The embrace is reassuring to Adelaide, just now, which is unusual for them. Adelaide knows how to take comfort in other people, she grew up doing so, but it was always very specific, very selective, and from the moment that the bars slammed behind Rodeo "forever", that function has been turned off. Except in extreme circumstances Adelaide has been largely self-contained, those tenderer parts of herself shut down, as if to preserve themselves in a hostile environment.
So it's strange to feel like leaning into that embrace in a genuine way, but just now she does. And yet - as he describes his ability to detach it is all so familiar to Adelaide, certainly something that she can identify with in a very real way. Possibly too much, because while Rob tells her their marriage is an exception to that emotional detachment, Adelaide knows that for her part, it isn't. She remembers their wedding day, the way that there were no butterflies, only a sense of (possibly defensive) self-righteousness, a sense of this makes sense so I am going to do it and I don't need romantic love anyway, I need to be safe.
It makes her stomach twist uncomfortably, the idea that she might be worse than Rob, in this. The fact that she might be the wrong one. True, she never did lie, never did say she loved him or shower him with pretty words. She'd never had to. But maybe she never realized just how sincere his feelings were, and maybe that was because she had never wanted to know. She'd thought of him as being proud of her, pleased by her, fond of her even. She has to admit, she has underestimated his ability to feel deeply - maybe because it looks so different than how she's always been loved in the past.
But all the implications are the Rob does care about her, and deeply. Not just in a possessive sort of way, though that is there as well in spades. And with that thought Adelaide feels stifled, abruptly. She didn't think her heart needed to be involved here, or in her life at all, when she had agreed to marry him. Now her heart is wide awake, no longer just stirring from hibernation, and there seems no easy answer. There is no halfway for her, no in between. Her heart is either engaged or disengaged, and she can't flip back and forth. Can't visit her brother, see Sarge, and be on, and then come back here and be disregarded.
None of it can be resolved right now, she knows. She doesn't know how it will resolve at all. But she does know that until she figures that out, in full, detailed steps, she can't make moves. And until she figures out what to do with his newfound guilt, the newfound realization of his feelings and his humanness, her hands feel tied.
And so when he lets her go she wraps her arms around her middle, looks solemn, and nods. "Alright," she says, an affirmation. "I won't hide. I know that you might not be the biggest fan of my brother, but he's very, very important to me. As long as you know that, I think we'll be fine. And you can be honest with me, no cocooning me from hard facts." She tries a smile, reaches for his hand, when the monitor on the countertop crackles to life. Charlie is waking up babbling, and Adelaide's hand reroutes before it ever reaches Rob's. She reaches for the bathroom door instead, with a sense of the surreal for the massive swings and shifts that just occurred in this small space. "And then the little prince beckons," she says.