I bite the inside of my lip and fist my hands at my sides, doing my best to ignore the panicked inner voice as Maddie wipes Bridget’s tears with the hem of her apron.
Over the top of the bright pink fabric, Bridget’s eyes linger on Mick for only a moment before sliding over to fix on my face. “I’m sorry, but who are you?” she asks in a chilly voice.
“She’s my girlfriend,” Mick says before I can convince my mouth to move. “And she stays. Anything you need to say to me, you can say to her.”
He reaches back to take my hand, but my fingers aren’t working so well, either. I want to give his palm a comforting squeeze, but my hands are cold and stiff, like rigor mortis is setting in.
Which is appropriate, I guess.
Despite Mick’s words, it feels like something is dying in this room, something beautiful I hadn’t realized how desperately I needed until Bridget showed up to take it away. I mean, I knew I loved Mick, but I hadn’t realized losing him would feel like something vital is being ripped out of my insides.
I can’t bear to think about my life without him, a fact that scares me nearly as much as the thought of trying to help raise an unstable woman’s baby.
“This is private, Mickey,” Bridget says, her full bottom lip beginning to tremble. “I don’t want to discuss our baby’s future with a stranger in the room.”
“She isn’t a stranger,” Mick says, his grip tightening on my hand.
“She is to me.” She sucks in a wobbly breath. “And I think I’ve already been through enough without having to talk about the night the condom broke in front of the woman you’ve been sleeping with while I’ve been trying to figure out how to raise a child all by myself.”
She dissolves into sobs again and sags against Maddie, her pale cheek resting on the taller woman’s chest while Maddie strokes her shiny hair.
“Okay. Let’s try to calm down.” Maddie casts Mick a wide-eyed look over Bridget’s head that silently begs him to take control of the situation. “Getting upset isn’t good for anyone, especially the baby.”
“I’ll go downstairs.” I pull my hand from Mick’s.
“You don’t have to,” he says, his voice dropping as he turns to face me. “Seriously, Faith. I don’t have any secrets from you.”
“But you have a baby on the way,” I say, my throat so tight I can barely get the words out. “That changes everything, Mick. You know it does.”
He shakes his head, the panicked look in his eyes making me suspect he can feel our dreams dying, too, all our sparkles extinguished by the tears of a woman he’s going to be bound to for the rest of his life.
Bound.
Like a shackle around his ankle that he’ll drag behind him forever, ensuring we never have the same easy, uncomplicated relationship again.
The thought makes my chest ache and my eyes sting as I bolt for the door, fleeing down the stairs and out into the cold day alone.
Chapter Nineteen
Mick
I watch Faith go with a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach, struggling to ignore the voice in my head that insists she’s never coming back.
That this is it—Bridget has ruined my relationship with Faith the same way she ruined my senior year of college and there’s no way to reclaim what’s been lost.
But losing Faith is so much worse than losing a carefree, final year of school.
A future without Faith in it is unthinkable, intolerable, so terrifying and rage-inducing that when I turn back to face Bridget, it takes all my self-control to keep from shouting for her to cut the waterworks and tell me what it’s going to take to get her out of my apartment.
I get that Bridget’s tears are convincing to people who don’t know her well—Maddie’s obviously worried for the girl sobbing on her chest—but I’ve seen Bridget turn tears on and off like a faucet more times than I can count. They’re simply another weapon in her arsenal, a tool she uses to manipulate people.
I’m honestly not sure Bridget’s capable of feeling sadness the way other people feel it. Our final months together made it clear she has very little empathy, only a driving desire to get what she wants, no matter what the cost.
Even if the cost is another person’s will to live.
By the end of our relationship, there were days when the thought of checking out was preferable to living another day under her reign of emotional terror. But I never seriously considered that final, permanent escape. Deep down, I knew I’d find a way to be free of her, that one day I’d leave her in my rearview and never look back.
But now she’s here.
And she’s having my baby and I hate myself for having continued to sleep with her, even if it was the one area where we weren’t completely dysfunctional by the end. I hate that condom for breaking and I hate fate for its lousy fucking timing.
Now, I’ll never escape her, and soon she’ll have another person to terrorize, a tiny, innocent person who deserves so much better than a mother like Bridget or a father who wishes he or she had never been born.
The thought makes my throat close up with shame and guilt, but it’s true.
I don’t want this baby. I don’t want my ex to have an excuse to sink her claws into me again or face a future worried for the safety of a child who will never have a stable home life so long as Bridget’s in the picture.
“All right, let’s take a deep breath.” Maddie rubs Bridget’s back as she wipes the tears from her cheeks with trembling hands.
The trembling is probably an act, too, I think, my contempt for her so intense there’s no room in my heart for compassion. There hasn’t been for a long time.
“Why don’t I go make you something to drink?” Maddie casts a pointed glance my way as she steps over to the dining table and pulls out a chair. “You two sit down and talk this out, and I’ll be right back with warm milk. It will help you calm down.”
“Thank you so much, Maddie,” Bridget says, sniffing as she beams up at my sister. “You’re as sweet as Mick always said you were. I appreciate your support so much.”
“Of course,” Maddie says, as she helps Bridget get settled at the table. “Mick, do you want something? Tea or coffee?”
“No, thank you.” My jaw clenches with reluctance, but I force myself to circle the table and sit down across from Bridget, meeting her watery gaze as Maddie crosses the room to the kitchenette to fetch the milk and a pan to warm it in.
As soon as she’s out of earshot, I say softly, “I don’t know what you want from me, but if it’s anything more than child support and my half of the childcare duties, you’re going to be disappointed.”
Her bottom lip starts to tremble again, but I cut her off before she can get started.
“Save your energy,” I say. “Tears won’t work on me anymore.”
Almost instantly, her eyes clear and her features shift. I would say she drops her mask, but there’s nothing real at the heart of Bridget to conceal—I ought to know, I stupidly hunted for it long enough. But there is no authentic person to uncover, only a series of masks she employs with such proficiency most people never realize there’s only emptiness underneath.