Page 141 of Prey for You

Then she shoved me back one step and stormed out of my house.

45. Analyze, Ana-lies

~ BRIDGET ~

“You went to see him?!” Gerald looked genuinely shocked. “Bridget, we talked about this!”

“I had to,” I muttered. It was the next day. I sat on Gerald’s couch, arms crossed, legs crossed, heel tapping. Everything in me wound so tight I was surprised I didn’t pop through my skin. “I had to see his face. I had to see how he reacted.”

Gerald took a deep breath and rubbed a hand over his head. “Okay then… how did he react?”

I frowned. “Exactly as I expected.”

“And that’s… a bad thing?” he asked carefully.

I chewed my lip. “Yes.”I think.

“Can you explain why?”

I almost couldn’t say it because I was afraid of it. But if this week had taught me anything it was that I didn’t have a fucking clue. I’d been wrong… wrong, wrong,wrong.

Hadn’t I?

That was the problem. I couldn’t sleep because my mind kept going back over it all. One second I wasconvincedSam had played me. The next I wascertainit was Jeremy playing chess with the pieces to make Sam look bad.

But it always came back to the same thing: Jeremy told him about the picture and Sam didn’t explain it. He couldn’t.Because he’d done it. And that made everything before that a lie.

Unless he was telling the truth when he said it was panic because I disappeared.

But the timing though. And he never told me about it…

And so I entered the roller-coaster again. I was exhausted. I wasn’t sleeping. Barely eating.

In any given moment my head said one thing and my heart said another. I didn’t know what was upside down or sideways. I hoped Gerald might have a clue.

“Bridget?”

He’d asked me a question and I hadn’t answered.

Gerald looked very worried. “You said Sam did what you expected. And that was a bad thing. Why?”

I blew out my breath. “Because… because it means… it means there’s a part of me that still believes him,” I admitted.

Gerald looked very thoughtful. “Explain.”

I tucked my arms tighter against my chest and let my heel keep tapping because if I didn’t move I would explode.

“He said everything I expected—all the clarity, all the fucking reassurance, even thoughhe’sthe one in trouble. He’s always like that. More concerned about how I feel or what’s going on for me, than himself. I attacked him, G, and he didn’t hit back. He stopped me from hitting him, and that was it.”

“How did that make you feel?”

“Horny!”

Gerald closed his eyes like he was rolling them.

“I’m serious!” I burst out. “That’s what I’m telling you. I don’t react to this guy like the others. I don’t feel the same way, I don’t get scared of him—and I don’t getbored…there’s somethingdifferent, Gerald—and that means… fuck, does that mean he does have me like… mental? Am I doing what that shrink said on the stand?”

Gerald’s jaw went tight. “I believe I can tell you withcompletecertainty that you do not have Stockholm Syndrome, Bridget. Or anything even remotely like it. Frankly, I had words with Jeremy allowing that argument to be presented given what we know about you. I felt it was… deceptive.”

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