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Well, that, and an actual lead.
Blowing out a breath, Sam stood, kicking his feet into a now-familiar loop around the kitchen. They’d chosen to hunker down at his place because it was bigger than hers, but somehow, right now, he felt as if he’d been crammed into a shoebox. Normally, fire and rescue scenarios were the only thing that could keep his mind occupied for longer than five minutes, the one thing that made sense when everything else was just noise. But they hadn’t found a single lead, and neither had Dallas or the Intelligence Unit. Sam and Lucy had stayed safe, but the only time they’d left the confines of his apartment had been to go to the small gym in the basement of the building for an hour every day. Even though their fire starter did seem to be lying low and Sam knew—rationally, anyway—that digging through all the files to find that needle in the haystack would take time, he also knew that they were ultimately working against the clock. He and Lucy might be safe for the moment, but this guywouldstrike again. They had to find him. Fast.
So it was a serious pain in the ass that the harder Sam tried, the less he could fucking think.
Channeling as much calm as he could, Sam took a deep breath and tried to reset. His thoughts swirled and blended together, and he tried to make them form a cohesive path. But they refused to obey, and rather than coming up with a spark of something useful, he just ended up at another dead end.
“Shit,” he muttered, his feet pacing the floor in a steady thump-thump-thump. Lucy looked up from her laptop, her brows creasing in concern, and she pushed back from the table to look at him.
“We’ve been at this for a long time,” she said, glancing at the windows along the far wall. Although they’d closed the slats on the shutters as a matter of security, it was still obvious that the sun had set, most of the daylight having faded into shadows. “Why don’t we take a break to eat? I can make enchiladas, if you want.”
He shook his head, still pacing. “No, thanks. I’m not hungry.”
“Do you want to go down to the gym, then?” she tried. “We could do that circuit on the treadmill. You know, the one with all the hills? I’ll even race you.”
All Sam could manage was a small smile. “Maybe tomorrow.” He needed to figure out a way to untangle his thoughts before he could do anything else.
Still, Lucy persisted. “Okay. How about some TV?”
“I’m good, really.”
“Maybe some yoga. Or paint by numbers. Or we could knit socks in every color of the rainbow. Or—and this is a crazy one—you could tell me what’s bugging you so I can try to help make it not bug you anymore.”
Impulse had him opening his mouth. But his defenses, the stubborn bastards, kept the words from coming out. Talking about his neurodivergence ranked somewhere between chronic insomnia and accidentally getting kicked in the nuts. On the rare occasion that he did give it any airtime, it was with the doc who prescribed his meds or Captain Bridges, who knew about Sam’s diagnosis as a matter of protocol. Hawkins knew, too, although they never talked about it, apart from a monthly, “you good?”. But come on. Telling Lucy that his brain’s default setting was permanently scrambled, when she was so smart? No fucking way could he let her see the one part of him he’d always kept hidden.
Except, in her own way, Lucyhadalready seen him. All of those moments when he’d needed her calmness to help find his own and she’d been right there to give it. She’d never questioned why, or what was causing his restlessness. She’d simply had his back above all else.
And he trusted her.
“I just hate that my ADHD makes it so hard for me to help on this case,” he said, the words sounding rusty and strange in his ears.
Lucy blinked, only once, before understanding washed over her pretty face. Closing her laptop, she stood and walked to the spot where he’d stopped, mid-pace on the kitchen floor. “I’m sorry. I’m sure that’s frustrating as hell.”
“You’re not surprised I have ADHD,” he said, and she tilted her head in half-concession.
“Yes and no. You manage it well—outwardly, anyway—but it explains a lot. We can talk about it if you want, or you can talk and I can just listen. Or”—she smiled—“we can really knit socks, if you feel like that will help. It’s your call.”
Sam huffed out a soft laugh, his shoulders automatically loosening by just a fraction. “You know, learning to knit isn’t a half-bad idea. At least it might give me a place to put some of my restless energy, and believe me, I feel like I’ve tried just about everything else.”
“When were you diagnosed?” Lucy asked, the same way she might ask him to pass the sweet potatoes at the fire house dinner table, and his answer tumbled out with surprising ease.
“Officially? When I was twelve. But only after three other specialists had tried and my father refused to listen to them.”
Her eyes flashed, the corners of her mouth pulling downward. “That’s…one way to go.”
“That’s my father,” Sam corrected. He’d lost count of how many people had been dismissed, disregarded, or even lost their jobs because his father had been given an unpalatable truth. “The only reason he didn’t demand a fifth opinion was because the fourth time I was diagnosed, it was by the Chief of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic, and literally no one outranked the guy. But my father never bought into the diagnosis.”
“Sorry, how do you not ‘buy into’ a medical diagnosis?”
Sam could see how nearly anyone else would take the word of four of the top psychiatrists and neurologists on the East Coast as gospel. Of course, his father was too much of a narcissist for little things like logic and reason. “Hardcore egomania, mostly. But we’re Fauriers. I couldn’t possibly have ADHD. Flaws are not acceptable.”
“Flaws.” Lucy repeated the word as if it tasted rotten. “Please tell me you’re not serious.”
At one time, Sam would’ve given anything to be able to say he wasn’t. “Sadly, yes. But my father doesn’t believe in neurodevelopmental disorders. He dismissed the diagnosis as an excuse and didn’t give any of the medications or treatment options provided by those doctors a second thought. He said what I really needed was to buckle down and try harder. Of course, he might as well have been telling me to just take a quick jaunt to Mars on a fucking bicycle.”
Lucy shook her head, her curls bouncing off the shoulders of her dark-red sweater, and the kindness in her eyes nearly wrecked him. “Sam. I’m so sorry. That’s an unforgivable thing to do to anyone who needs support, let alone your own child.”
“It made for some contentious teenage years,” he said. “But I learned pretty fast that I was never going to be good enough for him, so I figured if I was going to piss him off, I might as well go all in.”
