Chapter 20

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ADAM

ADAM WATCHED John drive off to work after dropping him back at his apartment the next morning. He slowly shut the door and turned around to lean back against it.

Fuck . Last night had sucked . It had gotten better after that awful mishap during the near-accident, but not by much. At least John had finally gotten some sleep, though it clearly hadn't been enough. The poor man still looked exhausted. Every night that John had spent in Adam's bed, Adam had woken up in the middle of the night to find John wide awake, lying tense and stiff, staring up at the dark ceiling. Adam almost wanted to tell John to go home and sleep in his own bed.

Almost.

Except he knew he couldn't stand a night alone in his apartment. Just being stuck in there all day was starting to make him crazy, even when he kept himself busy, going through his stuff.

But even with that, he was running out of distractions. He'd gone through every drawer, cabinet, cupboard, and shelf in the apartment half a dozen times already, packing up things he no longer wanted or needed.

Adam had started all over yesterday with another pass at the kitchen, adding a few more things to the boxes. Then he'd taken another look at his closet. He now had a whole box full of nothing but shoes, ones that either no longer fit or for which he had no occasion to wear. Then there was one entire box he'd filled with CDs, which he never played anymore. All his music was digital now, so why bother keeping the CDs?

He shuffled over to the stacks of boxes taking over the wall in the dining room. A tiny smile pulled at his mouth. It felt good to let all those things go. He honestly couldn't wait to load them all into John's truck and drop them off at a donation center. It would make his apartment feel more like John's place. Light and airy and free of clutter. The more stuff he boxed up, the more it quieted all the nasty chaos in his head.

But there was still that third bedroom to tackle. Adam had tried—all day yesterday—to make himself go in there, but he hadn't succeeded.

Adam sighed and went back to the entryway to take off his shoes. First things first , he thought, hearing John's voice in his head. The man had given him an order, after all.

He pulled out his phone, his hands trembling as he unlocked the screen and searched through his various text threads. There was one for all the daddies and boys he knew, then another for the boys alone, plus one just for the trans boys. That last one meant leaving Dakota out of the discussion, since he was the only boy in their group who wasn't a transsexual. He'd been blessed with all the right parts from birth.

And none of the wrong ones.

Adam rolled his shoulders, feeling an itch all over his skin from the tug of his chest binder. He took a deep breath, opened the trans-only thread, and typed out the message before he could chicken out and change his mind.

Me : Who did you guys use for top surgery?

Adam let out a shaky exhale. There . He'd done it. Granted, it wasn't fully obeying John's order, but at least it was a start. He'd taken the first step. Now he just needed to wait for some responses.

Despite all of his friends being at work, Adam started getting responses almost right away. Ryder named one doctor down in Santa Barbara, while Nicky named another, but that one was closer to Los Angeles. Haven mentioned a third, who was located in Templeton, the hospital town just south of Paso Robles, and when Morgan joined in a few minutes later, it turned out he had used the same surgeon that Haven had. Adam looked up all the names, just in case, and saved the phone numbers to his contacts.

It still wasn't obeying John, but it got him another step closer.

Adam set his phone aside. It wasn't that he wanted to disobey a direct order—if anything, he itched with the need to follow through and make John proud of him—but there was still something stopping him. It wasn't even the fear that he might die on the table like his dad. Nor even the sense of not deserving the surgery. That was still there, but it was muted. Not nearly as intense as it had been.

Still, he felt like he was waiting for something. But what that was, Adam had no clue. Some kind of sign, maybe. Or permission.

"Fuck," he muttered to himself. "I don't even know." Maybe he was just trying to talk himself out of following through.

Except he knew he needed to do so. That accidental touch yesterday evening had nearly destroyed him. John had grazed his chest before but never full-on grabbed him there. Granted, Adam knew John hadn't done it intentionally—he'd only been trying to shield Adam from harm—but the man's hand had cupped right over a part of his body he never wanted John to go near.

"Fuck!" Adam yelled. He wanted to be free of the damned things. He needed them gone.

Adam snatched up his phone, picked the name of the closest surgeon, and made the call.

A few minutes later, he stared at his calendar in a daze, seeing the consultation appointment jumping out at him in red ink. Next Thursday. Holy shit . Adam panted, hands shaking as he tried to text John to tell him that he'd done it.

But his fingers wouldn't cooperate. He was too amped up. Too nervous and uncertain and twisted up inside, knowing that, in just six days—six short days that he knew were going to fly by in a blink—he'd been meeting a surgeon about finally making his body right. Something he'd been desperately craving for over a decade. Something he'd wanted so badly, he'd pushed his dad toward death.

Adam dropped his phone, then snatched it back up. Not to text John, but to start one of his playlists. He needed music. He needed loud noise to drown out the voices in his head. Otherwise, he was going to storm out that door and start walking to the nearest liquor store, no matter how far away it was.

He tapped on a playlist at random and turned the volume all the way up.

Adam threw his head back and laughed as the opening notes from Once Upon a Time 's musical episode began to play. The first track was way too chipper for his mood, but he found himself singing along anyway, belting out the lyrics to expel some of the tension in his body.

It wasn't enough. Adam paced his apartment as he sang, looking for a distraction. Looking for something to keep him busy. Keep him moving.

Except he found nothing. He'd just had breakfast at John's place, so he wasn't hungry. There wasn't much of anything to clean, since John habitually tidied up after the both of them, probably without even realizing he was doing it. Adam made a slow, steady circuit of the whole apartment, looking for something more to pack up, but of everything that remained, anything he touched was something he either used on a regular basis or couldn't bear to part with.

"Fine!" he shouted between verses. He stomped off to the third bedroom, being the only space left to sort. Adam opened the door and stood there for a long while, staring at the seemingly endless piles of stuff, wondering how the hell to even start.

He spotted a box of his dad's business files. Yes! Okay. That, he could do. Even Dad wouldn't mind seeing those thrown out, since he had always been fastidious about shredding old documents once they no longer needed to be kept. Adam grabbed the heavy box and hauled it out to the dining room, starting a new stack against the wall. He went back to the bedroom, found another file box, and pulled it free.

Then he had to move stuff around to access the rest. There was no rhyme or reason to the way Dad's stuff had been placed in the room. When he and Haven had moved into this apartment, and the third bedroom allowed Adam to finally empty out his storage space, they'd pretty much carried everything in and stacked it all at random, not bothering to organize anything. One box of Dad's clothes sat on top of his old dresser, while another was wedged under a box of books. Some boxes of business records were piled on top of a nightstand, while others had been used to keep the mattress braced upright against the wall.

Adam's clothes were damp with sweat by the time he finally got the last of the file boxes out of the room and stacked with the rest. He went back to see what else he could haul out, then muttered a curse. Even with several boxes removed from the space, the bedroom looked even more chaotic. If it had been disorganized before, it was a disaster now.

He picked up his phone and scrolled through his playlists until he found one of his favorites. Adam set it to Shuffle , wanting to surprise himself, and set the phone back down, only to snatch it right back up when the first song began to play. Oh! He barked out a laugh. This song simply had to be part of Everett and Morgan's reception. Adam opened his text thread with Trevor and told him as much, then quickly added a second message in explanation.

Me : Everett was straight before he met Morgan.

Trevor responded almost immediately.

Trevor : OH! HA! That's brilliant. Okay. It's going on the list.

Trevor : By the way, we should be there about a week before the wedding, so it'll give us some rehearsal time. Everett said we can set up in their event room since it won't be in use leading up to the day.

Me : Oh perfect! Okay. Awesome.

Trevor : So plan for time off work now!

Me : I'm sort of already not working. Long story.

Adam fidgeted as he sent the message. Fuck . He missed his job. But he knew he wasn't ready to go begging to have it back. Even with the distraction of chatting with Trevor, he felt the itch to go have a drink. Besides, they'd probably already hired someone in his place.

Shit. Speaking of that . Adam fired off another message.

Me : Your singer really doesn't mind me stepping in?

Trevor : Nope. He said he'd either come along and you guys can alternate songs, or he'll just take the week off and go home to visit family.

Adam frowned in thought, nodding his head to the beat of the music still playing. He didn't mind sharing the spotlight. He could do backup vocals just fine, if need be. And it would be nice to dance with John, which he wouldn't be able to do if he was up on stage the whole night.

Me : Tell him I'm fine either way. :D But there will be certain songs that HAVE to be mine.

Trevor : HAHA Got it. Will do!

Adam waited, hoping Trevor might send through another message. Maybe even a definitive answer about their singer. But when several minutes passed and his music continued playing, uninterrupted by notifications, Adam let out a sigh and trudged back off to the third bedroom.

He stopped in the doorway and groaned. Fuck. What a mess. Adam had no idea where to start next. He'd moved things about so haphazardly to dig out those file boxes, the room now looked like some chaotic game of Tetris and Jenga all mashed into one.

Somehow, he was going to have to at least separate the boxes from the furniture, but he didn't have the space in that bedroom to do so. Adam strode down the hallway to Haven's old room. He paused in the doorway, looking around, assessing each thing he saw. After a moment, he stepped inside the room and slowly walked through it, putting his hands on everything he passed, waiting to see if he got that gut-punch feeling.

But none of the items there held any sentimental value, beyond having had them for nearly his entire life. All the furniture—the bed, nightstands, lamps, and dresser—had come from the guest room of the Idaho house, which he'd hardly ever had reason to set foot in. Adam stood in the middle of the room, hands on his hips, as he slowly turned in a circle. He took a deep breath, then nodded. All of this could easily go.

And in the meantime, he could use this room to get himself organized. Adam dragged the nightstands over beside the dresser, then strained to shove the bed into the corner, leaving one whole side of the room completely empty.

Then he went back to the third bedroom, grabbed the first box he came to, and opened it.

Adam felt a shiver run down his spine as he put his hands on his dad's old clothes. Fuck . He grabbed a shirt and held it up. Adam frowned. It was weird to think his dad had once worn this. That it used to encase a living, breathing body. Now it was just a piece of fabric.

He unpacked the whole box, making even more of a mess all around himself, then shook his head and folded everything right back in. A faint, queasy feeling tugged at his stomach. Like getting rid of Dad's clothes meant getting rid of the man himself. But then he thought of Haven's room. Of the furniture in there that had been put to use for someone's benefit, rather than sitting in storage and collecting dust. Dad would love to know that his clothes had gone to someone in need.

Adam carried the box out to the dining room and added it to the stack.

He spent the rest of the day, slowly going through each box in the third bedroom. Adam took a break at lunch time, but then dove right back in, playing song after song and belting out the lyrics as he worked, still feeling a need to expel all that tension and noise in his head.

Adam found the rest of his dad's clothes and added them to the donation stacks. Then he found Dad's record player. It stung a little to let go of that, as well as the box of records themselves, but what use were those records, sitting in boxes, when someone could be enjoying them instead?

He added them to the stacks and slowly stepped back, waiting to see how he felt. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't devastating, either. Adam blew out a heavy breath and went back to the room.

Over the sound of his music, Adam heard John's voice, calling his name.

"Back here!" Adam yelled just as he spotted a box with no label to indicate what it contained. Adam dragged it out from behind a small end table.

"You've been busy," John said.

Adam turned around to see the man standing in the doorway. "Yeah." He paused, studying John's eyes. "How was your day?"

John sighed. "Long." He scrubbed a hand over his face. "The plumber pretty much took over my office all morning, so I couldn't focus. And Ward was even more distracted than he's been lately, which wasn't helping. It felt like I didn't get a damned thing done all day."

Adam grimaced in sympathy. "I'm sorry."

John offered him a tired smile. "But you've obviously gotten stuff done." He paused. "Did you call a surgeon?"

Adam's chest tightened. "I did." He swallowed hard. "I have a consultation next week."

John grinned, then started to lean towards him, only to stop short and glance at the corners of the room. "That's great. I'm so proud of you." He paused. "Something wrong?"

Adam fussed with the flaps of the box. "I don't know. I guess I feel like…I need his permission or something. His blessing, maybe. I still don't really feel like I deserve it."

"Hey," John murmured. "Your dad would want you to be happy. You know that, right?"

Adam hesitated before he managed a nod.

"I know he would," John insisted, then quickly scanned the room again. "Why don't you call it a night, okay? I'm gonna go use the bathroom real quick, and then maybe we can figure out something for dinner. Sound good?"

Adam started to nod again. "I just want to do one more box," he said, tapping on the one with which he was still fidgeting.

"Okay. I'll be right back." John paused, looking like he was about to lean down to kiss him, then turned away and strode off to the bathroom instead.

Adam let out a sigh, then looked down at the box. It was weird that there was nothing written on it. All the other boxes were labeled. Adam shrugged and folded back the flaps.

Holy shit . He reached into the box and pulled out an old VHS tape. The sight made him laugh. It felt like stepping back into ancient history. Who used VHS anymore? Then again, Dad was always walking around with that camcorder, documenting Adam's life. Rather, Evelyn's life. Sure enough, each of the tapes were labeled from a different part of his childhood.

Adam: age nine.

Adam: age four.

Adam: graduation.

Adam: first steps.

Adam: first day of school .

Adam felt his heart racing before the nagging sense of something being off could really penetrate his brain. He looked at the tapes again. Read the labels again.

Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.

"John!" he screamed.

John came flying back into the room. "Adam? What? What's wrong?"

Adam held up one of the tapes, feeling a grin take over his face even as tears raced down his cheeks. All his fear and guilt fled, and somehow, he knew he'd never sink to the escapist depths of craving a drink ever again.

Because he'd just found what he was looking for.