Page 94 of Hunt for You

But when I opened my mouth, he tensed and that made me hesitate and we were just looking at each other and suddenly my heart gave a little kick.

Gerald’s line that he’d repeated countless times over the years came back to me, echoing in my head in his deep, pompous tones.

The only way to know if a person can be trusted is to trust them—which is why we’re so scared to do it. We have to take the risk before we can know if we were right to do so. You’re a risk taker, Bridget. Try it.

I’d always ignored that last part.

But as I readied again to tell Sam the lie, my skin did that thing where it closed in on me, and I felt the hand on my throat and…

And for the first time ever I decided maybe it was time to stop caring if people looked at me differently, or wondered if I was crazy.

Maybethisguy would be different.

And so I swallowed back the lie, pulled my hands in my lap, and tried to figure out how to tell him at least part of the truth.

“You said you’re a felon?” I said quietly.

“Yes. Assault and battery, sexual assault on a woman, and voyeurism. It never gets easier to say that, but it does get easier to live with myself every day I don’t go back to it.”

I nodded and swallowed hard, my entire body poised for flight, my heart pounding, and my thoughts beginning to skitter. But I found I wanted to do this. Iwantedto finally be honest with someone.

“So, um, my dad is a felon too.”

“Here in State?”

I nodded. “You might have heard of him. His name’s Gordon Reynolds.”

Sam frowned at the wall. I waited.

It was a pretty boring name, but anyone who lived in the Pacific Northwest and was alive twenty years ago knew it—even if they couldn’t rememberwhy.

I’d had to tell this story before—against my will, or for legal stuff. You could always see the moment someone’s brain madethe connection on my dad’s name. Because they did exactly what Sam was doing now.

First he went very still.

Then his eyes went wide and cut to me.

32. The Story

~ BRIDGET ~

Sam gaped at me. “Gordon Reynolds. He killed his wife—”

“In front of his daughter. Yes,” I said, settling into that oddly numb place I always found on the other side of revealing this little nugget.

Sam just kept staring at me, and I kept waiting, because I knew he’d get there.

Then he sat back in his chair like he’d been shoved. His handsome brow furrowed, and his eyes went deeply, desperately sad.

“You’re his daughter? The one he took with him when he went on the run? Or was that a—”

“No, it was me.”

“Oh,Bridget…” He was aghast. And even though I’d been coached by counselors and psychologists and countless therapists over the years that the look on his face was notpity,not an assumedweakness,it still always felt that way.

So I did what I always did and pretended I didn’t care. I flapped a hand to dismiss him from having to say anything and spoke to the false grain on the formica table.

“Look, I know it sounds dramatic—”