by Jerry Cole
He needed to get his shit together before he fell apart completely.
Brandon was waiting for him when he arrived, leaning against the doorjamb, Saskia already leashed up and sat at his feet.
“All right,” Brent said, aiming for a smile that probably looked more tired than bright. “I’ll bring her back at the usual time.”
“Brent,” Brandon said, holding Saskia’s leash out of reach. Brent resisted the urge to snatch it away.
“I don’t have time for this,” Brent started, surprised when Brandon moved between them, shielding him from taking Saskia.
“Brent, look at me.”
Brent grit his teeth and refused, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “If you don’t want me to take Saskia, I have other clients that need me.”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” Brandon said, and Brent met his eyes with a scowl. “Marc called—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Brent said, turning on his heel and heading for the elevator.
“Would you let me explain?” Brandon yelled, then cursed, clearly trying to get Saskia back into the apartment. Before he could manage it, Brent ducked through the door to the stairs and trotted down them, scrubbing at his face, ashamed of the tears currently spilling down his face. Jesus, he was losing it.
He took his phone out of his pocket with shaking hands, shooting a text to Marc he doubted Marc would read.
Stop talking to Brandon about me. It’s NONE of your business.
It was short and angry, and Brent was going to regret sending it eventually, but he didn’t care. He was tired of everyone having an opinion on his mistake, and even if Brandon was doing his best to fix things, Brent didn’t want to hear about it.
His next clients were across town. Brent resigned himself to another long trek and exhausting himself, yet again. Predictably, it started to rain as he entered the train car, and he doubted he would make it out with the dogs and home again without drenching himself to the bone.
The client, a single-mother called Kristen, had a dog she needed walking at lunchtime. Brent had a spare key and usually he would take her dog, a little Jack Russell named Utah, and bundle her into the car with the rest of their daily dogs.
Now, he didn’t have a car, he only had himself, and he couldn’t imagine Utah would be very happy with a wet journey to the nearest park.
The key wasn’t in the usual place, and though Brent rang the bell three times, there was no answer. Brent searched his phone, hoping he hadn’t missed a message, and felt his stomach swoop with annoyance when he saw a text from Kristen telling Brent she was going to have to cancel the appointment; she had taken Utah on a family trip to Wisconsin.
Brent was either going to cry or punch a wall. Maybe both.
He shrugged himself deeper into his jacket and stuffed his hands into his pockets to keep them as warm as he could as he jogged back to the station. It was far too cold, and he bundled himself up in the seat, closing his eyes. He had to open them after a few minutes, afraid he was going to fall asleep and end up missing his station.
The rain hadn’t let up any as he exited the station and the cold was starting to seep through his drenched jacket, so he was soaked through his hoodie and t-shirt by the time the apartment block loomed above him. He was shivering, teeth chattering in the cold, and it took him three tries to get the apartment door open.
His head had started to feel fuzzy around the second station, and he was desperate to get into the warm, to shed his cold clothes, and sleep through maybe the next five days. The thought of sleep was so good Brent hardly noticed where he was walking, throwing open the door to his apartment, startled when Juliette didn’t immediately appear.
He tried to take his coat off, but his hands were shaking too much, and he couldn’t get them to co-operate. He blinked a few times, tried to clear his blurry vision and looked up sharply at a whine from the living room. Looking up quickly was a mistake, and Brent had to put a hand on the wall to steady himself. When he could risk looking, it was to see Stanley hovering in the hall, and Brent had a brief moment of what the fuck when he heard the voice coming from the living room.
“—so, where is he now?”
Brent knew that voice almost as well as he knew his mother’s, and his chest constricted painfully. He let out a gasp and then Marc was standing in hall, a quick, “Never mind,” into the phone before he hung up.
Brent wasn’t sure he was actually breathing, body trembling with cold and adrenaline and the fact he had walked into the wrong apartment.
“Sorry,” he tried, annoyed when he could barely mumble the word. “I’m just...”
The words came out slurred, and Brent’s world tilted sideways. His knees gave out, and he would have crashed to the floor, but Marc was by his side in a heartbeat, catching him before he could jar his knees.
“Brent?”
Chapter Thirty-One
Brent snapped awake suddenly, sucking in a lungful of air.
“Hey.” There was a familiar voice sounding a little far away, and Brent swung his head around the room, pressing the palm of his hand to his forehead when it started to swim. “Take it easy.”
A beat, two, and Brent opened his eyes, focused on the chair across from the couch. Marc’s couch, he realized belatedly, because he had walked into Marc’s apartment. Shame settled low in Brent’s belly, and he locked his jaw, ducked his head so he could stare at his hands
“How do you feel?”
“Like a fucking truck ran over me,” Brent bit out, grateful that at least his mouth was working properly.
“You look exhausted,” Marc pointed out.
Brent couldn’t stand it. How could he be so normal when things were so fucked up between them? He was acting like he hadn’t caught Brent being a complete dick and told him so. “Why do you care?”
When Brent raised his head at the ensuing silence, he felt his heart skip a bit at the hurt on Marc’s face. Brent’s anger was warring with the guilt over how he would react, but he was ashamed that seeing Marc hurt just made it more obvious he wasn’t the guy Marc needed.
“I never stopped caring,” Marc said, though it came out with more bite than his expression warranted.
Brent snorted, swinging his legs to the floor and testing whether he was all right to stand. He swayed a little at first, and then straightened, gesturing at the couch and the blanket that had been haphazardly thrown over him. “Thanks for, you know, this. It was habit, I guess.”
Marc’s expression shifted from understanding to worry. “Brent, when was the last time you slept?”
“I think you know the answer to that,” Brent said. He saw his jacket and shoes in the hallway, still soaking wet, and realized too late he was dressed in a pair of Marc’s sweatpants and a woolen sweater that had always been his favorite. Fuck, Brent couldn’t be here, in these clothes, pretending like he hadn’t screwed everything up. “I need to go.”
Stanley was sitting in the kitchen, and almost as if he could understand, he butted his head against Brent’s leg. It was enough to make Brent want to scoop him up and stay, but he couldn’t.
“Stay,” Marc said, an echo of Brent’s own thoughts.
“Why?” Brent stepped away from Stanley, grabbed his jacket off the hook. He bent down to scoop up his shoes and sighed. “You don’t trust me.”
Marc opened his mouth, then closed it again. He looked sad and reluctant, two things Brent knew a lot about. “I’m worried about you.”
“Isn’t everyone?” Brent gave Marc a wry grin. “That’s what happens after a breakup. Even to those involved,” Brent continued. “I’ll live. I usually do,” Brent muttered.
“At least let me help you.”
“Why would you even want to?” Brent snapped. He didn’t know what to do with Marc behaving like he still wanted to take care of Brent, even though he hadn’t fought Brent’s assertion he didn’t trust Brent anymore. “I’m sorry I ended up here, it was an accident. I’ll leave your clothes in yo
ur mailbox or something.”
“Brent,” Marc said quickly, but Brent shut the door on Marc for the second time that day and tried not to hate himself for it.
Marc didn’t need to be chasing after him anymore, not when he was finally starting to get himself out there, to have friends and people who liked him as much as they liked Brent.
Granted, Brent would have liked those people to still include him, but he was the idiot that decided using a picture of Marc’s was a good thing.
Juliette was waiting when he finally tumbled into his own apartment, tossing the shoes on the floor and hanging up the coat in his own hallway. He was still exhausted, could feel the tiredness seeping through his body, and he shot a few texts out to the next day’s clients, telling them he wouldn’t be around. Almost immediately, he received four well wishes and he groaned, relishing the idea of having a whole day in bed to just sleep.
Not that he had been able to sleep for long when he finally got there. Though Marc had had two nightmares before they’d broken up, he was used to at least sharing his bed half the night with Marc, if not the whole night through. Now he was back to sleeping alone and he couldn’t get used to it. He resorted to letting Juliette up beside him, though it wasn’t anywhere close to normal.
Debating whether to have a shower before or after takeout, he was snapped out of making a decision by a knock at the door. Positive he knew who it was, Brent didn’t answer, hoping Marc would give up and go away. Juliette was on her feet, whining, like she knew the exact cadence of Marc’s knocks or even the smell of him outside the door, which wasn’t as farfetched as it sounded.
“Go away, Marc,” Brent yelled.
“Brent,” Marc said, keeping his voice level. He was out in the corridor. “I just wanna talk to you.”
“I don’t have anything else to say to you.”
“Maybe I do,” Marc said, a little quieter. If Brent hadn’t been edging into the hall, he probably wouldn’t have heard it. Unlike Brent, Marc wasn’t just barging into the apartment, and as much as Brent wanted to ignore him until he went away, he knew first hand Marc could easily out-stubborn him.
Sighing, resigned to having to face down Marc when he wasn’t exactly at his best, Brent pulled open the door. He hadn’t realized how much smaller he was than Marc before, but there was no way he could ignore it now.
“Can I come in?” Marc asked, surprisingly gentle.
“Whatever,” Brent muttered, and left the door open, hardly caring that Juliette immediately trotted over to say hello. Brent collapsed into the armchair facing the window, feeling hyperaware of the fact he was in Marc’s clothes, Marc standing in the middle of the room, and traces of Marc all over his apartment, including his influence in not letting Brent leave his shit all over the place without picking up after himself.
There was fuck all he could do about it now.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“I wanted to,” Marc started, and then seemed to lose steam. He perched on the edge of the couch, looking half-ready to turn, and Brent wouldn’t have blamed him. “Have you really not been sleeping?”
Brent raised his eyebrows. “That’s what you want to talk about?” Waving a hand when Marc opened his mouth, Brent sat forward, letting out a small self-deprecating laugh. “I have so many clients, I can barely get from one side of Chicago to the other in time to take them out. I keep trying to sleep in a bed I’m used to having another person in, and I keep wondering when I’m going to snap out of whatever this shit is,” he said, indicating the whole room around him, “and hope me being an insensitive dick wasn’t the sentence it turned out to be.”
Marc looked a little shell-shocked, like he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with all that information. Brent let him work it out, closing his eyes and massaging his temples. God, he needed a drink, some food, and to sleep. His whole body was screaming at him to just lie down somewhere dark and wait it out, but Brent was also hyper-aware of Marc in the room and couldn’t distract himself, even when he was desperate to do so.
“I was talking to—”
“If you say Brandon,” Brent snapped, without opening his eyes. “I’m so tired of hearing the two of you talk about me.”
“If you’d wait,” Marc said, an edge to his voice that was painfully familiar. When Brent opened his eyes, Marc was staring back at him, unashamed and refusing to back down. “I was talking to my mother.”
Brent swallowed, startled enough he didn’t know what to say. Marc’s lips twitched, like he wanted to smile but thought better of it.
When there was nothing else forthcoming, Brent couldn’t resist asking, “So?”
“I didn’t know what I was going to do with the email,” Marc admitted, his voice dropping. He stared at the floor, brow furrowed, and Brent knew better than most how Marc felt about his parents. “I almost didn’t believe Brandon when he gave it to me.”
Brent rubbed at his arm self-consciously. “But you did.”
“I did.” Marc met Brent’s eyes again, looking thankful and something else Brent couldn’t begin to explain. “I think,” he said, keeping his voice level, but Brent could hear the waver in his tone, “I tend to react and then regret it.”
Brent didn’t know what to say to that. There was hope warring with the resignation in his chest, and he didn’t want to breathe, didn’t want to risk this being another nightmare he’d wake up to in an empty bed.
Marc rubbed his hands on his thighs. “I thought they blamed me. I think I blamed myself and used them as an excuse.”
“It wasn’t your fault any more than theirs,” Brent pointed out, needing Marc to know that at least.
“I know that now,” Marc assured him. The look he turned on Brent was thankful, but Brent didn’t know why it was aimed at him. “Thank you.”
Brent’s eyes widened. “For what?”
Marc snorted, expression incredulous, but he kept his tone light. “You received the email after we broke—after we fought. You didn’t have to send it to me.”
“I would never have kept it from you,” Brent told him. He noticed Marc’s slip on broke up but didn’t want to bring it up. There was already enough hope settled in Brent’s chest. He didn’t want to give himself any more, it would already hurt when Marc left. “What did they say?”
Marc’s smile was a wider, his eyes soft and affectionate. “They were both happy to hear from me, wanted to let me know they loved me and missed me.”
“I bet they had,” Brent said quietly. He tugged on the sleeves of his sweater—Marc’s sweater—and scratched at his wrist.
“They want to see me,” Marc said gently. He looked up at Brent through his lashes. “I don’t know if I should go.”
Brent didn’t answer for a moment. He wanted to be sure he would say the right thing. He was confused and hopeful and exhausted, but he didn’t want to give Marc advice that wasn’t sound. He folded his arms across his chest, rubbing at his elbows. “I think you should do whatever makes you comfortable. Either have them come to you—it’s your safe space—and you can always ask them to leave if it gets too much.”
When he risked looking up, Marc was watching him, eyes widened slightly, mouth quirking up into a smile. It was soft, lips parted slightly as if he was still being surprised by him. Brent felt a little smug about that and tilted his head slightly as Marc let out a slow breath.
“Thanks,” Marc said again. “You always know the right thing to say.”
“Apparently not,” Brent said, laughing self-deprecatingly. He was painfully aware everything that had gone wrong between them was his fault, but he didn’t know what to do about it.
Marc sucked in a breath quickly, his eyebrows raised. Brent realized with mounting horror he had spoken aloud, and groaned, rubbing his hand over his face.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Marc said gently. There was a brief pause, and then Marc leaned forward, touching Brent’s knee. “Can I ask you a question?”
“You just did,”
Brent said with a small smile. Anything to keep his heart from hammering out of his chest. “Sure, go ahead.”
“How would you feel about starting again?”
Brent stared, Marc looking apprehensive, and Brent’s heart was definitely going to burst out of his chest if he didn’t understand what was happening soon. “Starting again?”
Marc’s smile was understanding, and he pulled back, resting his forearms on his knees. The distance between them hadn’t increased anyway, but Marc’s presence was as intoxicating as it ever was. “Yeah. I think we got a bit wrapped up in each other there.” That was something Brent couldn’t deny. “I had nobody else in my life at that point, and you were new to Chicago. It would have been easier, somehow, to latch on to each other and never let go.”
“Yeah,” Brent breathed, pain settling in his stomach. “So, starting again?”
“I think,” Marc said slowly, his eyes shining with something Brent didn’t dare name, “I want to start again.”
Brent wasn’t sure he had the courage what needed to be done. He was still hurt, still sure he was going to wake up at some point and realize his mind had run away with itself.
Thankfully, Marc was being courageous enough for both of them. “It wasn’t the PTSD, right?”
“What?” Brent shook his head vehemently. “No, not a chance.”
“Good,” Marc said decisively. He held out his hand, smile wide. “My name’s Marc Bergeron. I work at a doggy daycare, and I’d really like to date you.”
Brent wanted to cry, his hand shaking as he took Marc’s without hesitation. He didn’t know how he was still breathing when he toppled forward, hauling Marc into a hug. He barely remembered to say, “My name’s Brent Strome, and I would love to date you.”