Page 174 of Hunt for You

I shook my head and cursed, but that glass around my heart shivered again.

“…Sam served some of his time in the same prison. We don’t have proof that they’re associates yet. We’re looking into it…”

“There are thousands of men in that prison—” I started, knowing how pathetic I sounded. But Gerald wasn’t done.

“I’m sorry that it seems like no matter how hard you try, you always get deceived by the people you care about.”

I flinched.

“I’m not deceiving you, Bridget. But I think Sam was.”

Sam’s eyes, pleading. “…Everything I said was true. All of it—it was real. I changed my life. God changed my life—”

“Stop,” I whispered.

Gerald shook his head, but his expression dropped to misery. “Sweetheart, I am sodeeplysorry that Cain—or Sam, or whichever one is his real name—might not turn out to be who you thought he was.”

I hissed a curse and recoiled from that statement, fought it in my mind.

He never fucked me. Not once. Not even when I gave him permission. Not even when I begged!

I was going to talk to Sam. I would find a way tomakehim answer my questions if it was literally the last thing I did. Because apparently, while I’d been busy falling in love with two different men, they were the same guy. So that meant either both of them loved me… or neither of them did.

And then I realized… I’d brought the law down on a man who was a convicted felon, a Primal Dom, and a preacher who’d turned his life around.

If I’d been any one of those, I would never have forgiven me. Let alone all three.

I did this.

It was me.

That thin wall around my heart caved, the glass shattering and sending shards of glass plunging into my heart so it spasmed and shrieked with pain.

But this time it didn’t stop.

The pain started in my heart, but radiated out. I clutched at my chest.

Gerald watched me, his brows pinching down. “Bridget, what—”

I sucked in a breath and clutched at my chest, and suddenly he came alive.

“Oh, shit, Bridget—is it your heart?!”

I couldn’t talk. I tried. But the pain was so bad… I stumbled forward, throwing my arms up, towards him, trying to grab his shirt, but my hands wouldn’t work properly.

Murmuring reassurance and muttering curses, Gerald caught me and quickly ushered me to the couch, laying me down, and screaming for help as he checked my pulse and—

Pain.Nothing but pain—and a hole in my chest that started sucking the light from my field of vision.

It was an odd sensation… kind of like sinking away from reality. As if I could see and hear what was happening outside my body, but it didn’t touch me.

Somewhere, deep inside, I was vaguely aware that Gerald was bent over me, his face painted in fear and determination, and there were pounding feet and lots of voices.

But then the room got dimmer and those lights flashed on the edges of my vision—except, in a perfect, circular halo this time. All the way around. Not just in the corners.

And as I sank further from Gerald’s quick, efficient movements and instructions, I started to laugh.

Because what fucking irony that on the very same night I found a reason to live, my body would finally betray me?

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