Page 116 of In Your Wildest Dreams
Carefully, I pull up the sleeve, revealing bruising a few inches from her wrist. It’s red and purple, splotchy like someone wrapped their fingers around her delicate skin and squeezed. My stomach bottoms out.
“Fuck, Bridge. Did I do that when we were having sex?” I try to think back to the other night. I’m sure I pinned her hands above her head at some point.
“No,” she says quickly, then her voice lowers. “No. You didn’t do it.”
The wheels turn slowly. I didn’t do it. But someone did.
“Bridge…” My pulse quickens and heat climbs up my face.
Tears fill her eyes.
“Who did this?”
It takes everything inside me not to rush her to talk, but I can see her working up to saying more.
“Yesterday when I left here, I stopped by the coffee shop in my old neighborhood.”
“Right.” She sent a cute pic of her with coffee standing beside my SUV. It’s the new wallpaper on my phone.
“After I sent that picture, I ran into Gabe.”
Goddamnmotherfuckershitfuckdammit.
My body is eerily calm as I rage internally. “Gabe did this? He put his hands on you?”
“I was just trying to get away from him.”
“This is not your fault,” I say too quickly, showing some of my anger.
She tenses.
“Baby.” I place both my hands softly on her face and look her in the eye. “Whatever happened, there’s no excuse for it ending with you having fucking bruises on your arm.”
Her lip trembles. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone there. He saw the SUV. He knows that we’re seeing each other.”
“Listen to me, Bridget. You have nothing to apologize for. Can you tell me what happened?”
“Not much. I saw him, he said some terrible things about me and you, and then said that he’d ruin you unless I had sex with him,” she whispers. “And then I dropped my coffee on him and got away.”
Ruin me? That’ll be hard to do with two broken legs and a smashed jaw.
I kiss her forehead and then move her to the couch beside me. “I need to call my agent.”
“No, no, no.” She holds on to me to keep me from moving. “Please don’t tell anyone. I didn’t even want to tell you.”
“I always want you to tell me.”
“You know it’s complicated. He isn’t just some jerk ex-boyfriend. He can damage your career.”
Like I give a fuck right now. “This has gone too far. He doesn’t get to talk to you like that and he definitely doesn’t get to put his fucking hands on you. Are those the only ones?”
She hesitates, then shows me the other arm. It has similar bruising.
Motherfuckingcockfuckasshole.
“I’m fine, okay? I made a mistake going somewhere that I might run into him. I knew he went to that coffee shop sometimes. You going to talk to him or making a big scene will just make things worse. I thought about it all night. If he was going to trade you, he would have by now. He’s just trying to scare me.”
A slow unsettling rage fills me as I realize two things at once. One: Bridget’s been trying to avoid Gabe since we started dating. I already knew this, but suddenly the not going to games or out in public together looks different. I thought I understood it before, but I was only thinking about what it meant for me if he saw us together. She was telling me, and I didn’t hear her. She didn’t want to see him. Which leads to number two: This isn’t the first time he’s hurt her.
