Twisted-Games

I wanted to sweep her up in my arms and hold her tight, but a strange
distance stretched between us, giving me pause. She stood only a few feet
away, yet it might as well be miles.
“I’m sorry I haven’t answered your calls or texts,” she said, fiddling with
the blanket. “It’s been a crazy couple of days. The palace is trying to figure
out how the press got their hands on those photos of us, and between that and
my grandfather’s hospitalization—”
“I get it.” We could deal with all that later. “And you? How are you
doing?”
“About as well as you’d expect.” She finally looked at me, her eyes tired
and missing their usual sparkle, and the needle of pain pierced deeper. “Nik
and I have been staying here overnight, but he went home to take care of
some paperwork. He and Sabrina are postponing their honeymoon until
Grandfather’s better.” She let out a weak laugh. “What a wedding present,
huh?”
Yeah, it sucked, but I didn’t give a crap about Nikolai and Sabrina. I only
cared about one person in the world, and she was hurting.
“Come here, princess.” I opened my arms.
Bridget hesitated for a beat before she finally closed the distance between
us and buried her face in my chest, her shoulders shaking.
“Shh, it’s okay.” I kissed the top of her head and stroked her hair, a
heaviness sinking into my bones at the sound of her soft sniffles. I’d
weathered artillery fire, nighttime missions in subarctic temperatures, and
more broken bones and near-fatal injuries than I could count, but Bridget
crying came closer to breaking me than all those things combined.
“No, it’s not. I almost killed him.” Bridget’s voice was muffled, but her
pain shone through loud and clear. “He had a heart attack because of me.”
I tightened my hold, her pain seeping through my skin until it became my
own. “That’s not true.”
“It is. You weren’t there. You don’t know…” She pulled back, her nose
red and her eyes glassy. “We were having an emergency meeting about the
news of…you and me. I confessed the allegations were true, and when he
told me to end things with you, I refused. I was arguing with Markus about it
when he collapsed.” She blinked, her lashes glittering with unshed tears. “It
was me, Rhys. Don’t tell me it wasn’t my fault, because it was.”
A deep fissure split my heart in half. Bridget already blamed herself for
her mother’s death. To add the guilt from her grandfather’s heart attack on