"How the fuck could you let this happen?" Nick snapped. He was pacing back and fourth in the waiting room, losing his mind.
For the last couple hours, I had debated on if or how I should tell him about the conversation I had with Bridget. This clearly was not a good time to tell him what her and I discussed.
"I'm sorry." I said for the thousandth time tonight with my head in my hands, still in shock. Everything was falling apart.
"Sorry doesn't explain how this happened." His palms pressed against the back of his neck.
"You would know better than I would. She got around you to get to me. He just shot her. I don't know how it got to that point. It just did. He was about to shoot me and she came out of nowhere and jumped in front of me." I explained.
"I know you're new to the family thing, but you are supposed to protect them, especially your sister. I thought that would be instinctive." He seethed.
His words twisted the knife in my chest. I reminded myself that he was just distraught and stressed.
"Enough, Nick. It isn't his fault." Nate hissed.
Police were speaking to the doctors. They had asked me everything I knew twice. I was sure the man worked for Alec, who clearly placed a target on my head. We had already handed over my home security footage from today, but Nick made sure the volume was untraceable because the man at door knew I was hiding something. I couldn't have police asking what that was.
"I'm so sorry for all of this, Nate." I said quietly.
"This isn't your fault. Abby has always felt guilty about not being able to save you on the night of the fire. You could not have stopped her from jumping in front of you even if you tried. She wanted to protect you."
It has been hours since we have gotten any information on Abby. The wait was wearing Nick down by the bit. The events of the night overloaded my mind. None of it processed. I didn't know if I should give Bridget space or what I would say if I went to see her. The only person that would have the answer to any of it was Abby.
"I'm sorry, Aiden. Nate's right." Nick murmured under his breath. A doctor came over to update us before I could verbally accept the apology.
"The bullets hit her right subclavian artery and her lung. She has lost a significant amount of blood, making her extremely weak. We repaired what we could until her blood pressure dropped dangerously because of a bleed we are trying to find the cause for. Considering how much blood she lost and how long she went without oxygen being carried to her brain, it's hard to say when or if she will wake up. If she does wake up, there is no telling how much brain damage she has or what function she will come back with. We are going to monitor her over the next few days and see what brain activity we can find."
I felt even sicker if that was possible. Nate let his head drop in his hands. This was my fault. Everyone around me was suffering because of the mission. It all happened as if I was watching it happen to someone else.
"Do you think she will wake up?" Nick asked.
"I've seen patients is worse condition than hers wake up and make a full recovery, but I've also see patients with less severe injuries not wake up. There is just no guarantees either way at this point. The only thing we can do right now is wait. We will know a lot more tomorrow. I suggest going home to get some sleep." The doctor answered bluntly before walking away.
Nick was already researching Abby's injuries, trying to figure out what more could be done. I sat back uselessly wondering how the fuck everything got to this point.
"Aiden, unless you plan on telling people how you're related, you can't stay." Nate reminded me.
"Right, okay. I'm not going home. I'll be my car if you need anything. Keep an eye on Nick, please." I muttered.
* * *
Two days had passed without a word from Bridget and a ventilator still breathing for Abby. The fact that she was sitting in Megan's room with out me there, completely accessible to Alec, made my skin crawl. I had never felt so powerless, knowing nothing I could do would make this okay. I revealed my deception to her at a time when her trust in others had already been shattered. The only ounce of trust she had left was with me, and I tore it away before she was ready.
The tubes and IVs made my sister almost unrecognisable. The harsh scent of antiseptics made my head throb. I sat in the seat beside the bed and held onto her hand. It was the only part of her that still looked normal. Even her closed eyes were taped to prevent corneal abrasions. Wires were inserted all over her body, but her hands stayed untouched.
"Can she hear me?" I asked the nurse as she took Abigail's vitals.
"The doctors will tell you we can't know for sure, but I think she can. I believe comatose patients do better when you talk to them. Talk to her." She finished her work and left.
There were so many things I wanted to tell her and so much I wanted to hear from her. I wondered if she would really hear me or not.
"You need to be okay. I just got you and Nate back. I still have so much more to learn about you. Nate needs you. I...um... I need you. When you found me, you brought back some of my humanity."
I looked back down at her hands before reluctantly continuing to speak as if my honesty would pull her back to consciousness.
"You have been the only one able to tell me when I'm out of line or going overboard. I need you to tell me what to do to fix what I did to Bridget. She... effects me in a way I don't know how to explain or handle. I haven't cared for anyone since I lost everything. Now, I'm losing both you and Bridget at the same time. And, I really... I don't think I can do it." I paused to get my thoughts in order. My voice shook as I forced the words out.
My breathing became more erratic as the reality of what I said settled in. Lately, it has been so difficult to keep my emotions in control. I had become so used to burying everything that I had no idea what do to when it crept up to the surface. My eyes closed as I did what I do best, bury it all. I inhaled a deep breath and continued.
"Nate and I need you to be here. We aren't finished."
I felt uncomfortable saying all of it out loud. It reminded me of praying, which I hadn't done since my parents dragged us to church as kids. I stood up to leave and saw Bridget standing in the doorway. I wondered how much she heard.
"Can we talk?" She asked. I nodded and walked out into the hall with her. Her appearance was strikingly different. She was so sad and exhausted, and it was my fault.
"What's wrong?" I asked, knowing how stupid of a question that was.
"Everything is wrong. I– I can't breathe. My family has all but dragged me out of here to get me home. I think they're scared that I know too much, and they want to keep me quiet. And I can't breathe because I'm terrified my dad will take advantage of catching me alone." She rambled.
"Bee, I–" I tried to cut in.
"The only person I want to talk to about any of it is you, but I can't look at you or think about you without falling apart. I have been going insane wondering what was real and what wasn't, and what else I don't know." Her voice was shaky.
She tried to control it and hide the fact that she was going to cry the next time she tried to speak. My hand reached for hers. For a single second, I felt her hold onto mine before pulling away.
"What can I do?" I asked.
"I really need you to tell me everything. I need to know what was real and what wasn't."
"You can ask me anything."
"There is somewhere we can talk privately, but if you don't want to go too far from your sister, I understand." She said hesitantly. Something about her saying your sister had a strange sting behind it.
"There haven't been any changes for a while. She's stable for now. I can go talk with you."
She led me to the lift down the hall from Abigail's room. We fell silent until the doors opened up to what looked like a deserted floor. She lead me to a stairwell, where there was a ladder leading to the roof of the hospital. Being outside always made her more at ease for these conversations.
"Are you bringing me up there to push me off the edge and murder me or something?" I joked, testing her patience.
"Jacob... Sorry– Aiden, you can't do that."
"Do what?"
"Be charming and make stupid jokes." She said without any evidence of a smile on your face.
"Sorry, I'll try to be less charming if that's what you what." I muttered. I caught her smile for barely a second before she had a straight face again.
"Jacob, I swear to god..." she snapped back.
"Aiden," I corrected under my breath. She shot me a death glare.
"Sorry, just call me with whatever you're comfortable with." I said seriously, "Go up the ladder first."
"Why? No, you go first." She argued.
"Just so that I can catch you if you trip or something. You really think I said that so I could hurt you?" I asked, slightly hurt.
"Well, it's not like you didn't hurt me already." She said under her breath. I stopped myself from opening my mouth.
She started climbing up the ladder. When we were nearly at the top, she gasped as she tripped on one step, but I immediately grabbed her waist not allowing her to fall.
As we got to the top, I needed to decide how honest I was going to be. The rooftop was cold but still comfortable. Clouds of grey dulled the sky and her blue eyes. I had never been more nervous to talk to Bridget. There was no orchestrated conversation, in which I always had the upper hand. When I first moved here, everything I said was perfectly tailored to make her love me more or trust me more in order to distance her from Alec. It was all planned. Every piece of myself I had given to her, real or fake, was dressed to her liking. Now, all I had was the truth, completely raw and stripped. No frame. No bows. No cushioning the lies.
"You have to know how much I care about y—"
Her eyes began to water ever so slightly.
"Please, stop saying that." She said with a cracking voice.
I reached for hand, and for the first time, she didn't let go. My other hand was on her waist without any objection from Bridget.
"You wanted to know what was real. That is real."
"Are you sorry for what you did to my family or for hurting me in the process?"
The question was infuriating to me. I dropped my
hands back to my sides. Is she hoping I was sorry for targeting her father? Fuck, no. Of course, I'm not.
"If you are asking if I'm sorry for hurting your dad, then no, I have zero regrets for any pain I have caused Alec Gallagher. Am I sorry that what I did hurt you? Absolutely. I wish I didn't hurt you. I've always wished you weren't his daughter."
"So, if you could start over, you wouldn't change anything?" She asked.
"Of course I would change it, but you need to understand that when I first moved here, I had no one. I didn't know Nate and Abby were even alive. The last time I saw them they were in a house that was on fire and burning to the ground. Everyone told me they died. I had no doubt in my mind that my entire family was dead. I didn't grow up learning about right versus wrong or how to treat people. All I knew was how I was treated."
"That doesn't make any of it okay." She said. I wished she was angrier. The only emotion her voice carried was devastation, which cut much deeper.
"I'm not at all saying it does. I'm just explaining how it got to this point. I had nothing to lose and nothing to gain except retribution for my father. It's different now. I have some sort of family now. Nate and Abby coming back changed me. Meeting you changed me."
"Why weren't you just honest with me?" Although she pulled away from me a little, her expression softened into what looked like empathy.
"Up until recently, you've idolised your parents. You loved them whole heartedly. How do you think you would have reacted if I told you I moved her to destroy them?" I asked.
"But there have been so many times you could have told me. Like the night I told you my dad killed Kelsey, or when those therapy session videos leaked?" She was trying so hard to not cry. She looked so fragile.
"Since I'm trying to be as honest as possible here, I should probably tell you that those videos were leaked by me..."
"What? How? I thought one of your own sessions leaked. You said when your grandmother...wait, that was a lie, wasn't it?"
"It was a staged therapy session. I had to look like I was violated like everyone else."
"Why would you do that to the doctor, though? Her career was destroyed." She said, confused.
"She recommended to a judge that to put me in a juvenile detention centre right after I lost my family. You're mother bribed her to make sure I stayed away from any living family I had left." I explained. My fingers twisted my rings as I shifted in my seat.
I hated talking about this, but I owed it to Bridget. She deserved to understand.
"Oh my god." She shook her head in disbelief, "Was every bad thing that happened to my family and me since last spring orchestrated by you?"
"Not everything, but a lot of it, yes."
"What about Matt? Did you have something to do with him cheating on me?"
I didn't want to answer this, but I knew to have any sort of shot of getting her back, I had to be truthful. Each honest answer hit her like bullets. This next one was going to land straight through her chest.
"Yes. Kora was a very close friend. We were both trained by the person who sent us here, Kai." I began. I told her everything from the first day of training with Kai to how angry he got when he found out I had feelings for her.
"Did you sleep with her?"
"I have slept with her before, but not since you and I started."
Bridget looked sickly pale as if she was going to throw up.
"I-I don't know if I even want the answer to this. Did you..." she stopped speaking and looked up toward the sky.
My lips parted, but no words came out. I closed my eyes to brace for the impact of the car crash I was at fault for.
Get on with it.
"Kai was the one who abducted you. If I had known he was planning to do that, I would have protected you."
"So, you didn't know anything until you found me on the beach?"
I wish so much I could simply say yes to this.
"No, I found out where you were and tried to convince him to let you go."
"Was it something you wanted to happen? Did you just let him do it?"
The idea of her needing to ask this sent me closer to the edge. I bit the inside of my cheek.
"No, God, no. Bridget, I wouldn't do that. Kai said if I tried to save you, he would hurt or maybe kill you, but if I cooperated, you would be returned home safely."
I explained everything that happened when she was taken while she listened in horror.
"You slept with Kora. You leaked those videos. You were in on my abduction... I can't..." she trailed off in a panic before she walked toward the edge of the roof. Nauseated by the stress of it all, she bent over, gripping her stomach.
"You don't deserve this. I'm so sorry."
"I know you are."
All of the lies I had told pooled in her eyes before lining down her cheek. I came to her side, not knowing how to comfort her from the wounds I inflicted. As I rested my hand on her shoulder, she collapsed into my arms.
"What do you need from me to fix this?" I asked, pleading.
"I don't know... I'm...I'm so mad at you." She cried into my chest.
I unleashed what I did to Bridget, and now, it was he consequence of my actions was no longer only in my guilty conscience. It was in the darkly sunken orbits around her eyes and the tears hidden by the rain. It was in the crease between her eyebrows and in each shaky breath. It was everywhere.
"I know, baby." I choked out and pressed my lips to the top of her head as her arms tightened around me.
"Do you think my dad knows?" She asked, calming down a bit.
"Your dad stopped trusting me when he found out I knew he killed Kelsey. He has been suspicious of me since. I think the man that shot Abby came to my house on Alec's orders, but I don't think he knows about me." I explained.
"Can I ask you something?" I nodded. "Nick said you knew how to talk down a gunman the day Abby was shot, and you said Kai 'trained you.' What does that mean?"
There wasn't a simple answer to that, but I do my best to give her something sufficient. It was strange to go against my initial impulse to vague.
"Kai used to be in a special sector of the military. He used those training strategies on Nick and me. His goal was to instill strategy, perception, and manipulation and to eliminate fear and emotion. He used physical and mental tactics to minimise my humanity and my empathy. The only thing I was allowed to care about was the plan."
"What did he do to you?" The way she said it almost made it sound like I was a victim of something.
"We did a lot of different exercises. There was this one exercise underwater. He would tie rope around our ankles with heavy weights attached to us, and we would jump into the ocean or a pool. I would have to stay underwater until I triggered a repressed, traumatic memory."
"There's more?" She asked, horrified.
"He put me in high pressure, high stake situations that forced me to set my emotions aside to resolve the problem at hand. The worst was probably this one time I woke up strapped to a table with wires all over my body. I had no idea what was happening, and he said he was going to convert emotional pain of every traumatic event your dad put me through to physical pain."
"So, he tortured your emotions out of you? Did he like...brainwash you or something?"
"I don't know. It was voluntary for the most part. I never thought of it that way."
She went quiet for a few moments. I had always been able to read her. Now, it was impossible, and it drove me insane.
"It feels like none of it was real." She sat down on the cement against the bricks. I lowered myself next to her.
"I lied to you about my name, my family, and what I was doing to your family. Everything between you and I was genuine. Bee, I swear." I tried to meet her eyes. "What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking that I promised you wouldn't lose me, but I feel like I'm the one that lost you."
"You didn't lose me...but–" A rising lump in my throat halted me. I swallowed harshly to continue, "You don't have to keep your promise... you didn't know..."
Her palms pressed against her eyes as she spoke again. Coated with rain and tears, damp blonde waves stuck to her cheeks.
"I told you that we will work through anything you share with me. I just didn't think it would hurt this much." She breathed.
The words I'm sorry tainted my tongue, but I bit down on my cheek to stop myself. She knew I was sorry. Continuing to say would only comfort me, not her.
"You targeted my family and used me like a game piece. You've lied to me for months. Your friend kidnapped me. This should have broken my trust in you on every conceivable level. Yet, I feel safer being alone with you on a roof than I do in Megan's room with my parents."
"You don't have to stay with them. You have every right to want nothing to do with me, but I don't want you to feel unsafe. I did what I did because Alec is a terrible person. I never wanted to hurt you."
"What my dad did to Abigail, to Nick's family... It is killing me. Now that I know, it was all done to you too... I-I can't handle it. You didn't deserve what happened, but... I can't... god... I don't know what to do." She paused to compose herself.
I surrendered to the overwhelming feeling that I was falling without anything to hold onto. I couldn't watch her aimlessly hurting anymore. She leaned in against my arm as I pulled her to me. We sat in each other's embrace, surrounded by glass shards of the trust I shattered.
"What can I do?" She asked completely taking me by surprise.
"What?" I asked to make sure I was not hallucinating. My ears registered her question as my eyes would perceive snow in a desert.
"What can I do to help you clear your father's name?"
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I feel like this was a really boring chapter so sorry for that. A lot of things needed to be explained so that's what I focused on here. Again really sorry if it was boring!! It's not staying that way, I promise!
What are your thoughts on Bridget's reaction to everything?