The Starling Saviour

Chapter 70

'Tomorrow night,' I remembered with a nod.

'He might still be free,' Tommy pointed out. 'Give him a ring, I'm sure he'd love to help you out again.'

---

'Aria, how nice to meet with you again,' Adrian Chase greeted me with a grin as he entered Leyla's hideout, which was now starting to properly feel like my home, as I had tweaked a few things, including storing away all the strong spirits from a dangerous drunk me in case I got a bit too wasted again.

'Thank you for coming here on such short notice,' I smiled back at him, grateful for his presence. 'I realised that maybe I do need more help.'

'A lot of my clients do,' he agreed, sitting down opposite from me in the lounge area of my home. 'But usually, it takes them much longer to realise.'

'Well, I didn't exactly realise myself,' I admitted to Adrian. 'Talking to a friend helped.'

'Yes, that's good,' Adrian nodded, once again agreeing with me. 'I think, from our past sessions, you struggle to let your guard down, to let other people in. It's good to be vulnerable sometimes, especially with the people closest to you.'

'That is something I am definitely not good at,' I almost laughed. 'But, I think I need more than just letting people in. The trial that you were assigned to me for, the one where that Counselwoman accused me of all sorts, brought up a lot of things I didn't want to face. It made me relive a lot- things that happened to me the year I was missing.'

'Do you want to tell me about them?' Adrian gave me an opportunity to talk to him about my past. 'Remember, whatever you tell me in these walls is confidential.'

I longed to pour my heart out to someone, and Adrian was giving me that chance, but I didn't know whether to trust him that much. Yes, he was a professional, and he had to maintain his code, but I was still sceptical. I hadn't told anyone my full story, about what had happened to me in the ten years since Malcolm Merlyn had abducted me, but I needed to tell someone in order to keep sane.

And so I told him everything. Well, everything that was legal.

After I had bared my soul to Adrian, he took a few minutes to take in everything I had said, his reassuring smile not having faltered during my whole story. He had been so understanding and such a good listener, I wondered where he had been all my life.

'No wonder you are going through so much,' he finally said, taking my hand. 'You are a survivor, a fighter, Aria. You have nothing to be ashamed of. It's totally unfair that you were accused of being a vigilante just because you were on that island.'

Yes, I had left out the bits about me being a vigilante, not because of my own sake, but Oliver's. I wasn't going to be the one who would tell Adrian about his secret; if Adrian was going to find out someday, it should be off Oliver himself.

'But how do I make myself not spiral out of control again?' I fretted anxiously. 'I don't want to feel as down as I was when I was dating Marcus.'

'I actually have something on me now,' Adrian stated, taking a container from his bag, shaking it so I could hear the pills inside. 'It's a natural remedy, I bought it from the pharmacy nearby, it'll help with your flashbacks and your irregular sleeping patterns.'