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“Don’t know,” I admitted, one more thing that I didn’t have an answer for. He wouldn’t let me run from his caretaking or from myself, and my body trembled, a literal tremor from the effort of keeping myself together. I was a ball of rapidly expanding emotions with no escape valve. “I’m just over here, trying to not fall apart.”
“Fall apart.” Holding my shaking hands, he held my gaze, a seriousness to his eyes I wasn’t sure I’d seen before. “If you need sex to take your mind off things, I can do that. But if you need someone to hold you, I can do that too. You’re not going to scare me. Scream. Yell. Punch the couch. Fall apart.”
“Fuck. I’m just so angry. Still. Why am I so angry?” A few frustrated tears escaped my eyes despite my best efforts to hold them at bay. My sinuses burned, and I removed my glasses to swab at my eyes with the back of my hand. “Sorry. Sorry.”
I was angry, so angry, yet my body kept wanting to weep, not rage. If Adam wasn’t here, I’d probably be curled up in a ball in my shower, trying to not cry and failing miserably. Maybe I was angry at him too. Angry that he had to see me like this. Angry that he wouldn’t let me hide behind sex.
“You don’t have to be sorry. Not with me.” He continued to hold me, his tender grip a lifeline in the sea of all my churning feelings, including many I couldn’t name.
“Fuck this.” I tried the anger thing again, but improbably, yet more tears escaped for me to wipe at with shaky fingers. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Come here.” Not waiting for me to comply, Adam gathered me close, pulling me into his lap. “Come here. It’s okay. I’ve got you. You can cry.”
“Not supposed to,” I mumbled even as more tears trailed down my cheeks, more than I could hide with my hands. And then it was like a dam burst inside me, and I outright wept. I wept for the patient I’d lost, for the life they wouldn’t get to lead, the world they’d left behind, and for the inherent unfairness of how death always won in the end. I wept too for all the other times I’d lost and lost big and hadn’t been able to stop to breathe, let alone cry.
“Shh. Go right ahead. You cry.” Adam was murmuring nonsense words that barely registered in my brain as he held me tightly, hands soothing on my back. “I’m here.”
I clung to him and cried, not only for my patient, for my frustrating, awful day, but for every damn time I’d heard that boys shouldn’t cry, every time I’d felt guilty for crying alone in my shower, every time I’d wanted to weep and not had this same space and comfort to do so.
“You did good, Quinn. I know you can’t see that now, but you did. I’m so proud of you. And I’m proud of you now, how much you care.” Adam kept right on holding me, stroking my back and hair as I came apart. But unlike my fears, I didn’t drown in my sadness, didn’t fall into a bottomless pit with no escape route. Instead, all that anger I’d had for hours and hours simply…vanished. Gone. Replaced with a bone-deep weariness and resignation, but no more rage.
Gone. Released, taking with it all those weights pressing down on me. Far from drowning, I was floating from how good and right and necessary it felt to let go. I’d never felt safer in my life, more comforted, more surrounded by strength. And Adam stayed like he’d said, holding me tightly, not in the least deterred by my waterworks.
Amazingly, I wasn’t even shaking anymore. My face was wet and sticky, and Adam’s shirt was probably done for, but I wasn’t crying or shuddering any longer.
I gave a near-giddy laugh. “Oh my God. I’m a mess.”
“You’ll clean. I think you needed that. Feel a little better?” Adam continued to rub circles on my back, and I felt his words on multiple levels. Bodies showered. Clothes washed. And spirits repaired. I could get messy and sloppy with him and still return to my usual self afterward. What a gift. What an utterly wonderful, undeserved gift.
“Yes. Yes.” On the heels of another giddy laugh, guilt stole in. I shouldn’t have made him have to deal with that. “I’m sor—“
“Shh. No apologizing. I’m so glad you trusted me with that.”
My eyes narrowed as I studied him closely. His skin was blotchy, almost like he’d been the one crying. But his eyes were dry and as solemn as I’d seen them. He meant it. He wasn’t judging me for falling apart. He was thanking me. Wow.
“Is this another part of the Daddy thing?” I asked, voice more than a little awestruck.
