You crawled away from me.He's not Cole, Baby. Don't you give him that. Ben's words wash down the drain with the soap as he scrubs me all over gently. I came home in the middle of the night so fucked over I had to bite my own tongue to get up the stairs without screaming. I snuck into my bedroom and it was pitch black and then I heard Loch swear at me before he and Ben turned all the lights on.
Slipped away from me.
I tried to keep ahold,
but there was nothing I could say.
He asked me what the fuck I had done and I asked him if it even mattered. That I'm not a person, I'm a thing. That I have no value so what fucking difference would it make at the end of the day as long as I stay on the point. As long as it's one of them. As long as I need the ones who are dead. As long as I don't care about myself at all. Then he realized I wasn't moving easily and he swore again and gingerly peeled everything off me, noticing all the things missing, jewelry, underclothes, self-respect. He told Ben he was going to kill Caleb and Ben didn't even take his eyes off me, he just took my hand and brought me into a hot shower where I stood and cried while he scrubbed me clean of my sins while Lochlan stood outside the door nervously talking to himself and to us, still trying to figure out how I got the idea that I was worthless based on their attempts to keep me precious, to continue to take care of me.
One of these times he's going to kill you. Bridget, you need to stay away from him. I don't know how many times I have to tell you.
I put my hands up. Cole loves me.
Jesus Christ, Ben, what did we do?
Ben put up his hand and it was shaking. Let's just get her dried off and she can get some sleep.
Suddenly I'm being talked about in the third person AGAIN and I don't know what I have to do to make them see that it's THAT that makes me feel so disposable. I push away from Ben and stumble into the bedroom and crawl under the quilts. I'm shivering. I realize I'm not cold at all, I'm just shaking and everything hurts so bad and Cole feels so close I just want to reassure myself that life for the past eight years has been nothing but a dream and he's here and he's going to wrap his arms around me and pull me close and I will fall asleep with the smell of varnish and developer in my nose, even though I know better. I know I left him in the dark and came home because he wasn't nice and he wasn't kind and that's how I know it's him for sure but at the same time I don't know where I am and I don't know why I can't seem to listen to myself or why things have to be so hard. I don't know why Jake isn't here to keep him from hurting me and I don't know why I can't stop crying but I hate it. I hate that I can't get past this. I hate that I'm hurting everything that's good in my life. I hate her. Bridget. The stupid idiot with all the words to make her excuses but none of the brains to pull herself up and move the fuck on.