Chapter 304
I was out of my chair and leaping completely over Dax before he even knew what was happening. “Brandon!” I shouted, wondering how he had just happened to pick the one second out of the last fifteen hours that looked even marginally like I was interested in Dax as more than just a friend.
In the hallway, Brandon was trudging to the front door, his footsteps quick and even, but he wasn’t running. “Brandon, wait!” I shouted as I sprinted toward him. I was within a few feet of him when he reached the door. But he didn’t go out. Instead, he rested his hand on the handle and dropped his head so that he was staring at his Converse. He took a deep breath, and I braced myself, waiting to see if he would believe my explanation. There was nothing between Dax and I except for some camaraderie around a horrible experience. Staring at the back of my boyfriend’s head, I had no doubt in my mind who I wanted to be with.
His voice was quaking a bit, like he was doing his best to control his emotions. “I had a feeling something like this would happen as soon as you got here, though I have to admit, I thought it’d be someone older than me, someone flashier.”
Confused, I took a step forward. Something like what? “What’s that? Brandon, what are you talking about?” I was almost even with him now as he slowly turned to face me, dropping his hand from the door and shoving them both into his pockets.
His hair was over his eyes a little bit as he spoke, and he shook his head to try to get it out of the way, though I imagined he wouldn’t mind if it disguised the tears I could see starting to form in the corners of his eyes. “Compared to those average punks at your high school, I probably seemed like something pretty special.” I was beginning to understand what he was saying. “Here, I’m just another guy. And you? Well, you’re you.” He looked up from the floor and met my eyes then with a solid shrug.
I stared at him for a long moment, trying to figure out how to respond to that. It was all so ridiculous, and yet he had confessed his true feelings to me, so I could hardly burst into laughter and tell him that everything that had happened the last few days had nothing to do with him being inadequate or me looking at another guy. Instead, I decided to remind him of the same things I’d been telling him ever since we started dating. “Brandon, you are special. You’re amazing.” He started shaking his head, and I wondered how frequently he had heard any sort of compliments growing up with a mom who cared more about what was in her glass than what was in her son’s heart or mind.
I reached out and pulled him by his sleeve away from the door, over to the wall across from Jamie’s office. “Listen, I know what you think you saw, but you didn’t. I promise.”
His eyebrows shot up as he rested against the wall. Christian’s door was closed, and I imagined he might be eavesdropping for a moment but then thought he was probably so caught up in my tissue samples he wouldn’t even know we were here. “Really?” Brandon asked, and I could see in his eyes he wanted to believe I was telling him the truth. “Because it sure looked to me like you were getting pretty close to Tree Boy in there.”
I had to bite off a snicker at the nickname. “We are close,” I admitted with a nod. “We’ve been through a traumatic experience together. Very recently. But we’re just friends, I promise you. Surely you know me well enough to know I'd never cheat on you.”
He answered quickly. “Sure, I do. But after the last few days, I wasn’t even sure if you were still thinking of yourself as my girlfriend.”
“What? Why would you think that? Am I not allowed to get agitated by you every once in a while?” I asked the questions, but I already knew the answers. Of course he would think that. I’d been so rude to him recently, not even talking to him about how I was feeling. Now that I knew what Mina and Bonnie had been up to, I could blame part of it on them manipulating me. But I should never have been so rude to him. I took a deep breath and tried to reason it out. “I just needed a little space, that’s all.”
“But Cass,” he said as he brushed a strand of hair away from my face, “I don’t even know what I did.”
“I know. That wasn’t fair of me. None of it was fair of me.” I took a deep breath and slid my hand into his.
“Why… why were you so angry?”
It was a legitimate question, and part of me wanted to completely blame it on Vampire manipulation, but that wasn’t all true, or at least I hoped it wasn’t. As much as I hated the way I’d reacted to the situation with Mina, I wanted to believe at least part of it had been my own emotions. I did my best to explain it to him. “I was angry at every man on our team, everyone except Jamie.” He continued to stare at me like he couldn’t figure out why. “I watched through your IACs as you guys—you, your Dad, Christian, Aaron—destroyed Mina. At the time, I felt so connected to her. I could see into her mind. I walked those tall prairies in her boots. I smelled the earth and the fresh flowers after the rain. I was there with her when she was turned. All the events that marked her life, and her afterlife, were intertwined with my own experiences, and then you helped send her out of this world.”
