Page 128 of Prey for You

I stared at him and he sighed.

“Prove… prove what?”

“Prove that he’s been lying to you.”

“Aboutwhat?!”

Jeremy took a deep breath. “You know what,” he muttered, like he was mad I was making him say it. “We told you they were inside at the same time. We told you we thought there was a connection there. Well… now I can prove it.”

Then he flipped open the folder and inside was a picture. In color, but kind of pixilated. A security camera photo showing a rectangular table, an old guy in prison scrubs and a young guy with tattoos on his arms and—

I leaped forward and grabbed the photo, yanking it away from Jeremy, but he didn’t even move. He dropped his head into his hands.

Sam.

Sam. At the prison. Sitting at a table, leaning over it, speaking intensely with the old man.

The old man whose face looked horrifically familiar and yet I almost didn’t recognize him.

It couldn’t be.

It couldn’t fuckingbe.

“Look at the date on the corner, Bridget,” Jeremy said, his tone so weary I wanted to claw out his tongue.

I didn’t want to look. I wanted to look anywhere except at that photo. At that date. But I did it. I made myself do it.

And my heart broke.

9:04am on December 13th.

The day after the anniversary of my mother’s death.

Sam went to see my fatherthe next day.Two days after I told him I never wanted him to contact anyone about my father ever again. The same day I missed him so much, I begged him to come to me. The day before he rushed to the cabin to see me, like the conquering hero then plowed me like a field. And told me he loved me. And told me never to give up. That we couldbeat this.

He’d talked to my father just hours before, and he never said a fucking word.

The screaming in my head would not stop.

And then I realizedit was me.

Some time later when I could see again, I found myself sitting on the couch, that picture on the coffee table in front of me.

My head had stopped screaming, but it still spun. Gerald sat next to me looking haggard while Jeremy paced the space on the other side of the table.

“You’re making me tense,” I mumbled to Jeremy.

He raked a hand through his hair, but stopped pacing and dropped into the chair across from us.

He and Gerald started talking again, but I couldn’t hear them.

I kept seeing Sam in the witness box talking about those other women. The way he admitted that he used his Dominanceto build intimacy and trust… give them a place to be safe… regain their confidence.

But then he walked out of their lives.

And he’d been doing that with me. He’d beenwalking away.I forced him to come back. I’d never said the safeword. Had he been serious about the fact that he never intended to kill me, only come for me that night to help me? Not because he loved me, but because he hadn’twon?

This whole thing—the arrest, the case, the marriage… was it all just a manipulative man making sure he got what he wanted from me?

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