Chapter Nine ADAM
Chapter Nine
ADAM
Driving back into Silver Lake Falls, my heart rate picks up. Last year, I first came up here to check on Carter. Now I’m pulled back by an equal need to make sure he doesn’t burn himself out. Obsessing over the case.
And then there’s Jackie.
They got into her fucking home. The leaked images sent me into a spiral. Imagining what might have happened if she were home. I kept seeing it, over and over, until my chest felt like someone had knotted wire around it. I’ve barely been able to focus on work.
I don’t even remember packing my bags and materializing on Carter’s doorstep.
“Surprise,” I sigh as the door swings open.
Carter’s brows shoot up as he looks between me and the two frowning guards flanking me. Luckily for my continued bodily integrity, I’m on the short list of people cleared on all Rawlings properties.
Carter blinks slowly at me, clearly processing the unexpected visit. “You know I have a phone. And satellite Internet, if you want to video call me.” Then he squints at me. “Why are you here?”
“I missed your pretty face,” I reply with a tired smile. “You’re here all of the time now. It’s like you abandoned me.”
“I live here,” Carter deadpans. “With my future wife.” He crosses his arms and gives me that look. God, it annoys me so much. It’s such a dad stare-down. His poor future children.
We’re locked in a wordless game of chicken. The silence he uses like a weapon is pounding against my temples. Finally, I have to admit defeat. I’m too worn out to stand here all day.
“Look, I need a break,” I finally tell him, a half-truth. “I’ll deny everything if you mention it to anyone, but…you were right. I’ve been stretching myself too thin. And you offered…”
Carter exhales loudly, dismissing the guards with a nod. He shakes his head in amusement, waving me inside. “What changed?”
He’s relentless when he wants answers. I want to get it all out in the open before Eliza walks in. I’m already ashamed of what happened. I couldn’t bear the look of worry if she found out.
“I crossed a line,” I say quietly. “It scared the hell out of me. It’s not funny anymore. And I don’t want to put my parents through what it would mean if…”
The rest refuses to come out.
The eternity between blacking out and blinking awake under fluorescent white lights, piercing my brain to the point of pain. I can still taste the nausea rolling in my stomach at the smell of bleach and hand sanitizer. Everything around me was too white. Too bright. Too sharp.
Carter’s eyes narrow, the wheels turning in his head. He knows me too well. “What happened?”
I drag in a breath, letting it out slowly. “Ended up in the ER. I blacked out that night … after you dropped by.”
The memories are mostly foggy, but the doctors’ words hit harder than I expected. The severity of the situation pressed on my lungs, dense and suffocating. One stilted breath away from going into full-blown panic.
All I could think about was my parents. About how my stupidity could’ve destroyed them.
What if I hadn’t woken up? And the last thing people remembered about me was that I collapsed in a bar? The shame pulls at my insides, making me feel even worse.
Carter stops short in the hallway, spinning on his heels. “Why didn’t you call me?”
The edge in his voice echoes, bouncing off the large windows and hardwood floors, landing heavily in my chest.
“Not my proudest moment,” I say, straightening a crooked frame on the wall.
Carter stares. Neither of us speaks, the silence pulsing around us.
“You wanted to play nurse?” I try, forcing a joke, but Carter’s expression remains stone cold.
“You could’ve…” He scrubs a hand over his face, rubbing his chin roughly. “I can’t keep watching you hurting yourself. If you’re planning on pulling that shit here—”
“I know.” I don’t let him finish. “It was stupid. I’m too old to be barhopping anyway…”
“Adam,” Carter grunts in warning.
All the adrenaline that carried me through a red-eye and the drive here is finally wearing off. I lean against the nearest wall, the chill seeping through my shirt. “I’ll behave,” I promise. “I won’t cause you or Eliza any problems.”
“My door —our door,” he corrects himself, “is always open to you. But I’m curious.” He pierces me with that look again. “There are rehab centers.”
“I don’t need rehab,” I say, holding his stare. “I need space. Clarity. To stop wasting my time. Pretending the partying did something for me.”
Even if the reason I unraveled is somewhere in this house. A force I can’t escape.
A woman I don’t know how to let go.
I’m here only for Carter. Maybe if I keep telling myself that, I’ll actually believe it.
He’s never been one to ask for help, but after so many years, he doesn’t have to.
Unlike many of my friends back home, I grew up an only child.
But I imagine this is what having a brother feels like.
And I want to be here for him and his family, even if it weren’t for the sense of debt I feel I could never repay.
For his trust in me. All the support building me up when I was a fresh graduate without connections or a trust fund.
Since we’re having such a manly heart-to-heart, the other half-truth slips out. “I also want to make sure you’re all safe. I’m worried.”
Carter’s easy smile lessens my anxiety. “Hmm. Is that so?”
“What? I can be useful,” I say defensively. “I’m no Logan special forces type shit…but I can hold my own.”
Carter slings an arm around my shoulders, steering me deeper into the chalet, which they keep calling a ‘larger cabin’. “Stay as long as you need.” Then the motherfucker cracks an ominous smile. “This should be entertaining.”
We head up the stairs, and he lets out an honest-to-God cackle. “Jackie’s in the other guest room. Try not to get on her nerves too much.”
As if she were summoned, his sister swings open her door, scanning me and the bags in my hand with the scrutiny of a TSA agent.
Jackie whirls toward Carter, phone clenched in one hand like a weapon, fire in her eyes.
“What the fu—” Jackie rushes past us, muttering under her breath. “Is this a hotel now?” The rest of her words get swallowed by the thundering stomps of her boots down the stairs.
She’s gone before I even get to breathe her in.
“I’m starting to wonder the same thing,” Carter replies wryly. “Leave your bags in there.” He nods toward the next door. “I’ve got to finish up with the sheriff.”
By the time I make it downstairs, Eliza and Jackie are already gone. Carter is in the middle of a tense conversation with Sheriff Walker when he spots me and stops mid-sentence. He introduces me to the man who looks more like he runs a biker gang than someone who’s in charge of keeping people safe.
“At this rate, I’ll have to talk to the mayor about changing the population sign at the border,” he says, hands planted firmly on his duty belt.
“It’s not permanent.” I hold his stare. “Just making sure everybody’s safe and sound.”
“Mhm.” The sheriff crosses his bulky arms. “Do me one favor. Don’t go around punching people,” he drawls, looking pointedly at Carter.
My jaw hits the floor. Slowly, I turn to my best friend. The collected, ice-cold Carter Rawlings punched someone? “No way…”
“In a crowded supermarket, no less,” the sheriff adds.
Carter shrugs, unbothered. “Let’s call it self-defense against stupidity. He was an ass to Eliza.”
That tracks. Given the lengths he went to last fall for her.
What I’m less willing to admit? I’d probably do the same for a certain blonde who currently hates my guts.
The thought of her being home when the break-in happened…
it makes my stomach turn. I promised myself I was done with this.
With her. But every time, the instinct kicks in before I have time to fight it.
“Mind if we get back to business?” the sheriff says to Carter, who glances at me apologetically.
“I have to make a call,” I say, waving him off. “I’ll let you ladies finish the chat.”
My assistant answers before the first ring dies.
“Yes, Gilda. I’ll be taking meetings by video call for the next…” I don’t even know what the plan is. “Until I get back. If anything’s urgent, I’ll fly back.”
The pause on the other side of the phone is telling. “Anything else?” she asks, with an edge of caution.
I’d already set everything up last night. “Mark knows which hearings to look out for and what reports need to be sent out to clients.”
When evening rolls around, I’ve already filled Carter in on my talk with Congressman Turner and all the unpleasant details of the night I booked myself an overnight stay in the ER.
“We should get started on dinner.” Eliza snaps a large binder closed, sliding it away with the tips of her fingers and a grimace.
I grab the offending binder and flip through it. “Need some help with the wedding stuff? I’ve been to tons. I can definitely tell you what not to do. You’re not planning a live snake act, right?” I say with a shudder.
“Can I make it eat the guests who are rude?” Eliza crinkles her nose.
Carter freezes mid-step, on his way out of the pantry, arms full of ingredients. “No eating people at the wedding, Eliza.” He sets everything on the counter and pulls on an apron. “On that note, I’ll take care of dinner.”
“Fine.” She rolls her eyes playfully. “Jackie will help me. She’s more fun than you.”
The woman in question has been hiding in her room since they got back. I should be happy about it. Not having her scowl at me when we’re in the same room. But it only makes me crave her attention more, in any form I can get it.
The stupid urge to ask if she’ll be joining us for dinner has me looking for something to do. Anything really. I rap my knuckles on the window as a distraction. “Are these impact-resistant?”
Carter quirks a brow. “Replaced them when I bought the house.”
“And…”
“Yes, they have sensors,” he adds, casually chopping carrots.
“Ahem.” I circle the island, scrambling to remember my mental list. “Cameras?”
He turns on the burner, setting down the pan. “Hidden all over the property.”
“What about the…”
“The lake access, too.”
A distant memory pops to the surface. Jackie covering her face when we watched that movie about a bear hunting a pair of lost hikers. “I read there are bears around—”
Carter and Eliza exchange a look. They both fight to smother their smiles, clearly in on a joke they don’t want to share.
“So far, Carter’s managed to escape unmauled,” she snickers. “We’ll be fine.”
“Did you consider getting guard dogs?”
Eliza gasps with delight. “Dogs?”
“I’d end up with twenty house pets,” Carter says, grinning at her disappointed pout. He steps closer, draping an arm around her middle and kissing her shoulder. “We can get a dog, if you want. One.”
Eliza drops her chin to her chest to hide her smile, but Carter doesn’t miss it.
“What if something happens? Do you have an emergency response plan?”
“How about you have a chat with Derrick and Logan, if you’re so worried,” Carter says, with a smirk. “If they don’t hang up on you.”
Eliza glances between us, brows drawn together. “Should I be worried?”
“No,” he says, brushing the stray hair away and kissing the top of her head. “I’d never let anything happen to you or Jackie again.” Then he shoots me a smug look. “Because that’s what we do for the people we love. We protect them. Isn’t that right, Adam?”
I pretend I don’t understand what he’s getting at. “Oh, sure… unless she eats your last granola bar. Then all bets are off.”
Carter scoffs, but the corners of his mouth twitch.
My skull throbs. I’m cranky, not dumb. The ER doctor warned me about the potential aftereffects, but I didn’t expect them to hit so hard. Turns out bourbon-fueled, sleepless nights come with consequences after all.
Eliza looks at me with a widened gaze, like understanding is dawning on her. She’s the type of person who has an uncanny ability to read people’s minds, so I hastily take a particular interest in Carter’s cooking.
“Do you need help?” I say to change the subject.
Carter recoils. “No thanks, I don’t want food poisoning.”
“Carter, don’t be mean!” Eliza slaps his arm.
“You wouldn’t jump to his defense so fast if you were the one puking your guts out for two days,” Carter says, amused. “He tried one of his mom’s recipes in his first apartment. A chicken soup should never have clumps in it.”
I glare at him, but even I can’t help a snort of laughter.
“Tell her, Jackie.” Carter extends his arm toward his sister, who drifts into the kitchen, doing her best to pretend I’m not here. “You were there for the whole shitshow. Pun intended.”
She was there for it all. My firsts in a new city. She saw me struggling and held me tight. She laughed at my corny jokes. She showed me all the soft parts of her, the ones she kept locked away from everyone else.
At first, she was just Carter’s quiet little sister.
We went from occasionally crossing paths in their mansion when Carter dragged me to New York on breaks, to being inseparable when I followed my best friend there after graduation.
I was worried about him. That whole business with his college girlfriend had shattered him, and I didn’t trust his dad not to make things worse.
At some point, I started to notice the small things. Her razor-sharp humor. The unexpected way her mind worked when she had a problem.
And I wanted to know more.
I couldn’t help but observe the way strands of her hair curled under her chin when she tied it back into a ponytail. Or the delicate slope of her neck and the way it dipped between her collarbones. The perfect shape of her cupid’s bow.
Jackie tilts her head, silent for a beat. “It was a long time ago. I don’t remember.”
But then she finally looks at me. Something vivid and unbridled seizes in my chest, painfully familiar. That sharp stare says everything she refuses to put into words.
The world around us disappears for a second.
And I know she remembers. Even if she hates every memory of us.