You Saved Me

Three days, nine hours and forty seven minutes.

That’s how long it’s been since Gables was shot in the head by Bobby.

Three days, nine hours and forty seven minutes.

That’s how long Brittany hasn’t spoken to Bobby.

Three days, ten hours and forty eight minutes.

That’s how long it’s been since Joe walked out of Brittany’s life. But it defiantly felt more a year than those long three days.

And eight hours and twenty three minutes was how long all it took all her old friends to want to be her friend again.

The following Monday at school, everyone knew about Brittany’s eventful Thanksgiving and now knew everything about her past considering it was all over the newspapers the next day.

And as grateful as she was that everyone wanted to be her friend, she hated it at the same time, only because even though at least 100 people were trying to make good with Brittany and Steph, there was one person that wasn’t. And it was the only person that Brittany wanted more than anything, to try and make things right with. But she kept her promise to him considering it was the last thing he even said to her and she was a little bit afraid of what else he might say to her if she tried to confront him. He already broke her heart twice by his words, she didn’t know if she could live through it a third time.

And after her fourth eventful day at school and now at home, things were starting to turn around slightly.

“Hey…” Bobby’s soft voice brought her out of her dream-like zone of staring at the black TV screen.

She turned her head around to look at him, just to acknowledge that she heard him before turning back around to stare at the screen again.

Steph had tried countless of times to get her to talk to Bobby, but they always resulted in Brittany making a sad but true statement about how he really didn’t care about her so there was no reason for her talk to him, and Steph never had anything to come back with.

“Can we talk?” Bobby asked softly. He was flustered and a little bit heart broken that the girl that he had been taking care of and would rant and rave about with co workers, was turned into this sad and forlorn girl that wouldn’t speak to him and he didn’t understand why.

He knew that sometimes victim’s of a psycho killer, who actually survived and watched the killer be killed, would leave emotional trauma, but he never thought that it would be this bad for Brittany considering she witnessed her parents get murdered 9 years ago.

All he got as response from her was a shrug of her shoulders before she got up and made her way past him and up the stairs to her room.

He let out a loud sigh before following her up to her room and standing in her doorway with his ankles crossed along with his arms over his chest.

“I just wanted to run something by you…maybe see if you might want to do this.” he stated while she started pulling her books and such out of her back pack to start working on her homework.

“So…..I know that we’ve gotten close the last three and half months you lived here and I j-”
He was cut off when she scoffed at his sentence while doing a small eye roll in his direction and that little bit flipped a switch in him.

“What the heck is your problem?” he snapped at her and she jumped slightly from how sudden his tone of voice got from being soft and caring to hard and upset. But her shock wore off as quickly as it came as she mumbled, “It’s not like you care anyways.”

“Excuse me?” he snapped at her with an authorative voice while taking a step into her room.

“I said….” she said with a little bit of an attitude before bringing her head up from her book to look at him and finish her sentence. “It’s not like you care anyways.” and then went back to her books, opening them up to the appropriate pages but that was not going to sit well with him.

Especially not in his house that he was letting her live in and for hopefully a little bit longer than three more weeks.

Yeah…she was supposed to be moving to New York to stay with Laura after three more weeks.

Just in time for Christmas Break.

Most kids get to have fun with friends and family during Christmas break, but since Brittany didn’t have any family that she actually liked and only one really good friend, she got to the joy of moving during Christmas Break.

“Excuse me…but I do. Why else would I be asking you if you wanted me to adopt you!” he snapped at her and her breath caught in her throat from hearing that word leave his mouth.

Adopt? He wants to adopt me? He. Wants to adopt. Me?

He saw the confused look on her face and his anger was already taking over his emotions preventing him to filter the next couple of things that came out of his mouth.

“That’s right. I want to adopt you. Because I love you. You remind me so much of my daughter that died when she was 4 from being in the car accident with my wife. You’re not the only one who’s lost people they loved Brittany and I love you. I want you to be a part of my family. We can be a family together.” he yelled at her.

She stared at his upset, breathing heavily figure for a few seconds and watched as he shook his head and turned around, getting ready to leave her room but she snapped to her senses.

“Bobby wait!” she said as she scrambled out from underneath all of her books and papers she cast around her.

He stopped in his tracks but didn’t bother to turn around until she laid her hand gently on his arm and tugged on it lightly.

She was struck by the sight she saw when he turned around and faced her.

The man that had taken care of her, the man that just said he loved her, the man that saved her, was crying right before her eyes because of what she said, or lack of, to him for the last four days and just now.

She instinctively wrapped her arms around him and hugged him, trying to console him as best as possible and she couldn’t help but feel sadness pour over her when he wrapped his big arms around her and cried softly into her hair.

“I’m so sorry for the way I’ve been treating you lately. I just figured that you were only pretending because…” she trailed off, already knowing that her first instinct about the whole situation Sunday night was completely wrong.

“Because why?” he said in a husky voice, laced with tears and her own eyes started to tear up for thinking such horrible things about him to begin with.

“I thought I was just part of the job to you. Not that you actually cared about me. And that’s why I wasn’t talking to you the last couple of days to save myself from the heartache.”

He pulled away from her, letting his hands rest on her shoulders while pushing her arms length away to look at her with a confused look.

“What heartache?”

Just those two simple words seemed to trigger all the tears in her eyes and sent them streaming silently down her face.

He pulled her into him then, cradling her head in between his shoulder and chest and slightly swaying her from side to side to try and calm her down.

“You’ve been the best father figure..” she started and then sniffled slightly before continuing. “I’ve ever had. And I was so mad because I thought I was just part of the job for you and that you didn’t really care about me. That’s why I just stopped talking to you. Because I knew that if I acted the same way towards you, I would end up hurting myself more in the end.”

“I’m afraid-” he stopped himself to choke down any tears that were about to spring from his eyes. “That I don’t completely understand what you’re saying.”

She sighed loudly into his chest while bringing up her own hands to wipe away any tears from her face while she pushed lightly against him to look at his tear stained face.

“I lost both my parents. You know that. And for the last 9 years, all the families I’ve lived with, I never really felt like I belonged. Always an outsider and just a ‘good deed’ to them I guess you could say. But then…” she trailed off, wiping away at her eyes where more tears were about to fall from. “When I came here, you and I just clicked. I slowly started to trust you, I slowly started to see you as my father type figure. And even said I love you once but you didn’t hear it and I didn’t know if I really wanted you to because I didn’t know if I really loved you myself or just was really thankful to have found a father figure for myself. But when I saw him-” She stopped, her tears falling from her eyes too fast for her to wipe them all away and he pulled her into him again to calm her down.

He too was crying now from listening to her speech and he honestly had no idea what to say.

After a few minutes, she got control of her tear ducts again and wiped at her face with the bottom of her t-shirt really quick before continuing.

“When I saw Gables standing over you, pointing that gun at your chest, I could already feel the pain of losing my parents again before he even pulled that trigger. And you have no idea how uplifted I was when you didn’t die. I was so happy, words can’t even describe it. I felt like I had a family. But when I found out that you were an agent and that you were assigned to protect me for the last 3 and half months, I felt the anger of losing another parent again. So I distanced myself from you in order to save myself.”

He stood there, slack jawed at her speech she had just given and a wave of emotions was sent through his body.

Disappointment.

Happiness.

Faith.

Hope.

And most importantly. Love.

“Brittany…” he trailed off, his throat closing up on him from how emotional all of this was on the both of them. “I love you. And you were never ‘part of the job’ for me. Sure, I’m not gonna lie, when they assigned me as your ‘guardian’ I thought of it as just a job. But when you walked off that plane and I saw you for the first time, it was like watching my daughter walking towards me. And then you were no longer part of the job. You were my family right then and there. And I hope that you’ll consider being my family for real this time. Not just ‘part of the job.’” he stated to her with an apologetic smile on his face and she couldn’t help but smile back at him.

“Bobby…” she trailed off while pushing herself away from him to be arms length away and watched confusion and sorrow pass behind his eyes. “I would love for you to adopt me.” she stated and all the confusion and sorrow was immediately erased to be replaced with happiness.

Pure joy was radiating from the both of them at this point.

They both had a family now.

Each other.

Something that they had been looking for, for who knew how long and didn’t really know if they were ever going to achieve it.

Yes.

They were going to be a family now. And they were both completely ecstatic about it.

“Call Steph. Get her over here and we’ll have dinner or something.” Bobby stated while he pulled away from the bone crushing hug they just shared together.

“No. I want just us two tonight. There’s a lot that needs to be talked about. Like about my past that you don’t know about and your past that I don’t know about. So, let’s take the time to talk about it since we already are. This is our night. Our family night.”

Her heart soared when he smiled back at her, his toothy smile and he wrapped her in another hug and whispered, “Yes. Our family night.” into her ear.