Page 158 of Hunt for You

ME: Don’t be. This is me being my normal not-normal self.

SAM NOTPRIEST: Are we still on for Sunday? I’ll come sooner if you want to.

ME: Said every man, always.

SAM NOTPRIEST: You just made me spit my coffee.

ME: Then my work here is done.

SAM NOTPRIEST: Bridget, seriously, what’s going on?

I silenced my phone and slipped it into my pocket, because looking at his name was making me sad. I had a very busy day of pacing my house ahead, waiting to see if Cain was on the hunt. Wondering how my life would be different if I’d had a different dad.

I tried to imagine the world where my father had never existed.

Would I even be me?

Would I still have ended up here? Torn between Cain’s claws and Jeremy’s cage?

God, I’d love to put Cain in Jeremy’s cage and see who’d win.

My heart said Cain was stronger, that he had more to fight for. But I knew Jeremy had been honed like a weapon. He couldn’t be underestimated.

For a little while, I entertained myself with a parody of superheroes, imagining Jeremy and Cain as rival villains, duking it out to win the heart of the damsel in distress. Namely, me.

Except, it was kind of impossible to see myself just sitting by, watching that happen.

And Sam kept cropping up, intruding on my little fantasy. Because, even though I had turned off the ringer so my phone wasn’t making any noise, it was getting heavier with every passing minute. And I knew… I knew he was trying to reach me. And I had to make sure he didn’t. Because he was brave. And he was good. And if he had even an inkling of the shitshow that was about to descend on my life, he’d try to save me from it, and no doubt get himself killed in the process.

Sam would never play the hero in a villain story. He was the wise man. The loveable advisor and friend. The one who got killed in the third act so everyone cried, but could still cheer for the hero.

And I couldn’t do that to him.

An image swam into focus in my mind. Sam standing in front of his car, leaning back on it, watching me, smiling a little and holding up that bag of food.

He was strong, and confident, and… uncertain of himself with me.

I hated that I did that to him.

I wondered if he knew that it was just because I was so damned uncertain of myself, I didn’t know where to begin with anyone else.

That was why I belonged with Cain. Cain was just as broken as me. There was no uncertainty, because there were no boundaries.

Cain wouldn’t ask me on a date. He’d break into my house and slip into my bed with no warning.

Cain wouldn’t take me to a restaurant and pull out my chair. Cain would throw me over the hood of the car and fuck me from behind.

Sam thought that was a bad thing, but it wasn’t.

Sam was too good to understand if I tried to explain this. He’d fixed his own life, so he’d think he could fix mine. He wouldn’t accept that my monsters were finally catching up with me and there were too many of them for me to win.

I thought of Sam at that restaurant again, probably stretching his thin resources to pay for that meal, but doing it because he wanted to be a gentleman—because he was trying to make himself new. Hehadbeen dark—I could sense that in him. It was still there. But… muted.

Fading.

While my darkness just got bigger, and deeper.

It was good that I would stop showing up in his life. I would have destroyed him in the end. And I didn’t want to. Surprisingly, Ilikedhis light. I didn’t want to drag him back down into the depths with me, like some horrific predator.