“Don’t apologize for that,” she laughed. “I’m glad I can rest assured I’ll be safe around you.”
Well, yeah. I might have been thirsting over her more than anyone right now, but at least I knew what consent was, dammit. I folded my hands on the table. “So your brother’s okay?”
She pushed out a heavy breath, picking at her food. “I didn’t intend to get you wrapped up in my family drama, too. God knows I’m already putting enough things on you. We can just pretend that didn’t happen, if you prefer.”
“I don’t know if you think I just ask questions to hear my own voice, but it’s actually that I want to know.”
She laughed, catching herself off-guard with it. “Touché.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Honestly. That didn’t feel like any of the interactions I’ve had with him before. My family’s… they’re not terrible. They never treated me badly. It just always felt… strange… uncomfortable. They’re so formal, stiff, like any show of emotion is tantamount to murder.”
“Oh.”
She scrunched up her face at me. “I know what you’re thinking.”
I put my hands up. “I didn’t say it out loud!”
“Mm-hm. I can read your thoughts.”
Thank god she couldn’t, or she’d be horrified. “But you talked to your mom before coming here?”
“Ah… I should have taken your advice and just let you handle it. After I first called you, I reached out to some old family friends too, to see if anyone had leads. It got back to my mother from there, and she called me to tell me they were converting the home office to a bedroom that would besuitable for the duration of my stay.You actually called in the middle of that call and gave me a miraculous out.”
I chewed my lip. “You don’t have to go back to see them if it makes you uncomfortable. They don’t own you.”
“No,” she sighed, “but I should face it. They know I live in Merrimount now, and if I ignore them, they’ll probably send… I don’t know, spies, to watch the neighborhood, see where I go, track me back to you, and then I’ll be getting you in trouble, too, won’t I?”
“Your mother commands an army of spies, then, does she?”
“Mm. Otherwise known as neighborhood busybodies.”
“Oh, even worse. This old guy across from my complex just stops whatever he’s doing to stare at me when I go out and he’s there too. I swear, he’s never seen a le… a lady before.” I needed to make it more than eight hours before I nearly let the wordlesbianslip. “He’d rat on me for sure.”
She smiled wider. “So, I should probably face it.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
She frowned sharply. “You don’t need to fix every problem in my life, Bridget.”
“No, I know, just—sorry. I’m being nosy.”
She shook her head. “It’s not that. I just don’t want you to feel like you’re responsible for this mess.” She reached across the table, and I had a heart attack when she put her hand on top of mine. “This is more than enough. It means a lot. Thanks, Bridget. Now, let’s eat.”
Chapter 4
Victoria
Thankfully, Kevin and I never scheduled a time that I would be around to see the family or his girlfriend, so even though I was desperately curious about the latter, I avoided the whole subject of family long enough that Bridget and I managed to settle in a little bit together. I started to get rather fond of Christmas over the next few days, keeping busy around the apartment, settling in with my things in places—I had a nice speaker system that I’d brought along, so I helped set it up, moving things around in her living room, and that was when I saw Bridget more scared than I’d ever seen her before.
“Bridget?” I said, calling her attention across the living room, where she was on her knees trying to run an extension cord behind the couch, and she looked up.
“What’s up?”
“Is this yours? It’s in the drawer I dumped all the components in, but I think it might have already been in there…”I held it up, the small device like an egg timer, and she looked like I’d shown her a murder weapon, all the color draining from her face.
“Oh—that is… mine,” she said, her voice ghostly, and she was on top of me in three milliseconds, plucking it out of my hand, shoving it into her pocket. “Oh, wow, I am so sorry. I thought I cleaned all my junk out of here. My bad.”
“It’s your home. You really don’t need to apologize. I just thought it was part of the system and couldn’t figure out where it slotted in…”
She cleared her throat hard. “Well, not in there. It’s a, um, it’s a… it’s a keepsake.”
