Chapter 72: Confession's End

"Turns out," Trev went on soberly, "there're no more 'get-out-of-jail-free' cards in life than there are free lunches. There's always a price to pay, and what I didn't understand — because I was only thinking short-term — was that if I wasn't going to foot the bill, someone else — Vanna — was going to have to. You're right, Bonnie: I turned the tables on her, and all the inner conflict I'd been feeling up to that point shifted onto her. She'd made her choice, but she didn't feel right about it, and, though she tried to put a good face on it, I could see she wasn't happy. She didn't bring the same energy, the same excitement to our sessions as she had before, and the times I asked her about it, she insisted she was only a little tired, or had a bit of a headache. When we got into a rehearsal, and she was caught up in the music, she'd be her vibrant, laughing self again, but every so often, a shadow would cross her face, and her smiles would go from sunny to forced. I don't know how many times I was tempted to say we should just forget the whole thing, but, after the faith she'd shown in me, I was more than ever in the bind of not being able to reject her help."

"So, you hadn't gotten out of doing the performance, after all."

"No. If anything, I was more obligated to do it, but also — here's the strange thing — more committed. I hadn't meant to cause Vanna grief, but she was plainly racked with doubt about the rightness of her decision, and the only way I could ease her mind was to show her that, whatever my hidden agenda might be, she hadn't been wrong to trust my good intentions toward you, and, for that, I needed to see the plan through. I owed her that, Bonnie, even at the cost I couldn't like of maneuvering you into agreeing to go to the party."

Bonnie recalled the oh-so-hopeful looks Trev and Vanna had trained on her as she'd wavered over her decision. "You boxed me neatly into a corner of my own, even if you did, technically, leave whether or not we went up to me. I was hardly going to say 'no' with you and Vanna practically willing me to say 'yes.'"

"And once that hurdle was past, I wasn't worried about the rest, because, as I said, I honestly believed you wouldn't misunderstand. There wasn't much chance of your being pleasantly surprised, but I didn't expect anything worse than your finding the song choice and our polished performance bizarre, and, maybe, if you were puzzled enough to follow up with questions, having to confess to the embarrassing plot of having lured you to the bar so I could, with Vanna's help, strut my stuff for you like some human bird of paradise."

He turned to face her fully, then, his expression as earnest as it was pained. "I would never intentionally hurt you, Bonnie — never! — and that's why, when I saw how shaken up you were that night, I truly was stunned. I couldn't believe I'd upset you — the one person whose happiness I prided myself on always putting ahead of my own. It was so incredible, it was easier for me to believe you were genuinely, physically sick, but then, you wouldn't look me in the eye and refused to let me see you home. Standing there by the curb, watching you being driven away, I didn't know what to think, except something had turned your stomach, and there was reason to suspect it'd been me."

Bonnie had no trouble believing he'd been sincerely distressed, and, even though he didn't ask outright, it was clear he was still baffled by the violence of her reaction, and would welcome any light she saw fit to shed on the matter. She cast her mind back for the love of him, and volunteered, after a moment, "It wasn't just the duet. It was a variety of things: the songs Vanna did and how she delivered them…"

Trev frowned. "What d'you mean?"

"They were all on the theme of crushing on some man, and she wasn't exactly subtle about hinting she meant you. Don't tell me you didn't notice?" she said, when he continued to look at her blankly. "Well, I'll tell you who did notice, besides me: Steve Yates. He started out watching the two of you on stage, but, by the end, he'd focused all his attention on me, as if curious to see how I was taking the sight of my date and my self-proclaimed friend apparently flaunting their attraction to each other for every one in the room to see. And then, to top things off, just in case I was clueless, he said something like, 'They're pretty good together, don't you think?' I was mortified."

"The bastard," Trev said, not quite under his breath. "When we got back to the table, and asked where you'd gone, he just shrugged and said you'd turned green round the gills and run off. Vanna went to the nearest ladies' and couldn't find you…" He said no more for a time, as, brows knit, he fit these new puzzle pieces into his overall picture of that evening. At last, he said, almost to himself, "That explains so much."

He raised his eyes to hers, but some scruple kept him from elaborating, until, Bonnie waiting him out, he went on, "After you left, I dreaded going back into that bar — Vanna was going to have every right to ream me out with 'I told you sos' — but, amazingly, she was full of sympathy instead, and even took some of the blame on herself. She apologized for what she called 'adding special touches of her own' and 'beefing things up,' and I thought what she meant was the extra oomph she'd given the performance…"

"When she was actually referring to the numbers she'd done solo, and hadn't warned you about in advance." They shared a long, marveling look, astonished by a generosity, which, in her zeal to be supportive, Vanna had taken too far. Bonnie shook her head wryly. "Well, that's our Vanna all over: if something's worth doing at all, it's worth overdoing." She gave Trev a minute to absorb the full implications of what he'd just learned, and then, asked gently, "Is it any consolation, knowing you weren't the only one at fault?"

"No. It makes me feel worse, in a way, because all this time, she's been carrying that extra guilt and I never suspected. I mean, I knew she blamed herself for not having done more to talk me out of my idiocy, but actually messing things up…" He shook his head grimly. "That's a whole different level of regret.

"And I put her in that spot," he continued, "so, ultimately, I'm the one responsible in any case. Maybe, if she hadn't 'improvised,' everything would've gone as I expected, but there were never any guarantees…"

"Even the best-laid plans…"

"Often go awry," he finished. "And, by that token, even if the chance of your getting the wrong impression and being hurt as a result was infinitesimally small, as long as it was there in any degree, I shouldn't have taken the risk. I should've considered your feelings, first, last, and foremost, and I didn't. The night before we met at Ashby, I didn't get much sleep for thinking how little real care I'd shown for you over the previous few weeks. I only had to remember how pale and tired you'd looked that afternoon on the phone to feel thoroughly rotten and ashamed of myself. By morning, I was convinced not only that you were going to cut me loose but that I royally deserved it. I drove to the park fully expecting the ax to fall."

"And then — lo and behold! — it didn't." It was on the tip of Bonnie's tongue to remind him he'd only skated because he'd kept part of the truth from her, but then, in her mind's eye, she saw again the shady trail they'd followed round the pond, she, doing all the talking while Trev, head bowed, kept pace silently beside her. "My God," she breathed, "I was so sure Gramps was right, and so sorry I'd failed to appreciate how neglected you felt, I couldn't wait to beg your forgiveness. I asked you to let me have the first say, without interruption."

"And what you said was such a world apart from what I'd braced myself to hear, I couldn't believe my ears. I'd come prepared to take any recriminations you cared to dish out, humbly, without trying to defend myself, and, if it came to it, to accept your ending things between us, hopefully, with a modicum of grace. I was so far from expecting you to be open to giving us one final chance that when you offered a separation instead of a break-up, I was thrown for a loop. Of course, I was ecstatic, on the one hand, that you were willing to make me any kind of deal at all, even a deal so crappy — let's call a spade, a spade — that any man with an ounce of self-respect would've passed on it. On the other hand, even crappy as it was, I knew it was more than I deserved, that you were offering it only on the strength of a faulty assumption you'd made about my behavior. I couldn't take advantage of your proposal, Bonnie, not without taking advantage of you, and, even if that wasn't an issue, I couldn't, reasonably, justify accepting a deal that held out little real hope of our getting back together. Decency, pride, true gratitude, everything argued against my taking that deal…" He caught her eye a moment, a penitent look in his. "You probably thought, when you were waiting on my answer, that I was trying to push through my reluctance to agree, but, really, I was struggling to find the will to refuse."

"And you couldn't."

"No," he said heavily. "I'd thought, on my drive over to the park, that I'd already sunk as low in my own estimation as I could go, but I was wrong. I still had farther to fall."

In the rather somber silence that followed, Bonnie realized that, for all Trev'd explained so much and in such minute detail, she was still at a loss to understand what he'd meant about being too 'terrified' to release her. "I'm sorry to be so dense," she said, at last. "But I'm still not clear on what you were so terrified about."

His lips quirked up in half a smile. "Don't feel bad. I might not've figured it out, myself, except for Bishop."

"Bishop!" Bonnie echoed, her voice overloud in the stillness. "You talked all this over with Bishop?"

Trev's brows drew down in confusion. "You didn't think I worked all this out on my own?"

Bonnie groaned softly. "I'm an idiot. Of course that's why you went to Colorado! Frank was the one everyone in your frat house went to with their problems, the one whose advice you all trusted."

"Because he was always good for a swift kick in the pants when you needed it, and never steered you wrong." Trev smiled wryly. "And he hasn't changed a whit, thank God. I'd spent what was left of June and all of July making no more than a token effort to live up to my end of our bargain, so by early August, I knew, if I was going to have any real shot at dealing with my issues, I was going to need help, the kind of gloves-off, no-nonsense help that's Bishop's specialty. I called him up, asked if he could spare me some time, and he invited me to join him on the trail."

"Where he came through for you as usual?"

"Big time. I'll spare you the gory details, but suffice it to say that between me spilling my guts and Bishop chiming in with his insightful comments and questions, we finally dug down deep enough to where my crazy behavior began to make sense. My agreeing to our bargain, for example: he was, at first, as mystified by it as I was, but then, he came at it from a different angle and asked what it was I stood to gain by putting our inevitable break-up off by a few weeks. He reasoned there had to be something in it for me — some advantage to being your boyfriend, even if estranged, that I'd lose by becoming your ex — and he was right: what I was able to hold on to, as long as there was even a sliver of hope for us, was Vanna's sympathy and support, her being in my corner, on my side."

"But," Bonnie couldn't help but interject, "that makes no sense! If we'd called it quits that day, she'd've still been right there for you, ready to comfort and cheer you up."

"Yes, but we wouldn't've be a 'team' anymore. We'd've lost the common goal that gave us a special bond. Sure, there's the campaign, but we share that goal with dozens of other people. It isn't just 'our' thing."

"Alright, but, if you'd passed on the separation, you could've started building a new bond with her based on the friendship you already have."

But Trev shook his head. "I could've done that any time over the last six months, and didn't. I've been free, Bonnie, from the moment you turned down my proposal. I just haven't acted on it. You never asked me to be faithful. The opposite, in fact. You made it one of your conditions — remember? — that I try to meet someone new. You as good as gave me your blessing to put what I felt for Vanna to the test, and what did I do? I wined and dined a number of women, a different woman — or two — every week. It didn't matter who, just as long as they weren't Vanna. So, no, it wasn't a question of whether or not I was free. It was a question of my being afraid — terrified — of gambling away what I do have with her on nothing more than the chance of getting something better in return." He looked across his shoulder at her, his mouth crooked ruefully. "Apparently, I'm one of those poor-spirited 'half a loaf is better than none' types."

Bonnie slipped an arm free of his jacket, and, threading it confidingly through his, leaned into him. "It's human, Trev, not to want to leave the safe and familiar behind and step out into new, uncharted territory. Believe me, I understand. I've been afraid, too."

He moved his hand to cover hers where it rested on his arm. "But you've handled it so much better than I have, and I'm sorry about that, Bonnie, sorry from the bottom of my heart that I couldn't, at some point along the way, have been at least as courageous as you." He disentangled himself carefully from her arm, and, pivoting on the bench, took her hand in his again and looked her resolutely in the eye. "Will you forgive me, please, for not being man enough until now to let you go?"

Tears rose to Bonnie's eyes, and, through the lump in her throat, she barely managed to choke out, "If you'll forgive me for the same."

A bittersweet smile lit his face. "Done!" He lifted his jacket back into place over her bare shoulder, and, rising to his feet, helped Bonnie to hers. "I've kept you out here an unconscionably long time," he said, when she was standing before him. "There's probably a search party beating the bushes for us even now, but there's one more thing I need to say — the last thing, I promise! — before we head back."

Bonnie squared her shoulders, met his gaze and nodded. "All right."

Trev took a deep breath. "Some months ago, I told you your chances of my proposing to you again were good to excellent, and I do have a proposal for you tonight." He held out his hands, and she put hers into his. "Bonita-Angel Booth-Hodgins," he said, solemnly, "would you make me the happiest man on earth, and keep on being the best friend I've ever had or could possibly ask for?"

She shook her head fondly at his foolishness, and then, unable to contain herself, burst out, "Yes, of course! Yes!" And, without further delay, careless of the jacket on her shoulders, she threw herself into the arms he held wide for her, and wrapped her own around his neck. He swept her off her feet as he hadn't be able to do earlier in the evening, and it was just in the moment before he set her down again that her eye caught, over his shoulder, a splash of brilliant blue against the darkness. She no sooner touched the ground than she grabbed hold of Trev's arms to steady herself, and, leaning around him, saw Vanna standing stock still on the walkway, hands tightly clasped at her waist, her face drawn and pale in the moonlight. "Van?"

At the sound of her name, Trev turned swiftly around, and beamed at her. "Hey!" he said, his voice warm with welcome. "What're you doing out here? You weren't worried something'd happened to us, were you? I was just saying to Bonnie you were probably all wondering where we'd disappeared to."

Vanna took a hesitant step toward them, trembling but not, Bonnie thought, from the cold. "You didn't answer your phone," she said, on a plaintive note. "I've been calling and calling."

Trev reach down to scoop up his tumbled jacket. "It only buzzed the once," he said, in apology. He looked a question at Bonnie, who nodded. "Battery must've died…"

"We've been looking for you everywhere," she went on, as if he hadn't spoken. "Baer, Margot, Dana, my parents…."

She hadn't come any closer, as if she'd already exhausted all her strength in coming so far. Bonnie, moving toward her with Trev on her heels, saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes. "Vanna, honey, what's wrong? What's happened?"

She let Bonnie wrap an arm around her, but only looked at Trev. "I'm so sorry," she said, scarcely above a whisper. The tears that had threatened brimmed over, flowing in two luminous tracks down her cheeks. "It's the Senator, Trev. He collapsed. They've taken him to the hospital, by ambulance."