26. Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-six
Ace
I stop stalling and head down to Adam’s office once Matt leaves mine. I rap my knuckles against his office door, trying not to crawl out of my skin when he calls for me to come in.
He’s sitting at his desk, hunched over a stack of papers, but lets himself rest back in his chair as I close the door behind myself. I raise an eyebrow at him and smirk. He matches the expression with his own.
I promised Keaton three things - I’d meet with Adam regularly, I’d be better about my sleep, and I’d quit the uppers.
I didn’t promise anything about alcohol, though, so I reach down to the bottom of his cart of snacks and drinks and slide my hand beneath it to find the bottle of very expensive scotch. I grab two of his glasses off the cart and head his way.
He shuffles some of the papers on his desk around before sliding a few inside a textbook and flipping it closed.
He takes his glasses off and rubs at his eyes as I pour us each a drink.
He looks about as tired as I feel right now.
The first two weeks we were here, he’d nearly lived in his office almost as much as I did.
Things had started to settle, though. He’d been spending most nights in his room in the auxiliary house, his phone set on high volume in case we had an emergency here.
Ever since Carter and Casey sprang their news, I’ve only seen him outside of his office a single time, when he sat in my office so we could all have dinner last night.
I pour him a double.
I carefully avoid looking at the packets and books spread out across his desk. The most detail I catch is a pink sticky note in the center of a loose paper and an uncapped highlighter resting on an open book. A book about speech therapy. Then I catch myself.
“Worried?” I ask, needing my mind to have something better to focus on than whether or not that book is meant for Matt. I place his glass in front of him as I wait for him to answer, taking a seat in the chair opposite the desk.
“Worried about you?” he counters. “Or about Carter and Casey?”
I give him a look. “Let’s start with Carter and Casey.”
“Yes.” There’s no hesitation. He looks relieved to admit it, even, almost like a held breath I’ve finally allowed him to release. “But can I be cynical as all hell for a minute?”
I smirk. This is a very rare state for Adam Singh.
I can't help but think of how much Kellan would love to see it.
Not that he'd enjoy seeing the man distressed, but it's obvious to anyone with eyes that the ability Adam has to keep himself perfectly put together in even the most trying of times drives Kellan fucking nuts, an impressive feat considering the whole antisocial thing.
Then again, Kellan brought the problem onto himself.
After nearly 20 years of fooling psychologists, he finally met his match with Dr. Adam Singh.
And what did he do? He turned around and hired the guy.
That's just asking for a headache, if you ask me.
A surprising twist, too, considering Kellan doesn't accept headaches from anyone outside of his very small circle, a circle that seems to have somehow extended to include Adam in a way the rest of the circle has never been able to fully understand.
“Cynical Adam is my favorite. Go on.”
He rolls his eyes, but his smile makes it fond. “You just like when I’m cynical because it bothers Kellan and you find it amusing.”
“It is amusing!” I point at him, knowing for a fact he feels the same. “It takes so fucking much to bother that man and you say one pessimistic thing and he’s snapping. Unbelievably entertaining.”
“Yes, well, I’m glad that me provoking a man with antisocial tendencies provides you with a source of entertainment.”
“Oh, like Kellan would ever touch you.”
Something complicated passes over his expression before he locks it down.
The moment catches me off guard. Adam has always been good about keeping his expressions locked down.
Sometimes too good. He has a hard time turning it off when he’s not with a client, wearing a mask more often than not.
It’s rare he slips. It’s even more rare for something that intense to be what slips through, a multi-faceted chaos of emotions.
What the fuck did Kellan do to him?
I lean forward, my heart doing its best to lodge itself in my damn throat. “Did he threaten you? Over what? Is it about me or Keat-”
“Stop. No.” He leans forward too, resting his forearms on his desk, hands cupping the glass of scotch. He stares down into his scotch for a long moment before looking up at me with a wry smile. “Just - that wasn’t anything. Ignore it. My mind is messy.”
Messy. That pulls a smile out of me. I forgot he taught me that. When I was little, that’s what we called it - my mind would get messy.
“You know, we all talk to you and lean on you, but who do you talk to, Adam?”
“I have a therapist, Ace.” He reaches over to squeeze my hand. “Don’t worry about me. I just really need to find the time to video call with her. These past weeks have been too busy.”
I eye him. “We don’t lie?”
“We don’t lie,” he agrees, having adopted the rule from Kellan. He picks his glass up and nudges it against mine where it sits still untouched on the desk. “Your turn.”
“Wait, no, you never got to be cynical.”
“Ah, right. Well, between you and I? The decision to let Travis and Jake stay here is risking lives. If you weren’t here, I would have turned the position down unless Kellan agreed to override them.
It is utter bullshit. It’s unhealthy and unethical and way too many survivors left here too early.
One is already in the hospital for a suicide attempt.
I'm honestly surprised there haven't been more.”
I relax into the leather chair I’m in, taking a sip of my drink as he washes down his admission with a gulp of his own.
He leans his head back and closes his eyes.
“Sometimes I wish we could hold them. I know that’s fucking awful, I do, but the shock of a rescue is…
it fucks with them. They aren’t thinking straight.
Not yet. It’s all fear and survival instinct now.
Fight or flight or freeze, and we’re offering to give them wings.
If they were at a real hospital, with police working their case and social workers, they would all be on involuntary psych holds easily. There’s a reason for that.”
“There is,” I agree. “And there’s a reason we don’t enforce the same rules.”
“I'm aware.” He laughs humorlessly. “And now the two survivors they demanded to be here for are leaving anyway and I’m just-” he stops, rubbing a hand over his face.
He doesn’t pull it away when he’s finished, just resting it there.
“I’m just really fucking frustrated. Because these two aren’t ready either.
It feels like I’ve been slapping bandages onto everyone from this operation and praying for the best, and that is not the kind of doctor I am, Ace.
” He drops his hand, his eyes sad as he looks at me. “I don’t like this. I hate this.”
I take a sip of my scotch, pretending it’s the only reason why it hurts to swallow.
I want to say that I hate it too, but that won't fix it.
Plus, my hate is more complicated than his.
I care about Travis and Jake more than he does.
He's just their colleague - and sort of a therapist for them, if they ever let him help.
It's easy for him to say that things shouldn't have gone down this way. It's harder for me.
A goddamn mess, as Kellan had said. This whole operation has become a goddamn mess.
“One or both of them are going to hurt themselves in the next month,” Adam mutters, almost like he's telling it to himself, trying to come to terms with it. “Carter will likely do it through recklessness. He is so determined to prove that he’s fine. He wants to prove that he doesn’t need Travis or Maison or me or anyone here.
He’s all fight and fury, with no real reason to check himself.
He's breaking his own heart with Travis and that hurts is going to form a vicious circle he'll get swept up in.”
“And Casey will do it quietly. He'll slip away from us.
Carter is going to be so loud, he'll drown Casey out.
I'm not blaming Carter for that. I've just seen this enough times.
Casey is living for Carter right now. I don't think he's all that interested in living for himself.
If Carter successfully moves on, Casey will feel like a burden.
If Carter spins out and hurts himself, Casey will take all of the blame.
That kid is going to slip right through the cracks and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.
I don't even believe they'll actually come back to see me despite the deal we made.
Carter won't want to, he wants nothing to do with this place, and Casey won't come alone. It's…” he trails off, shaking his head.
“A goddamn mess,” I offer.
“Yes. A goddamn mess.” He rubs at his eyes before sitting back in his chair again, forcing himself to relax. “Now I'm worried about you.”
I sag in my own chair, bringing my drink with me. My knee is already bouncing.
“Give me three,” he says softly. “And something good.”
It's a game he used to play with me when I was younger He used to tell me that one day it'd be difficult to come up with three whole things bothering me, and that the something good would be hard to narrow down.
I hadn't believed him. Turns out - in a rare occurrence between the two of us - I was actually right.
I wonder if he's realized that. I wonder what he thinks of it, if he has. If he maybe still hopes I'll reach that place some day.
Wouldn't that be nice? To live in a world where good outweighs the bad?
I don't ask him. Tonight feels fragile, the two of us stretched too thin. If I asked, he might actually answer. I'm not ready for that kind of conversation.
So, I give him three bad things.