Following Me (27 page)

Garrett stared at her, but she
didn’t want to see his face.  She didn’t want to see whatever he was thinking. 
She just needed to leave.  If running was her strength, then she would exercise
her strength a second time.  She couldn’t stand the thought of staying in the
same apartment as Garrett one more night. 
How could he try and take
advantage of her after she had just trusted him with something she had never
told anyone before, especially after
what
she had told him?

Devon wasn’t
going to wait around long enough to find out.  She stumbled into her room and
threw on a pair of jeans and her sneakers.  Garrett tried to talk to her, but
she pretended not to hear him.  She couldn’t deal with this on top of
everything else.  She couldn’t even deal with her own problems.

DEVON WALKED BLINDLY down the
streets.  She didn’t know where she was going or what direction she was even
walking in.  It was dangerous to walk alone at night through Chicago.  It was a
really bad idea.  Then again, so was dating her boyfriend for three years,
lying to her parents, pushing Brennan away, and getting close to Garrett.  She
would just add those to the list.

Devon walked until the alcohol
felt less potent. 
Why had she drunk so much?  Who thought that was a good
idea for a depressive?
  She would have giggled at her own self-realization,
but it wasn’t funny.

When her feet started hurting,
she stopped and looked around.  She didn’t recognize anything, and that made
her even more anxious. 
Where had her feet taken her? 
Her eyes traveled
the buildings around the area as she tried to place her location.

She had been here before. 
Realizing where she was, she smiled and walked inside a building.

Standing in front of the door,
she made the decision that her feet had already chosen for her.  She knocked
and waited.  When nothing happened, she knocked again louder until she heard
someone moving around inside.  Her head was spinning, and she didn’t know if it
was because she was still drunk or if she was nervous.  It was fair to say it
was likely both.

“Who is it?” a voice called.

She didn’t answer.

The door opened, and Brennan’s
face peered out at her.  He left the door ajar, still latched to the wall by a
chain.  “Devon?” Brennan asked, yawning.

“Hey,” she whispered.  She
suddenly felt self-conscious, like she shouldn’t have shown up.

“What are you doing here?  It’s
four in the morning.”

“Can I come in?” she asked,
surprised by the time.

“It’s late, and I was sleeping. 
It’s been a long night.  I really don’t have time to deal…”  He trailed off
when he finally looked at her.

“Please?”  She tried to hold the
tears in, but she didn’t succeed.

“Devon, can’t this wait until the
morning?” he asked, doing a poor job of hiding his sympathies.

“It is the morning,” she
muttered.

“A normal hour then?” he
persisted.

Devon dropped her head and then
looked up into his big eyes.  They weren’t rimmed with red like they had been
this afternoon.  They weren’t dazed like they frequently were when he came into
work high.  They were just normal Brennan eyes, and she liked them the best.

“I don’t have anywhere else to
go,” she said, feeling defeated.

Brennan sighed.  He tipped his
head side to side as if debating, and then he closed the door, pulled back the
chain, and opened it for her.  “Come on in,” he said.  “I’ll make up the couch
again.”

“Thanks,” she muttered, relieved.

Devon took a seat on the couch
and remembered the last time she had been here.  Her head pounded, and she
tried not to think about it. 
This was Brennan.
  She could figure things
out.

He returned with a pile of
pillows and blankets, just like last time.  But this time, she could tell that
he was still pretty upset.  She wasn’t sure if it was from earlier or what, but
his body was rigid.

“Well, good night.”  He turned
and walked toward the bedroom.

At least, he wasn’t one to
pry.

“What’s wrong with you?” she
asked.  Unlike him, she was one to pry.

Brennan stopped walking and
sighed.  He turned around to face her.  “How much have you had to drink?”

“Too much,” she offered easily.

“That’s what I thought.  Why
don’t you just…sleep it off?” he said softly.

“Brennan,” she said when he
turned away from her again, “can’t you just talk to me?”

She watched him clench and
unclench his fists at his side.  He turned back around and shook his head.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Can you sit down?” Devon asked,
pulling her feet up on the couch.

“No,” he said stiffly.

“God, Brennan, what’s wrong?” she
asked, the alcohol making her bolder than she would have normally been.

“You want to know what’s wrong?”
he asked, crossing the room.  He took a moment to try to compose himself, but
he failed.  “You’re what’s wrong.  Everything about you!”

Devon swallowed, looking up at
him in shock. 
Where was this coming from?
  “What?  Me?” she croaked.

His hands shook.  “You walk into
my life when I won’t let anyone in.  You walk right in without asking, without
giving me an option.  Then, you slam that door shut so hard, it could crack the
windowpanes.  Just when I think you’re gone and I can close up again,” he
nearly shouted at her, “you crash back in all over again.  And it’s worse now
because I’m around you all the time.

“You have this barrier up, and I
have no clue how to get through it.  And it’s obvious that you don’t want to
let it down, but I can’t help but try.  When I think there’s no chance, none at
all, after you leave my gig…when I wrote that song for
you
…”  He trailed
off, looking at her fiercely.  “Then, you show up here, saying you have nowhere
else to go…when the door is always wide open.”

Devon’s heart was beating so hard
in her chest that she thought she might explode. 
This was what he had been
carrying around all this time?
  She had suspected that he still liked her,
but this…
how could she even respond?

“I think I broke up with my
boyfriend,” she said softly.

It wasn’t a lie, not exactly. 
She had left Reid.  It was over in her heart.

“What?” Brennan asked, coming up
short.

He hadn’t been expecting that.

“We’re over.”

Brennan sat down then.  “I’m so
sorry.”

She didn’t believe him, and it
made her smile.  “It’s, uh…for the better.”

“God, I’m a dick,” he said, his
hand brushing through his hair.

Devon laughed.  “Far from it.”

“Is that why you came by?” he
asked, his eyes narrowing.

“Sort of.”  Devon scrunched up
her nose.  “Hadley and Garrett got into a fight, and I didn’t want to be around
that.” 
Also not a lie.

“Everything is falling apart,” he
said softly.

Devon shrugged.  “I don’t know
about everything.”

She patted the seat next to her
on the couch, and he moved over to sit by her.

“How are you feeling, you
know…about your boyfriend?” he asked with a sigh.

She couldn’t tell if it was a
sigh of relief or not.

“I’m not sure if it has all sunk
in yet,” she admitted, wrapping her arms around her knees.  “We dated for
almost three years.”

“That’s a long time.”

“Yeah,” she said, “it is.”

Brennan sighed again.  “It’ll get
easier with time.”

Devon nodded.  “I think so. 
Plus, time is all I have now, right?” 
Was she trying to convince herself or
him?

“Sorry about yelling at you,” he
said sheepishly.

“It’s alright.  I probably
deserved it,” she whispered.

“You didn’t,” he said.  “I
was…projecting.”

“That’s one word for it,” she
said with a laugh.

He stared down at the floor for a
few minutes.  He really was beautiful.  He was even beautiful when he had
yelled at her.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said
finally.  “That when you didn’t have anywhere else to go, you came and found
me, so I can be there for you.”

He lifted his eyes to hers, and
she felt his words hit her.

“I want to be that for you,
Devon.”

THE SMELL OF bacon filled the
apartment, and Devon awoke with a smile. 
No nightmares.
  She hadn’t had
a single one all night.  It was the first time in weeks.  She had slept
soundly, not even waking up when Brennan got up to cook.  She checked her watch
and realized it was already noon. 
She couldn’t believe it!
  She had
slept for almost eight hours.  She couldn’t remember the last time that had
happened.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” Brennan
called from the kitchen door.

She yawned and stretched her arms
over her head.  She was clad in one of his T-shirts.  It was way too big, but it
smelled so good and clean and so much like Brennan that she wanted to wear it
all the time.  Her eyes traveled over his body, and she tried to keep the
appreciation off her face.  But it was too early, and it must have showed
because he smirked at her. 
What did he expect her to do when he walked
around the apartment shirtless?

Devon pointed out her feet until
they touched the other end of the couch.  It felt so good to just…be for once. 
She couldn’t believe how well she had slept after last night.  But she was
thinking that discussing what had happened to her, even if everything had gone
awry, had helped her…or maybe it was Brennan.  She couldn’t choose.

“Good morning,” she said through
another yawn.

“How do you sleep so much?” he
asked, leaning against the doorframe.

“I haven’t slept this much in
months.  I feel like a new person.”

Brennan laughed, and Devon sighed
back into the couch at the sound.  She wasn’t sure she had ever seen him laugh
like that—loose, happy, and free.

“Well, I hope this new person
likes bacon.”

“She does,” Devon said, nodding. 
She flipped the covers off her body.  When she stood, the shirt fell nearly to
her knees, and she blushed, remembering that she had taken off her jeans before
she fell asleep.  She snatched them off the ground and darted into the
bathroom.  After tugging the jeans back on to cover her exposed legs, she
quickly tied her hair in a knot and then splashed cold water on her face.  She
needed to wake up and not blush so much.

Brennan had a table big enough
for two against the wall in the kitchen, and Devon took an empty seat.  He
placed a plate with eggs, bacon, and toast in front of her.

“Coffee?” he asked with a smile.

“Sure,” she said.  “
Lots
of cream and sugar though.”

He laughed again, obliging. 
After pouring his own coffee, he took the seat across from her, and they ate in
comfortable silence.  Last night felt like a lifetime ago.  But Brennan liked
her; he had told her.  Well, at least, he had kind of told her.  He had told
her in a completely Brennan kind of way.  It made her sigh happily as she ate.