Callum’s POV

“It’s been a while since you’ve wanted to have a session,” Andrew pointed out as I sat in front of him in his office. It was so different from his office back at camp and I was honestly happy about it. I couldn’t be reminded of that place now that I had two constance reminders why I got sent there. “What’s been going on?”

“Axel and Weylyn came to my house when we moved in,” I said with a sigh. Andrew’s eyes went wide as he frowned and picked up his pen. “I took guardianship over them because Lily left them and mom walked out. They’ve been living with me for four days and I can already feel myself reverting back to early days of camp and I hate myself for it. I did the work, I put in the effort to be a better person and to control my anger and then Axel walks back into my life and suddenly I’m three comments away from screaming at him.”

“Have you screamed at him yet?”

“Not yet. I got close yesterday. I was telling him that he was going to spend the day with Liam while the rest of us went to work and he tried fighting me on it. I get why he did, like he didn’t want to be with a stranger but I don’t want them to depend on me solely. They need to get used to my husbands. And it feels weird to make them come and sit in a book store all day. They deserve to be comfortable without people watching or them being around people all the time.”

“How did you keep from loosing it on him?” I couldn’t help but frown, knowing I was either about to be lectured for leaving them in an unknown place or praised for following out tactics.

“I left.”

“You left?”

“I walked right out the door and when I came back that night, he wouldn’t talk to me.” Andrew frowned. I was getting lectured.

“So you took in two kids that have been left by every parental figure they’ve ever had.”

“Yes.”

“You told them you would take care and provide for them.”

“Accurate.”

“And then at the first sign of strain, you abandon them.”

“I’m not proud of it,” I defended weakly. He didn’t seem to care. “I was doing our tactics. I was getting mad so I left so I wouldn’t end up harming them. That’s what we said I should do.”

“That was back when we were talking about partners who were mature and understood trauma responses. These are children who probably don’t even realize they have trauma let alone thought about the possibility of you having your own problems.”

“So I should just force myself to stay even though I could have lost my shit on them?”

“No but there should have been better communication. There is one tactic where you sit down to calmly have a conversation and the second someone get defensive or angry you stop, set a five minute timer, and go to different rooms for a while to let everyone calm down. If after the five minutes you’re still angry you go back, tell the person you need more time, and you start a new timer.”

“We didn’t have time. We had to leave for work.”

“Then you need to time these conversation out to where you’ll have enough time or you be late for work. I’m sure springing it on them randomly didn’t help either.” I sighed knowing he was right like usual but I didn’t like it.

Andrew and I had developed a system when it came to therapy. Basically he didn’t sugar coat things for me and I didn’t keep secrets from him. We had started it back at camp when I was angry at everything all the time and it worked well for us so we just never gave up on it. It was good to know that the person helping wasn’t trying to spare your feelings. If I messed up Andrew was going to be sure I knew but he was also going to find ways to help me out of the hole I dug myself.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I admit. “I mean I won’t even try to pretend that I knew what I was doing before camp; I was just trying to make sure they had food and did their homework but now I’m an actual adult and they are literal children and it’s my job to help them and I don’t know how to do that.”

“Being a parent is hard,” Andrew started but I cut him off.

“I’m not a parent. I told them I wasn’t going to be that for them. I’m just their brother trying to help them not end up in camp or jail.” Andrew frowned.

“Have you considered that might be a reason he’s acting out? He’s never had a real parental figure. Just his brother and sister doing their best even though they were also children. Maybe he needs the authority now; acting out in hopes someone will finally step up and be the parent he’s craving.”

“He didn’t seem to care when we talked about it.”

“He probably didn’t want to admit it. He might not even realize that’s what he’s crying out for.”

“I don’t want to be their parent. I’m not ready for that responsibility.”

“What if I helped? We could start doing weekly sessions again. I could help you figure out how to parent and be a safe place for you to just rant. We could also resume anger management with new tactics for the new people you’ll have to use them with.”

I didn’t want to have to do angry therapy again. It was bad enough the first time and I usually found myself in a worse mood after the session and it just made the anger worse but if Andrew suggested it then I trusted him.

“Fine but you have to help them too. I want both of in them in therapy. Liam is suspecting abuse and I hope to god he’s wrong but I’m not going to overlook the signs.”

“We can definitely discuss that as a possibility. When do you want to start them?”

“I don’t know. Axel is going to fight me every step of the way when it comes to therapy. He hates strangers and I know it won’t actually be productive for the first several months. Weylyn will try it but he won’t talk about anything he thinks Axel won’t want him to so we really can’t help either of them until Axel warms up to you. We had the idea that maybe we could start slow and you could just start coming around the house so they could get used to you and then maybe by the time they are ready to start therapy they will already be comfortable enough with you to actually help.”

“I think that’s a really good plan. When could I come over to meet them?”

“Tonight is fine with me. The faster we get them used to you the faster you can get to the bottom of this abuse thing.”

“You know I can’t outright tell you if they were abused. I can only tell you if someone is actively hurting them which I know wouldn’t happen in your household."

“Yea I know but it would still make me feel better knowing they were talking about it with someone. I mean you saw Jax. He went from ‘will literally kill everyone in sight’ to ‘I will kill anyone who hurts my people’ in a matter of months. Even if I don’t know I just want them to work through this and not let it control them for ever.” Andrew smiled at me.

“You’re going to be a good dad.”

“Andrew that’s fucking disgusting. Stop it.”