Following Me(37)

“You’re back to crying when you wake up. Next, you’ll be screaming again. What changed?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Staring down at the white carpet, she tried not to think about it.

“Do you remember the dream? Can you tell me about it?” he asked cautiously.

She wanted to shut down. She didn’t want to discuss her dreams with anyone. She didn’t even want to think about them. But here Garrett was, comforting her and helping her. It felt like no one else even cared. Even though she hadn’t told other people, he was here, and he was so damn nice. Maybe she could trust him. Maybe…

Devon slowly nodded her head. “I…I remember,” she said softly.

“Will you tell me about it?” he repeated.

The silence that lingered between them was thick with tension. He was waiting for her to answer, and she was determined not to. What could she say to make him understand? She couldn’t tell him everything. She couldn’t tell him what had really happened. How would he react? What would he do?

“You don’t have to tell me,” Garrett said finally, staring down at the same space of carpet. “I understand if it’s personal. I just want to help you. Maybe talking about it will make the dreams stop.”

Devon hadn’t thought of that. She didn’t think the dreams would ever stop. They had stopped for the longest stretch of time recently, and still, they had returned with a vengeance.

Garrett sighed softly as if he thought he had lost. “If you don’t want to talk, that’s fine,” he said, beginning to rise.

Devon reached out and touched his arm. “Don’t go,” she whispered.

His eyes met hers then, and she was sure that all he saw was a hollow shell looking back at him. She felt pitiful and worthless. She just needed someone to believe in her.

He nodded and sat back down. “Are you going to tell me about the dream?”

“I’ve never talked about it before,” she answered finally. “Not really.”

“Well, I’m all ears. You don’t have to be afraid to talk to me.”

Taking a deep breath, Devon began. She told him what she had been experiencing in her dreams—how the person would always chase her and how the landscape would alter but it would always be the same person. She didn’t know how she knew that it had been the same person each time, but she just did. She told him about the fear that had gripped her, the inevitable end when she had been caught, and more recently, the times she had been thrown down on the snowy white bed in the matching white room. But she didn’t tell him the words the person had spoken. She wasn’t prepared to release that much of herself.

Garrett listened intently the whole time as if he was trying to really soak up what she had experienced. The longer she talked, the more invested he seemed to become in her story. He never laughed or made light of her dream even though at times when she was telling the story, it didn’t actually seem as scary as it had been in her sleep.

As the story came to a close, she ended in a huff and just sat there in front of him with her fears laid out in his lap. She didn’t know how he would respond or what he would say. She felt exposed and more than a little bit silly.

“That sounds scary, Dev,” he finally said. “No wonder you wake up in tears.”

His eyes were filled with sympathy, and she suddenly didn’t feel as silly. His acceptance was invigorating. She felt justified in her fear rather than feeling childish.

“Why do you think you keep having these dreams? Do you have any idea?” he asked, taking her very seriously.

Another crossroad. How much could she tell him? Not the truth, not all of it. Maybe just a piece. Definitely not the root cause. She wasn’t ready for that. She didn’t know if she would ever be ready for that. She had to tell him something though.

“I have my suspicions,” she said softly.

“Any you would like to share with me?”

Devon sighed heavily. Here goes nothing, she thought.

“I, um…can only guess. They’re not reality. I mean, I’ve never had anyone chase me,” she told him.

“Right.”

“Well…I didn’t come to Chicago for a vacation,” she said as fast as she possibly could.

He nodded. “When you decided to stay, I figured that, but I didn’t want to pry.”

Devon hadn’t told anyone this even though she knew Hadley and Brennan had speculated about the circumstances of her staying. And she couldn’t tell Garrett why either. She just wasn’t ready.

“I kind of ran away from my life,” she whispered softly. She was ashamed to even say it out loud. It sounded just as foolish as when she had recounted her dreams.

“What could be so bad that you would want to run away?” he asked curiously.

He didn’t sound like he was judging her, like she had expected. He just sounded interested in her problems. She could trust him. She could begin to trust him.

“Well…I was kind of tired of my life,” she said, tiptoeing around the real problem. “I told my boyfriend that I was in Paris with my family for the summer, and I told my family that I was staying in St. Louis with my boyfriend. Then, I called Hadley and hopped on the first train here. I needed to get away. There were too many things I couldn’t take anymore. Sometimes, I feel like I was just being melodramatic about the whole thing, like maybe it wasn’t as bad as it seemed.”