Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Justin didn't get up when Dawson walked in. He'd taken the corner booth and ordered two beers. He watched Dawson cross the room like he'd been timing how long it took him to show.
"Thought you weren't coming," Justin said.
Dawson dropped onto the bench across from him. "Got held up at the shop."
"You've been getting held up at the shop every day for a week and a half." Justin pushed one of the beers across the table. "Drink."
Dawson wrapped his hand around the glass. The condensation was cold against his palm. He didn’t drink. If he started, he might not stop.
Justin leaned back in the booth and crossed his arms. He had a way of going still when he was done being patient, his whole body settling into a kind of quiet that was harder to sit across from than any raised voice. He’d done it at the barn two weeks ago. He was doing it now.
“So,” Justin said. “You going to talk to me, or are we going to sit here and pretend everything’s hunky-dory until I get bored and leave?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You canceled on me twice last week. You came to the barn the week before and couldn’t pick up a wrench.” Justin uncrossed his arms and put both hands flat on the table. “I gave you space, but now we’re gonna talk. I’m not going to watch you circle the drain.”
Dawson stared at the beer. The foam had settled. Somewhere behind the bar, a glass clinked against the wash station.
“It’s Leo,” Dawson said. “The guy from the tractor pull. Plays for the Stags.”
He said it to the table. He couldn’t look at Justin while the words were still in the air.
Justin didn’t react. No surprise, no adjustment. He just sat there, and the steadiness of it told Dawson that Justin had known for a long time and had been waiting for Dawson to catch up.
“Okay,” Justin said. “Tell me what happened.”
So Dawson told him. Not all of it—not the nights, not how Leo’s hands felt or the sound of his laugh when nobody else was around.
But the outline. How it started. How it grew to the point that just talking to Leo felt like a huge part of his day.
How Dawson had kept them invisible, and how that had worked right up until the night Ethan came home early and Dawson shoved Leo out of his bedroom and into the hallway like he was a dirty little secret.
He told Justin about Leo’s face. Not anger or hurt, but resignation. The steady look of a man who’d just learned where he stood.
When he was done, the beer was still untouched and Justin’s expression had gone flat and hard.
“That’s fucked up,” Justin said.
Dawson’s hand tightened on the glass.
“I’m not going to dress it up for you. You shoved him out of your room. You treated him like nothing more than a meaningless fuck you were ashamed of.” Justin’s voice was even, direct, the same tone he used when he told Dawson a weld was bad or a fuel line was cracked. No heat. Just the diagnosis.
“I didn’t ask him to—”
“Don’t give me that shit. From where I’m sitting, you had the guy in your bed and you threw him out the second your brother’s headlights hit the window. That’s not protecting him. That’s protecting yourself. That’s you being too chicken-shit to own who you are.”
Dawson looked at the table. The wood was scarred and dark with years of spills. He could feel the truth of Justin’s words catching, the same way a bolt seats when it finally finds the thread.
“I know,” he said.
“Good. Because if you didn’t know that, I’d be more worried than I am.” Justin picked up his beer and drank. Set it down. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“He won’t talk to me.”
“Can you blame him?”
Dawson couldn’t.
“He’s got games. Road trips. He’s busy.” Dawson heard himself making the case and knew how thin it sounded. “But he hasn’t answered a single text since that night.”
“That’s what happens when you teach someone that being close to you is dangerous,” Justin said without cruelty. He could say the hardest thing in the room and make it sound like a weather report. “He’s not punishing you. He’s protecting himself. You taught him he had to.”
The jukebox cycled to a new song. Someone at the bar laughed. Dawson picked at the edge of the table with his thumbnail, a strip of varnish that had started to peel.
“You need to tell your family,” Justin said.
Dawson’s hand stopped. “I will.”
“Not next month. Not when it feels right. Because it’s never going to feel right, and you’re going to keep finding reasons to wait.
” Justin held his gaze. “Maybe there’s still a chance with Leo.
Maybe there’s not. But unless you’ve decided you’re going to be alone for the rest of your life, there’s always going to be someone.
And you’re going to do the same thing to the next guy if you don’t fix this now. ”
“Justin—”
“Why are you so sure they’ll react badly?”
The question caught him off guard. He’d spent so long treating the answer as obvious that he’d never had to defend it.
His family would—what? Disown him? His mother, who asked careful questions about dating?
His father, who changed the subject? Becca, who noticed everything, nudged without pressing, and always made sure he had a plate at Sunday dinner?
“Wyatt,” Dawson said.
“Wyatt’s traditional. Traditional doesn’t mean cruel.” Justin leaned forward. “And Ethan? You think Ethan’s going to have a problem with this?”
Dawson didn’t answer.
“Ethan, who’s been trying to set you up for ten years because he wants you to be happy.
And every time you shut him down, he drops it.
He doesn’t push. He just tries again next time.
I’m pretty sure he figured it out a while ago and now he’s doing it just to see if you finally snap and tell him the truth.
” Justin shook his head. “Your brothers aren’t stupid, Dawson.
You never date. You turn them down every time they try.
They’re just waiting for you to man up and be honest with them. ”
The bar noise settled around them. Dawson sat with Justin’s words, the untouched beer, and the strip of varnish curled on the table between them.
“Tell Ethan. Tonight. Go home and tell him. Because you can’t ask Leo to trust you if you won’t trust the people who already love you.”
Dawson looked at the beer he hadn’t touched. He picked it up, drank half of it in one pull, set it down.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay?”
“I’ll tell him tonight.”
Justin nodded. He didn’t smile, didn’t clap him on the back, didn’t make it a moment. He slid out of the booth, dropped cash on the table, and put his cap on straight.
“Drive safe,” he said, and walked out. “If shit goes south, which it won’t, you know the code to the back door.”
“Thanks, man.” Dawson felt like he was going to be sick. Now that he’d promised Justin he’d talk to Ethan, he couldn’t back out.
Ethan's truck was in the driveway, which meant Dawson was out of reasons to wait.
He pulled in behind it and killed the engine. Then he sat there, because his hands wouldn't come off the wheel. His usually steady hands were shaking now. He'd managed to say it once tonight, but Justin wasn't family. Ethan had known him his whole life. Saying it to Ethan would make it real.
He made himself get out of the truck before he could think his way back out of it.
Inside, Ethan was on the couch with a beer and his phone, boots still on, cap turned backward. He looked up when Dawson came in.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” Dawson hung his keys on the hook. Took his boots off. Stood in the entryway with his jacket still on and his hands at his sides.
“You eat?” Ethan asked.
“No.”
“There’s leftover chili. Becca dropped some off.” Ethan went back to his phone.
Dawson didn’t move toward the kitchen. He stood in the doorway between the entryway and the living room. The TV was on low, and the house smelled like chili and the faint chemical bite of the shop soap that never washed out of their clothes.
“Ethan.”
"I need to tell you something."
Ethan watched him, waiting, the TV throwing blue light across his shoulder. Dawson had meant to lead into it. He'd had the whole drive home to figure out how. But there was no run-up that made this easier, so he stopped reaching for one.
"I'm gay," Dawson said.
The words landed in the middle of the room and stayed there, impossible to take back.
This was the part he'd spent twenty years never letting himself reach — the silence right after, where the other person's face decided what you'd be to them from now on.
Dawson made himself look at his brother and take whatever was coming.
Ethan's face didn't harden the way Dawson had feared it would. He went still for a moment, and Dawson watched him sort back through all of it — every careful non-answer, every I'm good and Nah, not seeing anyone — and land somewhere that looked less like surprise than like recognition.
"Okay," Ethan said.
"That's it?"
"What did you think I was going to do?" Ethan leaned forward, elbows on his knees, mirroring Dawson without seeming to notice. "Kick you out? You own half this house."
Dawson tried to answer and couldn't. The relief had come up too fast, and it had taken his voice with it.
“Have you always known?” Ethan asked.
“Since I was a kid.”
Ethan nodded. He picked up his beer, looked at it, and set it back down without drinking.
Dawson could see him working through it.
The years. The evasions. Every woman’s name offered across a tailgate or a dinner table, every careful non-answer Dawson had given while Ethan moved on because Dawson’s disinterest had been consistent enough to look like personality.
“And Leo,” Ethan said. “He’s more than just a friend, isn’t he?” Not a question. The hurt was right there in his voice, quiet and blunt.
“Yeah.”
“Since when?”
“Since September.” Dawson’s hands were tight between his knees.
Ethan was quiet. Dawson watched the memory reassemble behind his eyes—Leo in the hallway, hair wrecked, coming from the direction of the bedroom.
“He wasn’t just hanging out,” Ethan said. “I cockblocked you, didn’t I?”
Despite everything, Dawson’s mouth twitched. “Yeah.”
Ethan almost laughed. Almost. Then his face shifted, the humor draining out of it as the rest of the memory caught up. Leo in the hallway. The quick exit. The way Dawson had stood there like a man trying to disappear into his own walls.
"He left pretty fast that night." Ethan's voice was careful, testing. "Was that him not wanting to be here, or were you being an asshole?"
It’d be easy to blame Leo, say he’d been getting ready to leave before Ethan got there, but Dawson was done lying.
"Me," he said. "That was all me."
Ethan nodded. He didn't look surprised. He just took it in and fit it against everything he already knew.
Neither of them said anything for a moment. The TV played low, and the kitchen still smelled like the chili neither of them had touched. Dawson stared at the carpet between his boots.
"I'm not mad that you're gay," Ethan said. "I don't care about that." He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice cracked — not from discomfort, but from effort. "I care that you've been carrying this your whole life and never let me help. I'm your brother. I've been right here."
Dawson didn't look up. He couldn't, not yet. He'd spent twenty years braced for the wrong reaction — disgust, distance, a brother who'd pull back a careful inch. Not for this. Not for Ethan being hurt that he'd been shut out of it.
"Every time I said bring a date to dinner, every time I asked and you shut down, I thought you were just private. I wasn't going to push. But this whole time—" Ethan stopped, pulled his cap off, dragged a hand through his hair, put it back on. "You didn't trust me."
"It wasn't about trust."
"Then what?"
Dawson looked up. His brother’s face was stripped open, the gruff exterior gone, and what sat underneath was a man who loved him and had been locked out without knowing it.
“I didn’t know how to start,” Dawson said.
“Justin knew. He figured it out on his own a long time ago. But I’ve never said the words to family.
You’re the first. You hear all these horror stories about families cutting someone off for being gay.
Logically, I think I knew that wouldn’t happen, but it’s still scary as hell to jump off that cliff. ”
Ethan went quiet. Words had always come easy to him; he'd never had to think twice about speaking his mind. Dawson could see him working out that it had never been that simple on the other side of the table.
After a while, Ethan spoke. "So are you going to do something about it, or are you just going to sit here and be miserable until he forgets you exist?"
Dawson didn't have an answer. He'd been asking himself the same question for a week and a half. “I have no clue. I just know I can’t ask him to give me another chance while I’m still pretending to be someone I’m not. He deserves better than that.”
“You’re right, he does. But you just told me," Ethan said.
"You did the thing you've been afraid of your whole life and the ceiling didn't cave in.
" He held Dawson's gaze. "So maybe stop assuming the worst about everyone and go talk to him. He probably understands that it’s going to take time for you to tell everyone, but you’re trying.”
Dawson's hands were shaking, a fine tremor he couldn't stop. He pressed his palms flat against his jeans and breathed until they went still. “Maybe you’re right.”
“You’re going to have to tell Wyatt,” Ethan said.
“I know.”
“Not tonight. But soon. He’ll be weird about it for a while. You know how he is.” Ethan paused. “But he’ll come around. And if he doesn’t, I’ll handle it.”
The TV played. The kitchen light hummed. The house was the same house it had been an hour ago, yet everything in it was different.
“You hungry?” Ethan asked again.
This time Dawson was. “Yeah. Starving, actually.”
He went to the kitchen, heated the chili, and brought two bowls to the living room. He handed one to Ethan, who took it without comment and turned up the TV.
They ate on the couch. Ethan poured too much hot sauce, like he always did. The TV played. Neither of them talked, and for the first time in weeks, the silence didn’t feel like it was hiding anything.
The rest of it — telling Wyatt, telling his parents, deciding what to do about Leo — could wait until tomorrow. He’d survived coming out once. That was enough for one night.