”

“Horny!”

Gerald closed his eyes like he was rolling them.

“I’m serious!” I burst out. “That’s what I’m telling you. I don’t react to this guy like the others. I don’t feel the same way, I don’t get scared of him—and I don’t get bored… there’s something different , Gerald—and that means… fuck, does that mean he does have me like… mental? Am I doing what that shrink said on the stand?”

Gerald’s jaw went tight. “I believe I can tell you with complete certainty that you do not have Stockholm Syndrome, Bridget. Or anything even remotely like it. Frankly, I had words with Jeremy allowing that argument to be presented given what we know about you. I felt it was… deceptive.”

“So… you don’t think Sam has fucked with my head so that I think I’m in love with him, but he’s manipulated that?” It was the question that had burned in my mind every miserable, lonely minute since I’d had to walk away from Sam.

Did I only think I loved him, when actually I’d been conditioned to think that?

Had I fallen for him because my mind was so shattered that I felt love when someone fucked me over?

Did I feel safe with a monster because I really had married my father?

God, I wanted to slap Jeremy for putting that in my head.

Gerald gave a heavy sigh. “You want the real truth, Bridget?”

“Yes!”

“The real truth is… I don’t know what to think anymore.”

I went completely still. “You think… you think there’s a chance Sam is good?”

Gerald looked away from me and his jaw rolled. “I truly don’t know,” he said quietly. “What I am sure of is that Sam is another example of the ways your life, in which you’ve been surrounded by violence, has formed your taste in men and sex and… well, relationships.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Frankly, I’m not afraid you’ve being coerced. I’m afraid that your trauma has morphed into an appetite for violence that draws you to the kind of people who are very, very dangerous for you.”

“So, you do think he coerced me? Or trauma bonded me, or whatever? And that he never loved me, he was manipulating me?”

“No. I don’t know.”

I blinked, shocked. “Are you—”

“I think that your connection with Sam is born out of an unhealthy place, but it has… opened you up in healthy ways. And I don’t see how that is possible if something real didn’t happen. And yet, by the same token, it’s also clear that Sam is not all the things he told you he was. Has he fought for you? Yes, consistently. I will give him that—he did when I went to see him, and even his lawyers—who had very strong words for me about talking to him—reported that he shows concern for you when they’re dealing with him. It is… startling. And yet…”

“And yet? ”

Gerald put his glasses back on and locked eyes with me. “It is possible for both things to be true, Bridget,” he said gently. “It is possible for Sam to be in love with you—even want to help or protect you—and still be a creature of violence and deception. If that is the case, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. But it does mean he has issues. Issues that could harm you deeply.”

I wasn’t breathing, but Gerald didn’t stop.

“Men can love you and destroy you at the same time because of their issues, Bridget. It’s not black and white. I’m sorry, but… that’s the best that I can say.”

But that left me even more confused.