Barbed Wire Bandages, page 13
When the room began blurring around the edges in that soothing, familiar way, Garrison thought long and hard about what happened and how he could have prevented it. He even rehearsed things he might say or do to make things better for Bridget, even knowing that it was too late.
He knew in his heart that Bridget would never forgive him. Even if he was able to tell her what happened, what would the chances be that she believed him? Not good. Not after the way Shawn and Nat had celebrated her demise as he stood between the two filthy devils. Not when Nat had squeezed his shoulder and patted him on the back. Not when Shawn had offered up a high five in plain sight of Bridget.
Nope.
He was done.
They were done.
Unsteady on his feet, itching for a fight, and against his better judgment, Garrison stumbled out the door of his motel room and started on foot toward Bucky's. With his body swaying side to side and his brain muddying through half-cocked thoughts, he trekked the few short blocks and shouldered his body through the front door.
As he tried to wipe the drunk from his eyes, a familiar voice called out to him over the cacophony of voices and fresh rage boiled to the surface of his skin.
“Garrison! Where the hell'd you run off to, man? You almost missed the after party!”
Turning like a bull drawn to red, he set his sights on Shawn, who was in the process of pulling an unimpressed blonde onto his lap. Garrison marched to the corner of the room, and without preamble, began pulling the booth away from Shawn in an attempt to drag him out onto the floor.
“The fuck, man?” He tried to scramble away but Garrison nabbed the back of his shirt and pulled. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
The nameless blonde screeched as she fell back in the bench seat and Shawn slid out onto the littered floor. As his surroundings melted into the background, Garrison pulled back his fist and nailed the lowlife square in the face. A satisfying crunch sang through the air as blood trickled from Shawn's nose.
“Garrison! Get the fuck off me! What are you-”
Another blow, another crunch.
Shawn attempted to scramble away even as the muscles in Garrison's arms continued to dole out a beating. He grunted with every shot, even though his target was blurring. It felt good, taking his anger out on someone so deserving, but his hands had stopped cooperating. His fists were loosening.
By the time a bouncer wrapped his meaty arm around Garrison's neck, his legs refused to keep him upright.
“Get him out of here!” Someone yelled.
The fight left Garrison, but before the brick shithouse could haul him out the door, a bleeding Shawn stepped in their path, wiping blood away with the sleeve of his shirt.
“Sorry, dick.” He spat on the floor. “I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take your girl down a few notches. Nothing personal.”
“Nothing personal?” His muscles stiffened and the bouncer strengthened his hold. “You tell Bridget it wasn't personal.”
Shawn swayed and gripped the bar for balance. “Well, wasn't personal for me. But the going rate for something like this is pretty fucking hard to walk away from.”
“Going rate?” Garrison shook his head, confusion mixing with grief and whiskey as he tried to decipher Shawn's rambling. “Nobody paid-”
“Actually, he paid pretty damn well.”
Clumsily, Shawn extracted a wad of bills from his pocket and shook them in Garrison's face. When it finally clicked, something shifted. At first, he'd only been pissed at Shawn. But now, learning that Nat had been financing their little scheme all along, Garrison wanted him dead. “You fucking scum.”
“Screw you, Garrison! I did what you were too scared to do. She deserved that! You and I both know it. You were just too busy getting you dick wet to remember.”
Garrison lunged at his former friend with renewed claim on his limbs. Even restrained, he managed to grab a chunk of greasy hair and deliver one last jab to his temple. Shawn went down, landing in a puddle of disgrace at their feet.
The bouncer stepped around an unconscious Shawn, and Garrison let his limbs fall slack. There was no use resisting. He was too drunk to function and he'd done what he set out to do. As graciously as possible, Garrison Beckett ducked his head and cooperated as the security staff of Bucky's escorted him off the premises.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Bridget flew through the back door, heaving in pain and blinded by tears. Heavy sobs assaulted her chest, making breathing nearly impossible. Her heart and everything else inside of her was crumbling.
As felines and canines jumped and pawed and whined at her feet, she shooed them away and fled to her room. She didn't want anyone around, even her closest friends. She wanted to be alone so she could break in solitude.
And she was definitely breaking.
She could feel the fissures cracking through her chest, her head, her gut; threatening to separate her into a dozen irreparable pieces. Every corner she turned, every breath she took, every blink that brought forth a new tear- they were there. The eyes. The faces. The laughter. Fingers pointing. Insults flapping through the air on razored wings, tracking her through the hotel, into the town's courtesy van, and around every curve and hill until she reached home.
But even there she wasn't safe from the jarring accusations that the people of Till Park were no doubt spewing around town. She'd gone from Crazy Cat Lady to Slutty Disgrace in a matter of seconds. All because she'd done it again. She'd poured her trust into someone she had no business letting into her life.
First, it was Nat. She fell in lust, convinced herself it was love, and then suffered through years of backhanded threats, whispered insults, and more public humiliation than one little wifey should ever shoulder alone.
The pictures – the ones her entire class had the pleasure of viewing – were Nat's idea, and something she'd done for him as a special gift. She should have known better than to instill such an insane amount of trust in someone who was screwing around on her, but she was at the end of her rope, fearing that their marriage was nearing its end.
But Bridget had survived that. Somehow she'd managed to keep her head held high even as Nat poisoned the town with rumors and lies. She even stayed in Till Park long after he was gone, determined to reclaim her life, her friends, and her independence.
And she actually started to do just that.
So, naturally...
Enter: Garrison.
She had no business trusting him, yet she had. She had no business developing feelings for him, yet his betrayal hurt so much deeper than anything Nat had ever done to her.
She had no business loving him... yet she wondered where he was, what he was doing, and if he was already on his way out of Till Park, proud of the humiliating closure he'd delivered.
In the sanctuary of her bedroom, she kicked off her shoes and climbed between the sheets. She pulled a pillow to her chest, hoping it would serve as the bandage she needed to keep her heart in one piece. But that soft pillow reeked of Garrison's cologne and that conjured up the few beautiful memories they'd made together in her bed.
“Stupid, stupid girl.”
Ignoring her burning throat, her overflowing eyes, and the empty, hollow ache shooting through her veins, Bridget hugged that pillow to her chest and wept. She wept for her wrongdoings. She wept for the image of herself she'd created. She wept for the future that she couldn't imagine suffering through alone.
But above everything else, she wept for Garrison Fucking Beckett.
Hours later, Bridget awoke tangled in the unmade sheets of her bed. Her tears had dried, the pain in her chest had subsided, and the voices in her head were nowhere to be found. After stretching her arms across the pillows and working the stiffness from her back, she sat up, forced herself to stand, and stumbled to the mirror.
When her haggard reflection blinked back at her, she scoffed at the mess she'd become.
“Damn.”
Her fingers rubbed at the black smudges beneath her eyes and her thumb dragged across swollen, cracked lips. She resembled a slightly coked-out raccoon that just crawled its way out of a blender in Hell's kitchen.
After drawing in a shaky, but determined breath, she locked eyes with her reflection and let her mind wander through everything that happened the night before.
“You're not that person anymore.”
That had been her mantra for months after Nat abandoned her, back when she vowed to bury the person Bridget Warner had been and give life to the new, well adjusted, kind version of Bridget she'd always yearned to be.
“You're better than that,” she insisted. “They were just pictures. Embarrassing? Yes. Life ending? No.”
She forced herself to laugh, to remind her heart what that felt like, but it sounded more like a tortured sob than anything. But that one sound was a promise to herself; a promise that she could get through something as stupid as a vengeful prank. Or a lying, deceitful dick.
She was Bridget Fucking Warner... and one (or three) assholes weren't going to determine how she lived her life. Nat would no doubt scurry back to whatever hole he crawled out of, Shawn would go on drinking and pissing people off, and Garrison...
Garrison.
She didn't know what Garrison would do.
She didn't know anything about Garrison.
There was only one thing, one truth, that she held close to her heart and refused to kiss goodbye.
She was strong.
Stronger than anyone in town gave her credit for. That was her truth, her anchor, and her shield.
Yes, she still hurt. And yes, it would take time for her to get back to the way things used to be before that man stampeded through her life...
But she would get there.
No matter what it took, she would wake up one morning and that night would be nothing but a distant memory.
Hopefully.
When she finally convinced herself to leave the safety of her bedroom, Bridget migrated to the couch and curled up next to the one being that hadn't abandoned her: Charlie.
His scruffy head rested on her knee as she picked at the cuffs of her sweater, lost in thought, contemplating her next move. She wondered what would happen once she decided to leave the house. And further more, she wondered if she would ever want to.
What happened at the reunion humiliated her. She completely failed at showing her classmates and former friends that she was now a down-to-earth, decent human being. Now, all they would think when they ran into her on the street was 'whore', 'slut', and 'trash'. It didn't matter that those pictures had been for Nat, who was her husband at the time. Combine the person she was in high school with the way she looked in those pictures and the result was shower scum. Toned, tanned, and smiling shower scum, but shower scum nonetheless.
When Charlie started whining to go outside with the rest of the dogs, Bridget pried herself from the plush couch cushions and sulked to the back door. Charlie skipped out ahead of her, but when he reached the edge of the porch, he stopped and looked back over his shoulder.
“I'm fine, Charlie. Go.”
His ears flattened, a sign he wasn't convinced, but he made his way down the stairs to do his business regardless. After shutting the door, she ventured down the hall to her room to retrieve slippers. Something about the house didn't feel quite right. It was too cold. Too quiet. Too dismal.
Deep down, she knew that had to do with Garrison's absence, but her heart wasn't letting her acknowledge that little factoid. It wanted nothing to do with him.
Liar, liar, skanky pants on fire...
When she came out of her room, she noticed the door to her art studio was cracked. She pushed it open, wondering if one of the cats had come in to make themselves at home, but there were no furballs to be found. Only stacks of canvases that had yet to sell and her one unfinished painting. Come to think of it, she hadn't picked up a brush since the night Garrison plowed through her fence, the night she started the painting that was cloaked in a thin, white sheet.
Inspiration was always easy to come by, but her urge to create was gone. Because the one picture she couldn't get out of her head was one that didn't need to be committed to canvas. And speaking of art that should never see the light of day, she stood in front of her latest work and realized it needed to go. Like, yesterday.
Dust danced through the air as she whipped the sheet off her easel and let it float to the ground. She stared at her work, shaking as she fought to contain her feelings toward the piece.
It was just one man. One simple man.
Her fingers reached out and tentatively stroked the ridges her brush had created. There he was... fists clenched, face forward, his entire body wrapped in barbed wire and standing at attention.
Garrison's green eyes glowed so fiercely, casting the entire picture in a mossy hue as he stood there in his blue jeans and bare feet, arms down at his sides like a proud, regal soldier.
“Marine.” She corrected her thoughts quietly. “Not a solider. A Marine.”
Her lips trembled, but through her crushing despair she had to acknowledge that the painting was beautiful. Even incomplete, there was no denying it was her best work yet.
Which is why she grabbed her pocketknife off the windowsill, cut the linen out of the frame, rolled it up, and shoved it in the back of the closet. She couldn't look at it, but she couldn't destroy it either. It was destined to sit there and collect dust, hidden from the world.
As she wiped her eyes and pulled the door closed behind her, she froze in place.
Something registered to her ears.
Something that sent a shock of nerves pulsing through her chest and threatened to stall her lungs.
A noise.
A very specific noise...
Someone was knocking on the door.
Her slippered feet shuffled along the hardwood floors as she attempted to straighten her hair and recall the last time she brushed her teeth. Whoever it was, they were not in for the best version of Bridget Warner.
She was officially a hermit, and she looked - and smelled - the part.
But when she opened the door, she couldn't care less about her bad breath and ratty hair. Her temper quickly flared to life around her and her hand itched to palm her Ruger.
“What the hell do you want?”
“I just wanted to say hi before I left.”
Nat leaned a shoulder against the house, an innocent smile curving his thin lips, as if he hadn't had a starring role in the apocalyptic film that was her life.
“Are you shitting me?” She clenched her fists and fought the urge to throttle him. “You humiliated me in front of our entire class, and you thought you'd just come by to say hi? That is fucking rich.”
The windows rattled with the force Bridget used to slam the door. After turning the lock, she braced herself against hard wood and fought to regulate her breathing. She didn't want to harbor so much hatred for one human being, but it was impossible not to. Not when he'd hurt her in so many unfathomable ways.
“Sorry, Bridge.” He made no attempt to stifle his laughter. “Sounded fun at the time, and you know me, I can't walk away from fun.”
“You're the Goddamn devil,” she growled.
“So, just out of curiosity, why does that guy hate you so much? I mean, he practically humped the plan to death even before I offered to pay him. Yeah, there was the freezer thing, but that was my doing, not yours.”
“Are you kidding me?” She yelled, turning to face the door. “We made his life a living hell, Nat. We harassed him every single day of high school.”
“I think you're exaggerating, babe. Shawn could have had it a lot worse.”
Bridget froze.
“Shawn? I'm talking about Garrison.”
The door thumped as Nat rested his shoulder against the heavy oak.
“Gary? That pansy ass tried talking Drunk-Oh out of it, but my boy's persistent.”
Nat laughed, and the sound rubbed against Bridget's heart like a cheese grater. She tried to remember what she'd seen in him, but came up empty.
“So, you gonna be mad forever?”
Her jaw dropped. Of course Nat would trivialize something like ruining a person's reputation. Nat didn't care about anyone but Nat.
“Yes, actually. I am.”
“Since when are you so uptight?” He raised his voice and slammed a fist against the door. “That was fucking genius!”
Bridget's anger was beginning to run thin, and sadness was beginning to peck away at her shell. She knew Nat wasn't lying when he said Garrison wasn't a part of his plan. He never lied. His biggest fault was being painfully honest.
But still, he knew. He knew someone was going to do something like that, and he did nothing. Not even give her a heads up.
“Don't you have somewhere else to be, Nat? Somewhere that isn't my front porch?”
“Right. I forget you're a busy woman these days.”
His voice softened, and she knew an insult was about to spin her way. That's how he always operated when it came to her. Insults were whispered. Not yelled.
“You probably need to feed your cats.”
And there it was...
She shook her head with a stilted laugh.
Same old Nat.
“Yeah,” she said loudly. “Actually I do.”
She was completely unashamed of her life, and that wasn't going to change because some jackass decided to belittle her.
“Well, it was good seeing you, Bridge.” He tapped lightly on the door. “Have a nice life.”
Refusing to look like a coward, she unlocked and opened the door.
“I'd tell you to do the same,” she said as she met his cold eyes, “but in all honesty, I hope you get hit by a bus on your way out of town. That way, I never have to hear from your sorry ass ever again.”
With a parting flip of her middle finger, Bridget slammed the door.
