Adele sucked in a sharp breath, then said, “With me. My room.” He turned on his heel and didn’t wait, and Gage knew he deserved this. And probably more.
The hallway was dark, and he followed his dad’s footsteps into his bedroom. The low light was on—probably for Kash’s headaches—and the room felt colder than usual. He noticed the window was open in the corner.
Shutting the door behind him, Gage took a breath. “I’m going to try to do this without crying because I’m not—I don’t want you to feel sorry for me or whatever because I’m crying. I’m not trying to manipulate you or?—”
“Gage. For fuck’s sake,” Adele said. He sounded angry. “Have I ever accused you of trying to manipulate me by crying?”
“Well, no, but I?—”
“Have I ever—and I meanever—made this an unsafe space for you to feel big, sometimes ugly feelings?”
He bowed his head. “No.”
“Have I ever held it against you when you lashed out at me for something I didn’t do?”
He burst into tears, covering his face. “I’m fucked-up. Dad, I’m so fucked-up. I can’t—” He took a beat, and it was between two breaths that warm arms came around him and yanked him into a familiar chest. The arms that had always comforted him.
The arms that hadn’t abandoned him ever.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Adele kissed the top of his head as he squeezed him. “I know.”
“I’m…I feel broken. I didn’t even realize it. I’m so angry about what happened, and nothing feels normal. I’m terrified to trust myself with someone else. I’m terrified I’ll fuck up Fallon or Mango?—”
“Mango?”
Gage swiped at his face before he looked up. “The, uh…you know. The baby.”
“Right,” Adele breathed out.
Gage closed his eyes. “I feel like something must be wrong with me that I came so fucking close to being saddled with someone else’s baby—one I didn’t want—and now I’m just what? Ready to jump into this thing with Fallon?”
Adele leaned back and used the edge of his sleeve to wipe Gage’s face clean the way he used to do when he was little. “I know if you and Kash didn’t need me, I’d be in jail right now for double homicide.”
Gage sniffed. “I know.”
“And I’m not going to tell you how to feel. But I need to know if I actually did make you feel like you couldn’t make a mistake. I know I fucked up pretty bad when you were little, but if I ever made your home?—”
“No,” Gage interrupted in a rush. “God.Fuck. No, it’s…I was having some kind of fucking break from reality. I don’t even know why I said all that. It’s not how I feel. Most of the time, I want to go back to being a kid so I don’t have to deal with all this hard shit.”
Adele sighed quietly. “You had to deal with a lot of difficult stuff growing up. You handled it better than I ever could.”
Gage didn’t know what to say to that.
“And I know I didn’t do everything right. I probably didn’t make you feel like you could tell me everything because it’s not like I could understand,” Adele told him. “I get that. And I get there wasn’t a strong community of adopted kids that you could relate to either. I kind of failed in that regard. All of that was on you already, so I know all of this must be a heavy weight.”
Gage shrugged. “I just want to know you believe I can be good at this. I want someone to look at me and think, oh yeah. He’s gonna fucking nail this dad and husband thing.”
“I have never, not once in my life, thought you’d be bad at this. If I’m worried—and I am,” Adele said carefully, “it’s because I’m afraid you’re neglecting yourself. You don’t look well all the time.”
Gage nodded, staring down at his feet. “I think I keep trying to race to some invisible finish line where all of this stops and I get to be myself again. But I’m starting to realize that my new self—the parts of me that have changed from it all—I don’t know what they look like yet. And I don’t know if there is a finish line.”
“There isn’t,” Adele told him. He wiped Gage’s face again. “There’s just patience.”
Gage bit down on the inside of his cheek, then huffed a sigh. “Do you think I can be all this—be this fucking messy—and still be good for him and Mango?”
“Yes.” Adele said it without a single moment of hesitation. “As long as you don’t ignore what you need. We’re a village, kid. You know we are.”
