Chapter 34 #2
“Do you have any idea what this could do?” he says, and for a second, I think he means to me—to my life, to my mental health.
Then he keeps talking. “To my ministry. To our family. To your mother’s standing in the community.
If this gets out, if anyone in the congregation sees this, they won’t just see some nameless boy.
They’ll see my son. The boy I raised under Scripture.
The boy I told them was a good Christian example.
They will see you on your knees for another man! ”
Shame crawls over my skin like a rash. “I know,” I say, throat tight. “I know what it looks like.”
“And you’re not ashamed,” he snaps. “If you were ashamed, this never would’ve happened. You wouldn’t have put yourself in that position. You wouldn’t have let yourself be used like that.”
I almost laugh. Used. If only he knew how eagerly I walked into every situation Dominic offered me—how often I begged for it. He’s only seen this clip; he didn’t see the part where I looped my pinky around his, and made him promise he still had me.
“This isn’t… I wasn’t forced,” I say, choosing my words carefully, trying not to throw gasoline on a fire that’s already out of control. “I’m not… I’m not a victim here.”
“So, that’s it…” he says slowly. “You choose this… perversion. You choose this man. You choose to spit in God’s face, and your family’s. You choose to be a sodomite, and a blasphemer, in some filthy woods with a criminal who’s old enough to know better… and you expect us to keep supporting that?”
“He’s not a criminal,” I say automatically, then shut my mouth, because that is the stupidest hill to die on.
Dad’s eyes narrow. “What is he, then?” he asks. “Is he a professor? Is he your superior? Is he a stranger you picked up at a bar? Who is he?”
“He’s… he’s a student,” I say, because that part is true, and less dangerous than the real answer. “He’s—” I stop myself before I say his name. There’s a part of me that wants to spit it right in my father’s face, but I keep it in. If they don’t know his name, they can’t hurt him.
“A student,” my father repeats, like that makes it worse; which, it probably does. “So you’re abusing your position as a teaching assistant to engage in sexual acts with a young man under your academic oversight.”
“No, that’s not what’s happening. He’s older than me and could bench-press a truck. There’s no power imbalance in his favor you need to worry about.”
“That’s not the kind of imbalance I’m talking about,” he hisses. “He is manipulating you. He is using you, turning you into something unrecognisable, and you’re so lost in your lust you can’t even see it.”
“It wasn’t like that,” I say, more firmly. “He didn’t trick me, Dad. I knew what I was doing, and I wanted it. I just… He’s more than that.”
There’s a beat of stunned silence from both of my parents, and it does nothing to calm my nerves.
My mother’s shoulders sag. “Oh, Brendon,” she whispers. “You’re in love with him.”
I don’t answer, but I don’t have to; it’s written all over my face. It’s probably been written there for months, and I’ve just been hoping no one could read it.
My father shakes his head slowly, like I’ve confirmed the worst diagnosis.
“This is not love,” he says. “This is perversion. This is sin dressed up as intimacy. You’ve let the enemy twist everything you were taught.
You stood up there, Sunday after Sunday, leading worship, helping in youth group, telling younger boys to stay pure, and all the while, you were harboring this… filth in your heart.”
“Don’t,” I say quietly, my resolve snapping.
“Please don’t stand there and talk about my heart like you know what’s in it.
I know sin and shame—I’ve been drowning in both my whole life.
This—” I gesture vaguely in the direction of the phone, the frozen image of my own flushed face still burned into my retinas.
“This doesn’t feel like that. Not when I’m with him. ”
My mother makes a choked sound, and my father’s eyes go cold. “So, you’re justifying it,” he says.
“I’m saying when I’m with him, I don’t feel sick or dirty. I don’t feel like I’m breaking every part of myself just by existing. I feel—” I cut myself off, because the word safe sticks in my throat, and I can’t stand the look I know I’ll get if I say it.
“You’re deceived,” he says. “That’s what this is. Deception. ‘The heart is deceitful above all things.’ You know that verse. You’ve used it in counseling younger kids, yet here you are, letting your heart lead you straight into Hell.”
“I’m already halfway there,” I say before I can stop myself.
There’s a beat of horrified silence. My mother presses her hand to her chest. My father’s eyes flare.
“I’m tired, Dad,” I say, my voice choked. “I’m tired of hating myself for things I can’t change, and pretending I’m fine while I’m falling apart. For once, I chose something that made me feel alive, instead of numb.”
“At the cost of your soul,” he says. “At the cost of everything we’ve poured into you.”
“We didn’t raise you for this,” my mother whispers. “We raised you to be a man of God. To marry a nice girl. To have a family. To serve the church.”
“I know,” I say, throat burning. “I know what you wanted.”
“And you chose this instead,” my father says. “You chose him.”
The way he says him makes it clear Dominic isn’t a person in this equation; he’s a symbol. A stand-in for everything they’re afraid of—lust, deviance, scandal.
I think about saying I didn’t choose to be attracted to men. I think about unpacking the years of denial, the girlfriends I used like bandages, the nights I stayed up begging God to change me. I think about telling them how many times I almost came out, and didn’t, because I knew this was waiting.
What comes out instead is, “I didn’t choose to love him. It just… happened.”
My father’s face shutters. “Then you need immediate repentance. There are ministries that help young men like you. We can fix this.”
The words ministries and fix make bile rise in my throat.
“I’m not broken. I’m not some project you can send to a camp and expect to come back straightened out and ready for a wife.
I’m—” I break off, because what I am feels too big and raw to put into words right now.
“I’m still me. I’m still the son you raised.
I’m still the guy who calls Mom when she’s sick, and sends you sermon ideas, and takes notes in church over Christmas.
I just also happen to be in love with someone you don’t approve of. ”
My mother presses her fingers to her lips, shoulders shaking harder. My father looks at me for a long, long moment, and I can see the war in his eyes. Love and doctrine. Pride and horror. The image of me as he wanted me to be, battling the reality of me as I am.
He slips the phone back into his pocket with neat precision, like he’s sliding a blade back into a sheath. When he speaks again, his voice is flat. “Then you have made your choice, so we’re making ours.”
A chill goes through me. “What does that mean?”
“It means, we will not fund your rebellion,” he says. “We will not pay for you to wallow in sin. We will not be complicit in your damnation. Effective immediately, we are cutting off your financial support: tuition, rent, stipend, everything. You want to live like this, you pay for it yourself.”
For a second, all I hear is static. “You’re… you’re cutting me off,” I repeat slowly. “Completely.”
His jaw tightens. “Yes. You’re an adult, and you’re making adult choices, so you can live with adult consequences.”
Panic flares, white-hot. All the emotional noise in the room strips away, and my brain does math instead.
Tuition bills. Rent. Utilities. Food. Jericho’s vet visits.
The scholarship covers a chunk, but the gap is still big enough that my parents’ support has been the difference between grinding poverty and barely comfortable.
Without it, I’m looking at taking on more loans than I ever wanted, and probably dropping out for a semester to work full-time and catch up. If I even can. TA positions don’t pay enough to bridge that gap, and they definitely don’t love scandal.
“You can’t,” I say, even though I know they can. “Dad, please. I’m halfway through this degree. I’ve worked so hard. I—”
“You worked hard and then you decided to throw your integrity away. I can’t stand at the pulpit and preach holiness on Sunday, then write checks so my son can dishonor everything we stand for on Friday night. I would be a hypocrite. I will not be that man.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I ask, my voice cracking. “Just… drop out? Move back home? Sit in the pew and pretend none of this ever happened, while you ship me off to some ‘program’ to fix me?”
“That would be a start,” he says.
“If you repent, if you come home, we will help you,” my mother interjects, eyes pleading even as her words line up with his.
“We will get you counseling. We will help you leave this lifestyle. But as long as you keep choosing this, we can’t.
We can’t support you living in open defiance.
We can’t pretend everything’s fine, when it’s not. ”
A hysterical laugh bubbles up before I can swallow it. “Open defiance,” I echo. “You found out because someone in the bushes filmed us without our consent and sent it to you like revenge porn for Jesus, and I’m the one in open defiance.”
“Watch your tone,” my father warns. “You are still our son.”
“Am I?” I ask because the way he’s talking doesn’t sound like it.
“Yes, but you are not welcome in our home while you are living like this,” he says, precise and formal. “If you choose to marry a woman, and walk away from this, we will talk. Until then, you’re on your own. We’re letting you face the consequences of your choices. Alone.”