Chapter 16
Chapter 16:
Bridget arrived at the restaurant the way Bridget arrived everywhere: as if by accident, as if she’d simply been carried there by the current of her own innocence, as if she hadn’t checked Lara’s location on a shared social media map before choosing this particular establishment on this particular afternoon.
Their table was near the entrance — close enough that Bridget, pausing in the doorway to survey the room, could hear the tail end of their conversation the way a cat hears a mouse in the wall: not every word, but enough.
“Lala!” Bridget’s eyes widened with the calibrated delight of a woman who had just discovered, to her absolute surprise, that her former mentor was dining at the very restaurant she’d coincidentally chosen. “What a coincidence! I thought I heard something about a wedding? Who’s getting married? Can I come? I’ve never been to a wedding p>
The request was delivered with the same breezy shamelessness as the trophy incident — the assumption that wanting something was the same as deserving it, that enthusiasm was a substitute for invitation. She stood at the edge of their table, head tilted, blinking, radiating the particular helplessness of a person who has learned that helplessness is a skeleton key.
Lara opened her mouth to respond — something neutral, something deflecting, something designed to end the interaction without creating the kind of scene that Bridget could later narrate to Callum and Declan as evidence of persecution.
Patricia was faster.
The silverware hit the table with a crack that turned three nearby heads. Patricia’s wine glass trembled. Her eyes — dark, sharp, litigator’s eyes — locked onto Bridget with the focused intensity of a woman who had been waiting weeks for this exact opportunity.
“My wedding,” Patricia said. Her voice was sweet the way antifreeze is sweet: dangerously. “You’re not invited.
Does that answer your question p>
Bridget blinked. The helplessness intensified.
Patricia was not finished.
“Do you have any concept of boundaries? Any at all? You don’t know us. We’re not your friends. We’re not your family. We’re two women eating lunch, and you’ve inserted yourself into our conversation like you have some kind of divine right to be included in everything that happens within a fifty-meter radius of your location p>
She leaned forward. Her voice didn’t rise — it sharpened, which was worse.
gα ℓ ησ ν𝓮 𝓁s․com has it all
“What’s next, Bridget? Are you going to ask to borrow my wedding ring? Sleep in my guest room? Try on my life to see if it fits? Where exactly is the line for you? Because from where I’m sitting, it doesn’t exist p>
Bridget’s lower lip began its familiar tremor. Her eyes filled — quickly, efficiently, with the practiced timing of a woman who could produce tears the way other people produced opinions: on demand and in quantity. She shrank backward, her shoulders curling inward, her hands twisting together in front of her stomach, and the transformation from intruder to victim was so seamless, so instantaneous, that Lara would have been impressed if she hadn’t seen it performed a dozen times before.
And then, with the timing that had become Bridget’s signature — the timing of a woman who understood that being rescued was a form of power — the door opened again.
Callum and Declan walked in.
They took in the scene the way they always took in scenes involving Bridget: selectively. They saw the tears. They saw the trembling. They saw a small, fragile woman surrounded by hostility, and their protective instincts — those deeply wired, twenty-year-old reflexes that had once been aimed exclusively at Lara — activated with the speed and subtlety of a fire alarm.
Callum reached Bridget first. He drew her toward him with one arm, and the gesture was proprietary in a way that probably wasn’t conscious but was unmistakable — the arm around the shoulder, the angling of his body between her and the table, the implicit message: she’s with me. His voice, when he spoke, was directed at Bridget but aimed at the room.