Best of Intentions

by Michelle Cary

  Even when they awoke this morning, things between them seemed good, then she'd emerged from the shower and he noticed something had gone terribly wrong. Not wanting to push the subject with her, he hadn’t asked why she’d suddenly shut him out again. Nevertheless, it bothered him. Had he said or done something to upset her or was this simply a matter of her over analyzing the situation? Whatever the reason, he knew completely winning Tess’s heart back was going to take more time than he planned.

  Once he’d made his food and cleaned up his mess, he picked up his plate and carried it back to the den. Regardless of the injury to his hand, this sitting around doing nothing was going to drive him insane. He needed to find something to occupy his time until he was able to get his life back in order.

  He picked up the remote and switched on the television. After flipping through several channels, he settled on MTV. Not that it should still be called music television, considering that with all the reality shows it played, it barely showed music videos anymore.

  Thankfully, he’d managed to catch it during a block of music videos and eased back into the recliner with his sandwich to watch. The first three video’s passed without notice, then Devin stopped chewing and stared blankly at the television. There in front of him was Ascension’s video for A New Path.

  Travis’s image filled the screen. His dirty blond hair fell slowly into his face as he gripped the microphone and began to sing.

  Life it seems will always leave you guessing

  Up or down, left or right

  The video cut to the guitars and an image of Devin and Cooper playing back to back with Kyle standing on a riser above them holding his bass.

  So much to question

  A crossroads brings you to the point

  Lights flashed and pyrotechnics shot from pods behind them, then the video cut back to Travis.

  Which way do I go?

  What’s wrong or right?

  What I need is a new path to follow

  Some kind of direction in my life...

  That video shoot had seemed to be millions of takes and retakes in an attempt to get the right look. Now, as he stared at the faces of his band mates immortalized forever by the camera, Devin was thankful for the director’s diligence.

  By the time the song ended, tears filled his eyes and for the first time since the accident, he openly cried. Gut wrenching sobs echoed through the room, drowning out the music and wracking his body while a deep and penetrating pain clung to his chest, threatening to cut off his air. Unlike the rest of the world, who dismissed Ascension’s accident as an unfortunate demise of a potential rock giant, these men were family to him. They weren’t simply a drummer, base player, guitar player and singer, they were individuals who each possessed unique traits and held a special place in his heart. They’d been a team, banded together to take over the music world. Without them to fall back on, he would have to face his uncertain future alone—well not completely alone—he still had Tessa.

  When his tears finally began to slow, Devin shut off the television, stood and headed for the bathroom. He flipped on the light, grabbed a washcloth from the cabinet and filled the basin with cold water. The ache lodged deep in his chest began to subside as he patted his face with the cool cloth. Nothing could bring back his friends, but he could find a way to keep their memories alive, to honor them in a way that their contribution to the music world would not be forgotten. But how?

  Maybe this was something Tessa could help him figure out this evening after work. He let the water out of the sink, wrung out the washcloth and reached for the light switch only to have a blinding light flash before his eyes. The all too familiar rush of adrenaline flooded his body, and he grabbed the doorframe to steady himself. A quick image of Tessa filled his field of vision. She stood next to her truck, hands up in surrender while a faceless person pointed a gun at her.

  As fast as the image came, it was gone and Devin stumbled out into the hallway. Once he regained his balance, he rushed for the phone and dialed the hospital. He needed to make sure she was all right, and warn her she was possibly in danger.

  Chapter Ten

  Tess stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the third floor. With last night's event still playing in her head and her emotions in turmoil, today was going to be a bit rough.

  The elevator opened to the second floor and Casey joined her. “You look like you’re in deep thought.”

  Tess shook her head. “Just some personal issues. I’ll be fine.”

  Casey smiled. “That’s good to know. But if you need to talk, my door’s always open, so to speak.”

  Tess nodded. “I appreciate that, but it’s something I’ll have to work out on my own.”

  “Man troubles?” Casey asked, arching a brow at her.

  A guilty smile tugged at Tess’s lips and she glanced down at the elevator floor. “You could say that.”

  “Aren’t they always the source of our problems?”

  Tess nodded. “At least in my life they are.”

  Casey laughed. “Typical. Oh hey, I forgot.” Her look turned dark.

  Tess’s skin prickled in response. “Yeah?”

  “I meant to tell you. You wanted me to keep you updated on Mr. McGovern.”

  “Right.”

  She grimaced. “He passed a few days ago. I’m sorry Tess, I kept meaning to tell you, and then I’d get tied up and forget.”

  A shiver raced up Tess’s spine, and she closed her eyes in an attempt to steady her rattled nerves. “How many days ago?” The elevator doors opened, but Tess remained in place waiting for Casey’s answer.

  “Three I think. It was the same day you’d put the request in to be kept updated.” Casey lifted a hand and touched her arm. “I’m really sorry. You knew him, right?”

  “My parents did,” she lied before snaking out a hand to hold open the doors. “This is my floor. Thanks for letting me know.”

  “No problem, Tess. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Hours later, Tess was still reeling from news. Guilt gnawed at her like hungry piranhas. Could she have done something to prevent it? He was dying anyway so how could she be sure he’d been murdered and not passed on his own? She’d have to talk to Eric about it.

  Walking back from a patient’s room, she overheard Tori calling to her. “Tess, Devin’s on the phone.”

  Tess’s brow creased and she increased her pace. Why was Devin calling her at work?

  “He sounded upset,” Tori said as Tess set the chart on the desk and picked up the receiver. She glanced at Tori, then pressed the line flashing on hold. “Devin, what’s wrong?”

  “Are you okay?”

  Tess’s skin prickled as the fear in his voice registered in her ears. “Of course I’m okay. Why?”

  “I had a vision of someone holding a gun on you. I know it was stupid to call you while you were working, but I needed to hear your voice and make sure for myself you were okay.”

  With a subtle glance down, Tess gauged her distance from Tori before turning her back and cupping her hand over the speaker. “Is this your first one since your sight returned?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Well, maybe because it’s your first after your injuries it might be wrong. I certainly don’t mean to belittle what you saw, but I don’t know of anybody who would want to hurt me and the parking lot is fairly secure, especially with…well, you know.”

  “Right…I forgot about the investigation.” He sighed into the phone. “Okay, so I definitely overreacted. I guess now that I’ve made a fool of myself, I’ll let you get back to work.”

  Tess laughed. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve seen you make a bigger fool of yourself than this.”

  “Gee thanks.” He chuckled. “I’ll talk to you when you get home, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Love you.”

  For a second she paused before she replied. “You too,” she finally said before returning the receiver to the base.

 
“Everything okay?” Tori asked.

  “Yeah, everything’s fine, why?”

  “Because he sounded upset.”

  “Oh that? He fell asleep on the couch and had a bad dream about me getting hurt, so he was calling to check on me.”

  “That was sweet of him.”

  “Yeah, he’s a sweet guy.”

  “You know, I’m a little surprised at you.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because it’s not like you to shirk your responsibilities. I mean how could you leave Devin home alone when he’s still blind and injured.”

  Stunned by her friend’s declaration, Tess looked up from the chart she was writing in. “Are you kidding me? Weren’t you the one who was yelling at me the other day about letting him in my house, and now you’re suddenly worried about his well being?”

  “Well,” Tori tapped her pen against the desk. “I’m only saying that if you cared about him as much as you say you do, then you wouldn’t leave him alone in his current condition.”

  Tess swiveled her chair to face her friend. “For your information, Devin’s vision returned last night, and before that he’d learned to negotiate my house quite well using a cane.”

  “Really?” Tori’s face contorted into a scowl. “He’s healing awfully quick. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad he’s feeling better, but don’t you find it all a bit odd?”

  Tess tried hard not to roll her eyes and failed. “Why do you have to be so suspicious? Some people heal more quickly than others do.”

  “Yeah, but-”

  Tess shook her head. “No buts, Tori. You know I love you like a sister, but I’m not going to sit here and allow you to hunt for reasons not to like Devin. I have an idea.” With Tori already suspicious of Devin, what Tess was about to suggest was probably a bad idea, but losing a friend to gain a lover didn’t seem like a good prospect either. What did she really have to lose? “You’re always trying to get me to go to church with you. Well, I’ll make you a deal. You come over for dinner one night after work, and I’ll go to church with you one Sunday?”

  Tori shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not going to make a deal to get you to come to church with me, Tess. You want to live in sin with your warlock boyfriend, I can’t stop you, but I refuse to be party to it.”

  “They’re not called warlocks.” By not letting the subject drop, Tess was treading into dangerous territory, but no way could she allow Tori to disparage him in that manner.

  “Huh?”

  Breathing through her nose, Tess worked to appear calmer than she actually was. Tori wasn’t a bad person, she simply tended to obsess over a subject and her current topic of choice was religion, or rather Tess’s lack thereof. “The term warlock means ‘oath breaker’ and is often used by covens when they banish a member. The Christians from Old England were the first to assign the term to men who were considered witches and worshiped the devil. Even in today’s pagan society the use of the word is often frowned upon.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Because before you convinced me to take the nursing track in school, I had a class on alternative religions and wrote a term paper on pagan religions versus Christianity for my final. It was actually a very interesting subject matter, and if you could see past the doors of your own church for once, you might think so too.”

  ****

  He was restless, Devin decided as he puttered around the house for what seemed to be the umpteenth time. After an hour of self-imposed therapy, his hand hurt like hell, and he was sick of watching television. He was about to head upstairs for a short nap when the familiar ring of his cell phone caught his attention. Following the sound, Devin found his phone plugged into a charger on an end table in the den. When had Tess done this? He’d been sure the charger, much like his favorite cherry red, Les Paul guitar, had been lost in the accident.

  He picked up the Motorola and stared at the number with disbelief. No way was his brother calling. For several seconds, Devin debated on answering, before innate curiosity won out. He flipped open the phone. “Hello.”

  “Thank God you’re all right.” Gavin’s relieved voice boomed through the tiny receiver into Devin’s ear. “I got back from Australia and happened to catch a story of your accident on the news. Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Well, you were in Australia for one. And then there was the whole being injured, blind and losing all of my friends. I wasn’t in much of a mood to try and have you tracked down.”

  “You’re blind?”

  Gavin’s tone revealed a concern which made Devin feel instantly guilty for being snippy with him. It wasn’t Gavin’s fault their parents had treated Devin so badly when he was younger. He probably should have thanked them, because if they hadn’t sent him to live with his Grandfather in Ireland when he was five, Devin would have never learned of his powers and how to use them. “Not anymore. It was associated with my head injury. But it’s healed now, and my vision returned yesterday.”

  “The hospital representative said you checked yourself out. So where are you staying?”

  “Do you remember Tess Callaghan?”

  “Wasn’t she the girl you dated in high school when you came back from Ireland?”

  “That’s her. Well, she works as a nurse at the hospital where I was admitted, and she’s letting me stay at her house.”

  “You know, bro., I don’t mind telling you that I was more than a little terrified when I found out what happened to you. I know we’ve never been all that close-”

  Devin smirked. “That’s a bit of an understatement, Gavin.” That too wasn’t something for which he could blame Gavin. With more than six years between them, Gavin was already at college when Devin moved home. Angry and hurt over his grandfather’s passing, Devin had lashed out at everybody around him, Gavin included.

  “Maybe, but you know I love you right?”

  The pang of guilt grew with his brother’s declaration. Up until that moment, he’d never given Gavin’s feelings much consideration. “Well, yeah, of course I know. I love you, too.”

  “And so you know, what went on between you, mom and dad wasn’t my doing. I kept telling them to leave you alone, and let you follow your dream. That after what they’d put you through they had no right to demand things of you, but you know how they were.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “If you don’t mind, I have the next couple of weeks off before I start a new project. I’d love to fly up and spend some time with you.”

  Up to the accident, the band had served as Devin’s surrogate family. With them gone and having faced nearly three weeks of feeling completely alone, save for Tess, Devin realized how much he'd missed having his real family in his life, even if it was only Gavin and his wife. “Actually, I think I’d like that a lot.”

  “I’ll call when I get my reservations made. You take care of yourself, okay.”

  “I will. And Gavin...”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.” Devin flipped the phone closed and stared down at it in his hand. Could it be that something good would come from this tragedy? He could only hope.

  No longer feeling like a nap, he headed into the kitchen. Maybe he could scare up something to make a nice dinner and surprise Tess.

  ****

  Tess stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the garage and watched while Devin, with his back to her, grabbed two hot pads off the counter and opened the oven door. He removed the bread from inside and set it on top of an empty burner on the stove. The aroma of garlic and onion filled the room, causing Tess’s stomach to growl in protest.

  After his phone call earlier in the afternoon and her argument with Tori, Tess had been too nervous to finish her lunch and now she was starving.

  He wheeled around and froze when he spotted her. “Hi.” He waved, still wearing the glove mitt on his hand.

  She smiled. “Hi yourself. What’s a
ll this?”

  “Um. I wanted to surprise you. I’m sorry about the mess on the counter. I promise I’ll do the dishes.” He quickly yanked the oven mitt from his hand and tossed it onto the counter. “Honestly, I didn’t expect you home for another ten minutes and was hoping to have most of this cleaned up by then.”

  Her smile grew. Could he possibly know how adorable he looked when he was nervous? “I caught all the green lights and you didn’t answer my question. What is all this?”

  “Dinner,” he replied. “And an apology for overreacting earlier. I usually handle my visions better, but this was my first one since the accident and well…”

  She slipped out of her coat, hung it in the closet then crossed to where he stood. “It’s okay,” Passing by him on her way to the table, she lifted a hand to his cheek. “I understand.” Without another word, she shifted her attention to the beautifully set table complete with candles. “You did all this?” She looked over her shoulder at him.

  “Well, I did cheat on the sauce, but I cooked the noodles myself.”

  His confession made her laugh and she reached for his hand. “I appreciate you trying to make dinner, and I’m sure it will taste great.”

  “I wanted to do something nice for you. You’ve been extremely patient with me and all my problems. And, well, this is my way of saying thank you.”

  “You didn’t have to do that, but it is nice to come home and have dinner waiting on me.”

  Devin reached for her chair and motioned for her to sit. “After you?”

  A loud bang rang though the kitchen. Barely in her seat, Tess to jumped to her feet. Wide-eyed she looked over her shoulder at him. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know?”

  “It sounded like it came from the back patio.” She paused and listened while a faint scratching sound moved across the back wall. “Something’s out there.”