Archive of Our Own ^beta

Adam Parrish isn’t built for easy living. This is a fact he accepted about himself a long time ago. People like Ronan and Gansey, they have the freedom to relax as they please. Nothing is stopping them from abandoning their responsibilities to fly to Cancun for a weekend or lazing around a field all day, driving donuts in the dirt.

People like Adam, however—real people—don’t have that luxury. Obviously. It would be a harsher loss to accept if Adam hadn’t already been going through these motions his entire life. Wake up. Go to school. Go to work for three hours. Spend an hour on homework after his shift. Go to his other job for an additional four hours. Spend the rest of the night studying until he passes out on his desk. Rinse and repeat.

This is how it’s always been. It’s as much a fact of life as the sky being blue, so Adam doesn’t waste time resenting his shitty hand this late in the game.

June is cloying and unrelenting. Adam is already stressed to the brink of insanity by Aglionby’s upcoming final exams and then graduation at the end of the month, not to mention the terrifying reality of college acceptance season. Throw in the extra shifts at Boyd’s thanks to the hot weather causing car trouble, and Adam doesn’t know how he’s going to make it to graduation without the sheer stress doing him in first.

Adam knows he should be glad for the extra pay. Financial aid is not as gracious as people (Gansey) think, but that’s a monster Adam refuses to touch for now. He’ll delve into that anxiety-inducing minefield once he knows he got into college. It’s all confetti after that.

By the time Adam makes it to the Barns for the night, he’s dead on his feet. There’s a blister rubbing against the top of his shoe that’s been driving him crazy since fifth period, and his back itches from the dried sweat that’s glued his shirt to his skin.

Adam kicks the front door shut behind him, tossing his car keys on the small table closest to the entrance. “Parrish?” Ronan’s voice rings from the living room.

“Hey,” Adam calls tiredly. “Did you guys eat dinner yet?” He hadn’t meant to come home so late, but he spent half the night dealing with a stubborn exhaust valve and lost track of time.

Ronan’s made his way over by the time Adam works his shoes off, Chainsaw perched on his shoulder. She’s poking a hole in Ronan’s shirt with her beak, widening it to the point of no return. It’s not a huge loss; Ronan can afford to buy fifty more of the exact same shirt without breaking a sweat. If it were Adam’s shirt being damaged, he’d already be calculating money down the drain. It would throw off his entire week.

Ronan ignores his psychopomp and pulls Adam in for a kiss. Chainsaw squawks in disgust and jealousy. Adam’s hands wrap around Ronan’s waist of their own volition as he sinks into the kiss. This might be the only good thing that’s happened to him all day.

“Wanted to wait for you,” Ronan says when they part, answering a question that Adam’s already forgotten he asked. Though that might be more an effect of the exhaustion than the kissing. He can’t remember the last time he slept more than six hours at a time. It hasn’t pressed on him like this in months—so heavy he might finally collapse under the weight this time.

“I think we have tortillas,” Ronan continues. Adam tunes back in. “Tacos okay?”

Adam nods, holding onto Ronan for a moment longer. He allows himself the brief comfort of resting his forehead on Ronan’s shoulder, sagging into him, letting himself be held up. Ronan’s hands come up to rub Adam’s back, working through the knots twisted there.

“Bad day?” Ronan asks, his lips touching Adam’s deaf ear.

“Just long.” Another brief comfort: Adam lets his eyes slip closed, just for a few seconds. Just enough to take the edge off. He dreams about sleep, about a hot shower, about a morning spent lazing around in bed with Ronan and not getting up to do anything but piss and retrieve snacks from the kitchen.

But fantasies aren’t real, Adam regretfully reminds himself—not for people whose names don’t end in Lynch.

Time’s up. Adam forces himself to pull back from the hug. “I should shower.”

“Yeah,” Ronan agrees, brushing his thumb over a spot of grease on Adam’s forehead. “You’re fucking gross. Go get cleaned up. I’ll wrangle the kid.” He pecks Adam once more on the lips and ushers him upstairs.

It took months for Adam to let himself break the habit of sticking to quick cold showers. At his apartment, a hot shower was a daydream reserved for freezing nights spent shivering by a thrift-store space heater. Here at the Barns, endless hot water is a commodity that Adam has slowly let himself get used to—largely thanks to Ronan, who has a bad habit of corralling Adam into the shower and not letting him leave until they’re both giddy and satiated.

Adam gifts himself fifteen minutes under the warm spray, letting the water loosen his muscles notch by notch. After dinner, he needs to put oil in his shitbox of a car so he can make it to work tomorrow. And he should check on that stubborn alternator while he’s at it. Then he needs to crank out at least a few paragraphs of his world history essay so he’ll have the weekend free to spend with Ronan and Opal.

Forcing himself to turn off the shower and leave the foggy bathroom is the hardest thing Adam has done all day. He gets dressed and goes to the kitchen, only to find it empty. There isn’t even the lingering smell of cooking.

Before Adam can ask, Ronan pops in from the other room. “Stove’s broken. I ordered pizza.”

Of course. Adam looks at the stove. The digital clock on the back of the unit is dark. He opens the oven door; the light doesn’t turn on. “What’s wrong with it?”

He doesn’t see Ronan’s approach, but the arms winding around his shoulders are a pretty good indication. Ronan rests his chin on Adam’s head—something he has to rise on his tiptoes to do since there are only a couple inches between them, but he makes it work. “Hell if I know. I tried turning it on and it just buzzed a little. I’ll call someone tomorrow to fix it.”

“Your dad dreamt half the stuff in this kitchen, but he couldn’t be bothered to dream up a magical stove?” Adam fiddles with the knobs, willing the damn thing to do something. Of fucking course. He sighs. “My parents used a gas stove, so I’m not great with electric, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“Just leave it for the repair guy. Or you’ll go down in history as the dumbass who electrocuted himself trying to cook dinner.”

“A repairman costs a hundred bucks just to get in the house.”

“Oh, if only I were filthy rich,” Ronan says, throwing his head back dramatically. Adam is not amused. “Will you chill out, Parrish? It’s just an oven.”

You don’t understand, Adam thinks, his temples already throbbing. It’s going to cost hundreds to get a repairman and pay for the new parts—double that if they end up having to replace the whole damn oven. Ronan doesn’t notice if he has to shell out a few extra bills to get take-out instead of cooking, but Adam does. He notices every single cent flushed down the drain.

“If it’s something minor,” Adam says, “I could replace whatever part needs replacing and be done by tonight. I should at least take a look.” He’ll have to postpone his schoolwork, but if he’s fast, he can still squeeze in a quickie and make it to sleep by three.

“Leave it,” Ronan tells him. “I’m serious. I already ordered the pizza, so we don’t need the oven tonight anyway. You can obsess over it all you want tomorrow.”

Adam eyes the sink full of dishes. “We don’t even have clean dishes.”

“We’ll use paper plates. Will you sit the fuck down already? It’s the weekend,” Ronan says. One of his hands slips down Adam’s arm to wrap around his wrist. “You’re allowed to relax. Take it.”

Adam bites back his response because he knows it will come out as a yell. He takes a breath and forces a tight-lipped smile. “Sorry. It’s been a hard day.”

“Clearly.” Ronan tugs on his wrist. “C’mon, I’ve got Fast and the Furious paused. You can whine to me about all the stuff they got wrong.”

It’s tempting. Almost too tempting to pass up. But… “You go,” Adam says, ushering Ronan toward the den. “I’ll come in a minute.”

“That’s what she said.” But Ronan goes, laughing to himself like the neanderthal he is.

Adam shakes his head fondly and goes to the sink. Even if they can skimp on using real plates tonight, the pileup won’t go away on its own. And Ronan’s version of washing dishes means rinsing them and putting them away even when there’s still dried bits of food stuck to the ceramic.

He’s only been washing for a few minutes when Opal comes barrelling in through the kitchen door. Her hooves are caked with mud, which gets tracked across the kitchen tile. Adam doesn’t have the energy to sigh.

“Adam, Adam!” Opal shouts despite being only three feet away. “I saw turtles today! They were by the pond!”

“That’s great,” Adam says unenthusiastically, scrubbing peanut butter off a stubborn spoon.

Opal runs circles around the kitchen table, talking around the stick she’s chewing on. “I found six whole turtles in the water, but when I splashed them they swimmed away, so I hid in the bushes and waited for them to come back and they did! And I got to hold them in my hands and I fed them strawberries and—”

“Opal,” Adam interrupts. It’s taking every ounce of restraint he has to keep from snapping. “Can you tell me about it later? I’m not in the mood.”

Opal is too engrossed in her story to listen. “And did you know that turtles can live for a hundred years? Ganseyfriend told me all about it. Have you ever seen a turtle? We should get one for a pet. Can I have a pink one? Turtles don’t come in pink, but I think—”

Opal bumps into Adam’s elbow hard, causing him to drop the plate in his hand. It smashes to pieces at their feet. Adam snaps.

“Damn it, Opal! Why can’t you just listen?” Anger roils through Adam in violent waves, pulsing and jagged. It makes his vision blur.

Tears spring into Opal’s eyes. She backs away from Adam, her lip trembling and hands drawn in close. “I’m sorry,” she whimpers, her voice watery.

I’m sorry, Dad, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please stop, it hurts, I’m sorry.

Adam comes back to himself slowly, fury receding with the tide. His palms sting. It takes a moment longer for him to place the prick of fingernails. His hands are curled into fists at his sides. The realization hits Adam like a wrecking ball. Opal is scared. Of him.

“What’s your damage now?” Ronan calls, summoned into the kitchen by the noise. He goes to Opal and picks her up with a sigh. He’s used to her tantrums by now. “What’s wrong, squirt?”

Opal bawls disconnected Latin into his neck.

Ronan’s eyes land on the soapy ceramic shards covering the floor, then on Adam, still frozen beside the sink. “Everything okay?” He asks it quietly, his eyes searching Adam’s face for an explanation. He reaches out to touch Adam’s arm. Adam backs away, out of his reach. Ronan frowns.

“I said I was s-sorry,” Opal hiccups.

Ronan rubs her back, bouncing her a little. “Hey, hey, it’s alright. Let’s give Parrish some space for now, ‘kay? We can watch one of your stupid cartoons.” His eyes connect with Adam’s over her head. Ronan jerks his chin towards the door. Take a minute, his eyes said. We’ll talk in a bit.

Adam’s legs are made of rubber and the doorknob is fuzzy in his grasp, but eventually he’s outside. The air is sticky with summertime. Fireflies blink across the dew-dappled fields.

Adam stares at his hands. He almost…but he wouldn’t, would he? He couldn’t. He can’t. But he almost.

It would have only taken a second. One second, one wrong move, and there would have been no coming back. Opal would be destroyed; Adam would be ruined; Ronan would be devastated. He came so close to crossing the line he vowed years ago he’d never touch.

Adam imagines Opal’s perfect little face turned black and blue and he wants to vomit. His father would laugh in his face if he could see him now. Robert Parrish always said it was a fool’s errand to try and move up from that damned trailer. Aglionby Academy, then the Ivy Leagues—they were pipe dreams. Children’s tales.

Dirt stays dirt, Robert once said. You can’t erase what’s in your DNA, boy. He said more, but Adam couldn't hear him over the ringing in his ears from being slammed against the counter.

The screen door creaks behind him. Adam can’t bear to look at Ronan as his boyfriend comes up to lean on the banister beside Adam. Ronan doesn’t bother looking at the field; he’s seen it before, and he’ll see it every day for the rest of his life. He’s a permanent structure here, as belonging as the farmhouse itself. Adam is more like an ugly piece of furniture you just can’t make work no matter how many times you rearrange it.

Adam can’t meet his eyes. “Is Opal okay?”

Ronan seems surprised at the question. “‘Course she is. I gave her an old Danimals container and now she’s watching TV.” Adam nods, feeling no relief. Ronan bumps him with his hip. “Are you okay?”

Adam laughs hollowly. As if he could possibly deserve Ronan’s tenderness now. “I think I should stay at the apartment tonight,” he says.

Ronan frowns. “I mean, we can if you want, but we’ll have to take both cars so I can drive back and feed the animals before you leave for work.”

“I meant alone.”

“Well, shit. I had no idea I was so ghastly to you,” Ronan says, imitating Gansey’s accent. It’s a joke, but Ronan Lynch was not made for lies. There’s no hiding the hurt under his skin.

“It’s not you,” Adam tells him.

“Really? You’re doing that right now? ‘It’s not you, it’s me’?”

“It is me.” Why can’t you see it? Why don’t you care? I’ve been ruined from the start. “You saw how scared she was.”

“Opal? I yell at her all the time. She’s fine.”

“Yeah. Now. But she won’t always be.”

“Okay, broody guy,” Ronan snorts, unconcerned. “What, you’re scared ‘cause you want to yell sometimes?”

“I wanted to hit something, Ronan.” The words taste like sand in Adam’s mouth. “I have a right to be fucking scared. You know why I should be scared of that.”

Ronan shakes his head ruefully. “So what? I’ve beaten up Declan more times than I can count, and we still love each other. Most of the time. I’ve even swung at Gansey once or twice. It doesn’t change anything.”

“That’s different,” Adam says miserably. Ronan loves more than he hates. He creates more than he destroys.

“Yeah,” Ronan concedes, “but you’re still Parrish. I don’t think you could hurt us if you tried.”

“I already did.” Adam touches Ronan’s throat. The bruises have been gone for months now, but Adam still sees them when he closes his eyes. He remembers the frantic tapping of Ronan’s fragile pulse under his fingers, rapid with panic and then slowing, dying out as the oxygen left him. Adam still has nightmares about it. He knows Ronan does too.

“That wasn’t you, moron.” Ronan covers Adam’s hand with his own, finger alongside finger alongside finger. “You were just along for the ride.”

“It was still my hands.” If anyone else had been the host, would it have been as easy for the demon to take control? What if it were Blue? Or Gansey? Or Ronan? Would they have had an easier time fighting it because their hearts were purer than Adam’s? Demons can’t inhabit a space that’s already full; they need someone empty, someone already capable of atrocities.

Dirt stays dirt.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Adam says around the lump in his throat, “having me around her.”

“Why? You’re not him.” Adam scoffs. “Hey,” Ronan says, sharper. “You’re nothing like that bastard.”

“I almost hurt her.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“How do you know that?” Adam clings tight to Ronan’s hand, pleading.

“I know you.”

“That’s not—that doesn’t mean anything. People change all the time. Whelk used to be Noah’s best friend. My dad used to shovel snow for the neighbors. Just because I wouldn’t do it now doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen. It’s in my genes.”

Ronan rolls his eyes. “Genes,” he spits. “Like that means a fucking thing.”

“Your dad was a dreamer,” Adam reminds him. He touches Ronan’s face, strokes his thumb over the prominent cheekbone. “And mine was a monster.”

“Fuck no. He had every opportunity to be one step above human garbage, and he threw it away. You choose to be good every day. I see how hard you try. You’re nothing like him.”

He says it so confidently, but Ronan has always been too idyllic for his own good. He grew up in a perfect home with perfect parents. He dreamt himself up a perfect brother and lived his perfect life, ignorant of the world’s evils until the day he found his father’s body in the driveway. Ronan’s heart, for all its cracks and divots, is as good as they come.

Adam has never been like that. His blood is polluted from the double-wide and the people living in it.

“Hell,” Ronan continues, “most of the time, you’re the one playing good cop. I’m the big scary asshole.”

“What if that changes? What if you let it change and something happens? What if this—” Adam gestures to his ear. “—happens to Opal, huh?” He can’t keep his voice from breaking. “You can’t see the future, Ronan. You don’t know anything.”

Ronan’s jaw is tight. The blow struck as it was supposed to. He almost says something, but a ringing sound beats him to it. They don’t have an actual doorbell, but Ronan dreamt a device months ago to act as a buzzer at the front of the drive. “That’s the pizza guy,” Ronan says, his voice strained.

Adam is the first to turn away. He wipes the blot of wetness at the corner of his eye with the shoulder of his t-shirt. “I’ll get the paper plates.” He goes back into the house. Ronan doesn’t follow.

Adam takes a couple of slices upstairs, trying not to feel like a coward when he avoids Opal’s curious gaze. Ronan’s dreamt Roomba has already cleaned up the plate shards. Adam sits at Ronan’s desk—mostly Adam’s desk now, since Ronan quit school—and gets started on his essay while he eats. It’s almost enough to take his mind off what happened. Almost.

Ronan comes upstairs a few hours later. He shoos a basketball-size dream hamster from the room. “Still sulking?” he asks.

“I’m not sulking,” Adam says. He erases a line and rewrites it. “If I finish this tonight, that means we have the whole morning tomorrow until my shift.”

Ronan’s breath is heavy, carrying the weight of a thousand things he doesn’t say. He runs his hand through Adam’s hair, rubbing his thumb over the back of his neck. “Sometimes I really fucking hate this, you know that?”

He means the work. The responsibility. The ache in Adam’s muscles and the shadows ever-present beneath his eyes. Adam doesn’t respond; they both know there’s nothing either of them can do to change this.

Ronan plugs Adam’s cheap flip phone in to charge without him having to ask. As usual, he leaves his own phone’s battery to slowly deplete through the night as a personal fuck you to the universe and its technology. “You plan on sleeping at some point? You look half-dead.”

Adam huffs what could be a laugh if he weren’t so drained. “I’m done after this paragraph. Then the night’s ours.”

“I like the sound of that.” Ronan starts for the door. “I’m gonna put the brat to bed.”

“No, I’ll do it,” Adam says, stopping him.

Ronan eyes him warily. “You sure?”

Adam nods. “I have to apologize.”

Ronan and Adam are pretty lax with most things, considering that they’re two teenagers raising a roughly six-year-old dream creature who spends her days eating twigs and digging for bugs. Typically Adam tries to get Opal to at least take a bath, but she agreed to sleep in a bed tonight, which is already more than they usually get. She still refuses to wear pajamas, so the compromise is one of Ronan’s old shirts.

Opal climbs into what used to be the guest bed but is now officially hers, judging by the teeth marks she’s chewed into the posts. Adam tucks her in, then sits down on the edge of the bed. He’s put this conversation off long enough. “About what happened earlier,” he starts carefully, “with the plate—”

“I didn’t mean to break it,” Opal says softly, nearly a whisper.

“I know that,” Adam says quickly. “You’re not in any trouble.”

“You were mad,” Opal says. She’s pulled the blanket up to her nose, her dark eyes wide and anxious. Adam recognizes it well—the wariness, the fear. His stomach swirls at the thought of Opal growing up like he did. Scared, quiet, so, so careful.

Adam doesn’t lie to Opal, generally. He speaks to her the way he wanted to be spoken to at her age. He hated it when adults dumbed things down for him. “I was mad,” he agrees. “But it’s…it wasn’t you I was mad at. Grownups get stressed out sometimes, and it makes us blow up. It’s not a good thing, and I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

“Oh,” Opal says. She lowers the blanket a little.

For a wise-beyond-her-years psychopomp, sometimes Adam forgets how innocent Opal is. The only evils she’s seen in her short life have been night horrors and demons. She hasn’t experienced any of the real world outside of Ronan’s head, and for a long time, Adam preferred it that way. Opal has seen enough terrible things. He never wanted her to know what other kinds of monsters are out there.

“Have I ever told you about my dad?” Adam asks. Just saying the word puts a bad taste in his mouth and phantom bruises pressing into his skin. Opal shakes her head. “My father…wasn’t a good person,” Adam settles on. He rubs the back of his neck. “He was…god, he was awful.”

Adam doesn’t even talk to Ronan about this. Both because Ronan already knows most of it—he was there for the worst of it—and because this isn’t a topic Adam enjoys rehashing aloud. He can’t even think about it without feeling pathetic most days.

“He used to hurt me a lot,” Adam forces himself to press on, “even if I hadn’t done anything wrong. He made sure I was reminded every day how much he hated that I was alive. He left me with a lot of pain and a lot of scars.”

Opal’s expression is thoughtful. “Is that why you can’t hear?” She touches Adam’s left ear. She’s always been cleverer than they gave her credit for.

“Yeah,” Adam says, swallowing hard. “This was him. I grew up scared every single day because of him. And I promised myself a long time ago that I’d never have kids because I didn’t want anyone to have to grow up afraid like I did.”

“I’m not afraid,” Opal says, sticking her lip out. “You’re good. Like Kerah. You’re good.”

Adam’s heart flutters with sudden warmth. He never counted on loving Opal the way he does. He always knew loving Ronan was part of the equation, and that that included all of the other parts of Ronan as well, Opal included. But…shit, Adam would do anything for this kid, and that thought terrifies him more than it should.

“Are you going to your other house tonight?” Opal asks.

Adam smiles thinly. “No, I’m staying here with you and Ronan. And it’s the weekend, so I don’t have school in the morning. We can spend the day together.” At least until he has to leave for work at 2:30, but it’s still more time than they get most days.

Opal yawns and burrows deeper into her pillow. “Good. I like it when you’re here.”

Adam ruffles her hair. “Me too.” He stands up and, unable to help himself, kisses her on the temple. “Goodnight, kid.” He turns out the light.

“Kerah used to dream him,” Opal says as Adam’s hand touches the doorknob. Her voice is thick with sleepiness, her eyes closed.

Adam stops in his tracks. “Who?”

“He had nightmares about him hurting you. They were the worst dreams.”

Adam doesn’t know what to say to that. Opal’s already fast asleep by the time he finds his voice again.

“All fixed?” Ronan asks when Adam returns to their bedroom. Ronan is sitting up in bed reading a dirtbike magazine. He’s wearing a shirt that Adam recognizes as one of his own.

Adam nods, thoroughly drained from the conversation and everything that came before it. He’s glad it’s over with. He shucks off everything but his boxers and crawls into bed beside Ronan. Ronan shifts his magazine so Adam has room to pillow his head on Ronan’s chest, his deaf ear directly over his heartbeat. He can’t hear it, but he can feel the rhythmic pulse against his skin. Ronan plays with Adam’s hair.

“My mom never hit me,” Adam says. Ronan’s fingers go still. “She wasn’t crazy about me, but she never hit me. Most she ever did was grab me hard sometimes. But she never stopped him. She’d patch me up in the earlier years when I still didn’t know how. Tell me that he didn’t mean to hurt me and I shouldn’t have provoked him.”

Ronan’s hand eventually starts moving again, combing gently through Adam’s dirt-light hair. He doesn’t interrupt.

“She’s the one who told me it was my fault,” Adam says, hating the words but knowing they need to be said. “All of it—their money problems, his temper, the bruises…she convinced me that I was responsible for all of it. That part wasn’t my dad. It was her.”

He looks up at Ronan and finds him already looking back. “Promise me you’ll take her away. Don’t even think about it. The second you think I’d hurt her, I want you to get out of here and never look back.”

Ronan looks physically pained. “Christ, Parrish.”

“I know. And it probably won’t ever happen. But promise me anyway.”

Ronan shouldn’t look so surprised. He knows Adam by now—really knows him. He knows that every thought and impulse is thought through carefully, picked apart for flaws before he even considers voicing it. Ronan knows that Adam doesn’t say these things lightly, and that’s the only reason Adam has the courage to say it at all.

“You’re not like him,” Ronan says, his voice a low snarl. “You never will be.”

Adam doesn’t lose his calm. “Promise me.”

Ronan stares at him for a long time before rolling his eyes. “Fine, you annoying bastard. I promise.”

“You’ll take her away and you’ll forget about me,” Adam says. Commands. “You won’t let me do it twice.”

Ronan sighs. “Adam…”

“You too,” Adam says. He turns over so he’s on his back, his head resting on Ronan’s stomach. He looks up at Ronan’s beautiful pained face. “If I ever…if I get rough, or I scare you, I want you to get as far away from me as you can. Leave me to rot.”

He can’t even bring himself to imagine it, the thought is so horrible. Ronan, black and blue from Adam’s hands that he once worshiped. Opal, broken and terrified with ringing in one ear.

“This is the least sexy conversation we’ve ever had,” Ronan says. His voice is hoarse. “And we framed a guy for murder.”

“Ronan.”

“I promise. It’ll never happen, but in some backwards universe where you were capable of it…yeah, I’d leave. I’d keep her safe.”

“Thank you.” It only eases some of Adam’s fear, but it’s enough. It’s something.

They lie together for a while, Ronan reading his magazine and Adam dozing on top of him. He should probably get under the covers before he conks out, but he’s too comfortable and Ronan’s breathing is too perfect a lullaby for him to move from it. Adam is nearly asleep when Ronan speaks up again.

“Opal trusts you, y’know.”

Adam opens his eyes with a frown. “You think I don’t know that?”

“I think you do know it, but you don’t feel it.” Ronan puts down his magazine. His beautiful eyes are fixed on Adam’s. Adam’s sleepy hindbrain aches to trace the lines of his face, the angles of his jaw, chart it out and draw up a map. “She’s always loved the shit out of you, from the very beginning. She’s not worried.”

“Because she’s a kid. They don’t have to think about stuff like this.” Not unless they’re already trapped in it.

Ronan snorts quietly. “Have you seen her? She’s as scared of the world as you were. But she trusts you.” He rests his hand on Adam’s chest, over his heart. “And I trust you. And that’s enough.”