Page 76 of Unravel You

I jerked to my feet, darted to the door, and banged on it. “I need to use the restroom. Hey.” I kept at it until a shadow appeared under the door. “Come on. I’ll just be a few minutes.”

The door swung open. Bridget stood there in the bright kitchen, looking as if she hadn’t slept in days. Good, I wasn’t the only one who felt like crap.

“You have one minute.” She braced her hands on her hips, lips pursed.

The bathroom was halfway down the hallway that lead to the front door. I slipped out of the basement and rushed to the powder room to pee before Bridget changed her mind. “Any chance you’ll give me a set of clothes to wear?” I projected my voice.

“I don’t see the point,” Bridget said.

A shiver ran through me as I washed my hands and watched the dirty water go down the drain. I lifted my gaze toward the mirror and groaned at my reflection. I looked as crappy as I felt. Closing my eyes, I turned around and leaned on the sink. Maybe I could stay in the bathroom until the police came.

“Time’s up.” Bridget barged in. “I don’t have time to babysit you.”

“What happened to you?” I glanced down at the slash across my cuticle. The damage Bridget had done was way worse. It hurt way more. “It doesn’t make sense. You had it all.”

She barked out an incredulous laugh. Did she not know how lucky she was?

“You think I had it all? Let’s see—I had a job that required me to put in sixty hours a week. A husband who didn’t care if I lived or died. And a life that was going nowhere fast. Does that sound like I had it all?”

From where I stood, it did look as if she were on top of her game. Was this a bad case of the grass being greener on the other side? How could it be? Derek and Bridget ran the company together. She was a success. “Derek always said you were a brilliant CEO. Embezzlement notwithstanding, of course.”

“He said that?” She met my gaze.

Jeez, she could be as intimidating as Derek. Even now—standing there looking as if she hadn’t slept in days and for all intents and purposes, at her rock bottom— she seemed dauntless.

“He did. Why did you betray him? He didn’t deserve any of it.”

Bridget threw it all away when she got in bed with her accountant to finance her gambling addiction. Derek never said it, but I wondered if he would still be married to her if she hadn’t done any of those things. He’d been happy with their arrangement because even if he didn’t love her, he did need her. Or at least, he thought he did. Wasn’t that why he’d agreed to everything Bridget asked for? He married her because she asked. My gaze blurred when my mind painted a picture of Bridget and Derek together.

“You don’t know how it was. He used me. I wasn’t his wife. I was a means to an end. I made his company what it is today. What did I get in return? A couple of million and a ruined career?” Tears brimmed her eyes for a moment before she blinked them away. “He couldn’t even love me. He couldn’t give me that much.”

Love? Bridget was in love with Derek? I glanced down at my hands. “I didn’t know.”

“Derek needed me. When he got what he wanted, he tossed me to the curb. Typical, don’t you think? Then he had the audacity to be angry at me for finding solace somewhere else. Men can be so selfish, so self-entitled.”

“It didn’t have to end like that.”

She shrugged, raising an eyebrow at me. “What would you have done? What do you do when the person you love can’t be bothered to care?”

Somewhere in the kitchen, Alex popped open a beer. He never bothered to care either. I was a doll, a toy to him. In the beginning, I had tried to work things out with him, but he didn’t have it in him to love. “You can’t make someone love you.”

She reached for my hand to look at the three-carat canary ring Derek gave me as an engagement ring. “That worked out for you, didn’t it? You’re here because I chose to stand up for myself. Never forget that. If I hadn’t moved on, Derek and I would still be married.”

“I think eventually Derek would’ve realized your marriage wasn’t real. You just accelerated the inevitable.” I yanked my arm away from her.

Her shrill laugh turned my fingers cold. “You can tell yourself whatever you want. As long as I get what I’m due.”

The doorbell chimed, and my whole body jerked. Bridget stood still, listening for movement near the front porch. A knock came next, and she shoved me back into the bathroom. “Stay there.”

Had the alarm signal worked? Alex’s heavy steps stomped toward the entrance. I stayed put until Bridget shuffled away from the door. Muffled voices filtered through, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I pressed my forehead on the doorframe.Run. You gotta run. Scream. But I couldn’t move. My arms and legs shook uncontrollably.

I took deep breaths to calm down. After a few seconds, I turned the metal knob and made a run for it. By then it was too late—Alex had already dispatched whoever had shown up. I didn’t even know if it had been the police or just some random person. He slammed the door, then grabbed me by the neck. I didn’t fight him because as long as he had his hands and attention on me, he would forget about the fact that he hadn’t punched in the code to lock the door. I had a shot at getting out. My plan with the alarm hadn’t failed all the way.

“Where do you think you’re going, huh?” He’d stayed away from me after I punched him in the face, but now he was ready to knock me around some more. Had Bridget asked him to stay away from me? Or had he finally realized I wasn’t going to put up with him anymore? “Did you call the cops?”

“How could she? She has no phone.”

“The alarm company said they received a distress call. What did you do?” He slammed my body against the wall. His eyes showed anger and frustration for having to explain himself. He had always had a problem with authority.

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