Chapter 22 | Adam
Anticipating the media frenzy that greeted them when they were in the airport and the culture shock of the first contact with civilization, Adam believed it was important to stay focused and calm. The entire trip Adam went into overdrive, making sure his breathing stayed deep and slow. He felt Wade’s rising anxiety. It would’ve been easy to get drawn into that cycle until they were both crazy from it.
Although deep down he knew it was coming, he still wasn’t prepared for Wade’s complete emotional shutdown. It started when the cameras flashed. The distance between them grew into an unfathomable gulf by the time they and their families were ushered into rooms for privacy.
Separate rooms.
Adam’s family had turned out in force, as well. Grannie had hooked her arm in his and hadn’t released him as they went into the conference room to wait for processing and the final trip home.
“I’m almost tempted to ask to be sent home on the train,” Adam said with a small laugh.
“We can arrange that,” Grannie said. “Adam, I feel absolutely horrible about what happened.”
“Gran, why?” When they sat at the table, she rolled her chair over to his.
She grabbed his hand to hold it. “Because I sent you to Sehela. She said she didn’t have a good feeling about you when she got back to the village. Even Benjamin had dreams in the days leading up to your leaving. I foolishly didn’t listen to the warnings.”
Grannie’s intuition was rock solid. She was also adamant about listening to it. That she didn’t say anything at all and the flight had crashed… it spoke volumes.
Adam shook it off. “No, Gran, that’s not productive. It happened the way it did for a reason. I don’t know why—”
Which wasn’t the truth, entirely. Adam believed deep down that it all had happened the way it did, precisely because Wade was supposed to survive that crash. They were destined to meet. If Adam hadn’t been there, there was a good chance that Wade may not have survived at all. The man had been in shock at first.
Adam was convinced his calm in the face of the accident had kept Wade alive until he could pull out of his emotional tailspin.
Perhaps that was hubris. It occurred to Adam on more than one occasion to reflect on his arrogance. Of all the people who died in the crash, he alone survived, marooned on the island with Wade to make sure the man lived.
It was all moot now. Wade survived. Adam survived. They were back in the real world. Both were free to live their own lives as they were meant to.
Just like all family reunions, when Adam’s brothers got in the same room with him and Gran, they talked animatedly and passionately to fill him in on all the gossip from Dreamer’s Folly and their lives. A small example of how the world kept going, and how Adam didn’t miss the drama of a small town all that much.
All the same, Adam was glad to be home and back to the familiar.
The anxiety from the plane had not gone away. It built and intensified.
Some of it was Adam’s. He knew what his anxiety felt like, how it settled in his chest like an expanding balloon.
There was more, though. A deeper anxiety that he could tell wasn’t his. It was the same anxiety that he picked up from Wade so many times on the island. A dread that sat deeper in his gut, like a rock. It only intensified the longer they remained in their respective rooms to spend time with their families.
His world was off-kilter, skewed to one side, and he was off-balance. Having been around Wade for all those months, Adam was intimately in tune with the other man. Now he missed him.
It was as if Adam was no longer whole, separated from a vital part of his existence. It didn’t feel right. It felt unsettling. The urge to make it right again, to set his world back on an even keel, flared strong and bright in his chest.
Would he and Wade be on the same flight? Would he even get a chance to see Wade one more time before their lives returned to normal?
If Adam could see Wade one more time before they left, it would make him feel better.
“Adam.” Benjamin sat next to him and leaned in. “What has you off balance?”
Of course. Adam chuckled softly. He really couldn’t hide any of his unease around his family. “I don’t know. It’s a little bit of everything. I want to duck next door and see how Wade’s doing, then maybe we can hunt a drink. Call Sehela and let her know I’m okay?”
With a phone in hand, Grannie rolled away so Adam could get up from the table.
He paused at the door and took a deep breath to center himself.
In the hall, Wade’s mother and father talked with one of the airport personnel. Before he lost his nerve, Adam tapped gently on Wade’s door and pushed it open.
Before he got Wade’s name out of his mouth, he stopped.
Standing to one side of the long conference table, Wade and a woman were in a tight embrace. A loving, tender, familiar embrace.
Right.
Right, of course.
Wade had girlfriends. No one special, of course, but lots of girlfriends. And he knew where to find Adam if he considered him special.
Adam clapped a hand over his mouth to stop the anguished feelings tearing through his chest. He held in the strangled sob that built in his throat and closed the door gently.
What else did Adam expect? Now that they were back in the States, it made perfect sense that they should both try to pick up the pieces of the life they’d been separated from for so long.
So why did it feel like a red hot rod had been shoved through Adam’s chest?
He stumbled back into his own conference room and pushed the door shut before Wade’s parents could spot him.
Adam’s youngest brother, Cade, slapped Benjamin’s shoulder, then gestured to him.
“Gran,” Benjamin said, as he walked over the conference table to Adam.
“Let me call you back, honey.” Grannie dropped her phone on the table and circled to join Benjamin.
Cade was at Adam’s side with a cup of water from the water cooler. “Do you need to sit down?”
Adam picked up the water and sipped at it. Once he'd drained the cup, he lurched to the nearest chair and sunk down on it. “I’m such an idiot,” he croaked out and buried his face in his hands.
Grannie sat next to him, her arm draped over his back. “You’re not an idiot, Adam. Do you need to talk about it?”
“I am an idiot, Gran, I was stupid. I…” he stuttered. “Wade.” It must've been obvious what he meant, at least part of it.
Cade flopped into the chair next to Adam, putting an arm around his shoulder with a familiar closeness. “Think that’s kind of natural.”
His brother’s warmth was a comfort. It provided Adam the freedom to spill it all out for them. How close he’d grown to Wade. How Wade had provided the stability he’d wanted and needed. How they'd gotten to know each other so intimately. No details, of course.
How desperately Adam loved Wade.
“I knew I shouldn’t have gotten close,” Adam choked out between soft sobs. “I knew it. I knew it.”
“Adam, sweetheart,” Gran said, as she gathered him close in a hug. Adam wrapped his arms around her. She used to hold him like this when he was a boy and had been hurt in school fights. She'd held him like this after his heart was broken by his first boyfriend.
Gran had been there through it all, the mother-figure Adam and his brothers needed after their parents died.
Pressed against her, he inhaled the gentle fragrance of herbs and incense, and it helped to bring Adam back to his center until the sobs turned to hiccups, then to soft sighs.
“It’s only natural to feel attached to him,” she said in a soothing voice. Her fingers combed through his hair. Adam wanted to crawl in her lap and fall asleep. “You two grew close because your survival depended on it. And you were isolated for months. Stress would do that to someone, and it’s natural that you’d develop feelings. I’m sure, in time, you’ll see it was just due to your circumstances.”
What she said was true. They’d never have gotten together back home in Dreamer’s Folly.
It was absolutely true.
Except when it wasn’t.
The feelings Adam held for Wade were very real to him. Love wasn’t something Adam gave away so carelessly. It’d happened on the island because it was a true emotion.
He loved Wade, as much as he’d tried to fight it.
As many times as he tried to convince himself that it was due to their being on the island together, Adam knew in his heart it wasn’t the case.