Adler (The Henchmen MC 14)

I liked the way he stole my cell, and my call list, and cold called for me while I folded laundry, charming his way to more actual sales than I had likely ever made.

I liked how he shot back at me when I snarked him, how he attempted to wash the dishes after dinner, how he joined me at the grocery store, tossing various items into the cart, challenging me to find a way to make them all work together.

I liked how when I strapped myself into my shoes every morning, leashing up Linny as well, he was waiting in the hall for us, running alongside even if he cursed the activity inventively... in several languages, leaving me to remember how he once told me I wouldn't be able to track him down, how we had wagered on it.

And I wanted to know.

I wanted to know more than I wanted to track down my next skip, have my next meal. And everyone knew how much I loved my food and taking shitheads off the streets. So that was saying something.

But it felt wrong now.

To use my contacts to look into him.

To snoop.

It felt like a betrayal.

Especially since he told me that he would tell me. Someday.

My problem was that I had never been accused of being patient.

But he was willing to be patient with me, give me time to get comfortable before I let him in, showed him my ugly and weird and uncomfortable.

I owed him the same amount of time.

So I stifled the demands, the questions.

And I learned something that was somewhat new to me. I learned to be present. To enjoy the moment. To take pleasure in whatever we were doing without thinking about pasts or futures.

It ended up being the least stressful six days of my life.

I was almost upset when my little visitor went away finally, leaving no reason at all that we couldn't go through with the plan.

To play a game.

A game that would end with us in bed.

Which was crazy.

I had always been one to rush into sex, and stay far away from the getting to know someone stuff.

And here I was wanting to delay the sex to get more of the chaste interactions with Adler.

I guess he had been right.

About something being different between us.

Even if neither of us could put a finger on exactly what it was. Even if it didn't really make sense. For either of us.

I had never been someone to simply accept some deeper plan, some secretly woven fabric of life, some higher power setting us up out of the billions of people on the earth.

It was hard to reconcile my aversion to believe in an order to the universe with this thing, this feeling, this knowing, this intrinsic understanding that this man who I barely knew - especially when I first experienced the sensation - was different, was a game changer, was someone important to my life.

But regardless of if I could understand it on a logical level, I felt it on another one, an emotional one, an almost spiritual one, even though that made no sense.

Everything with Adler just felt almost... easy. Effortless. Maybe because we were so similar, so full of attitude, blunt, interested in things that other quote-unquote normal people didn't find appropriate. Weapons, knives, martial arts, old torture techniques.

And, well, it had to be said that we got each other. The guards, the fear of them being pulled down, all the real and hideous bits of ourselves being on display to be judged, found wanting, be rejected.

I didn't know his damage, but I somehow understood that it was like mine, the kind of jagged and raw that most people could not accept because it was nothing close to the reality they had lived.

They could sympathize, sure, pity, of course, but they could never comprehend it.

The last thing I wanted was sympathy, pity. It was why I kept everything so under wraps, hidden like a wine stain on a carpet covered by a dresser.

I had a feeling that Adler was the same way.

He didn't want me to see his past and think differently about him.

It was hard to accept that someone could feel compassion for what we had endured earlier in life, but not think it changed who we were as people, would not alter what lens they viewed us through.

But all that was going to happen.

He'd made it clear.

I had agreed to it.

We were going to show all our parts, no matter what the consequence.

The idea was equally terrifying and liberating.

I hadn't known how nice it could be not to do everything myself, and I was starting to wonder if maybe it would be just as nice not to be the sole holder of all my secrets. To share that burden. To have someone to talk it over with, a luxury I had never been afforded.