Chapter 11 #2
“Most people haven’t seen your work.”
“I mean—” Chad shook his head. “They think art is decoration. Something you put on a wall because it matches the couch. They don’t understand that it’s—”
“A way of being seen?”
Chad looked at him. “Yeah. Exactly.”
“That’s what music was for me. Growing up. When everything else felt like a performance, like I was playing a role, music was the one place I could feel things without consequences.” Hank took a slow breath. “I didn’t have to explain it to anyone. I could just sit with it. Let it be true.”
“And now?”
“Now I have someone to share it with.”
The words hung between them. Chad set his glass on the coffee table and shifted closer, close enough that their shoulders touched.
“I keep waiting for the catch,” Chad said quietly. “The thing that’s wrong with you.”
“My snoring?”
“I’ve heard your snoring. I can live with it.” Chad wasn’t smiling. “I mean the real thing. The dealbreaker. Because every guy I’ve ever been with—there’s always been something, some reason it couldn’t work.”
“And you think I’m hiding something?”
“I think you’re too good to be true.” He stopped, swallowed. “I think you’re the kind of person who’s going to change things. Not just for me. For a lot of people. And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that.”
Hank set his glass down and turned to face him. “Chad. Look at me.”
Chad looked.
“I’m not too good to be true. I’m a man who spent most of his life hiding from himself.
I married my best friend because I was too scared to admit what I wanted.
I’ve made more mistakes than I can count, and I’ll probably make more.
” He reached out and cupped Chad’s face in his hand.
“But I’m here. With you. And that’s not an accident. I chose this. I chose you.”
Chad’s breath caught. “Hank—”
“You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted you to know.”
For a long moment, neither of them moved. The rain tapped against the windows. The bourbon sat forgotten on the coffee table.
Then Chad leaned in and kissed him—slow, deep, tasting of whiskey and something sweeter underneath.
They stayed on the couch, tangled together, talking about nothing and everything. Chad’s head on Hank’s shoulder, Hank’s fingers tracing idle patterns on Chad’s arm.
“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” Chad said.
“I collect vinyl records. Only classical. I have about two hundred.”
“That’s adorable and predictable. Something else.”
“Besides eggs, I can’t cook anything that doesn’t come from a box.”
“Noted. I’ll handle the cooking.”
“You’re assuming you’ll be around to cook.”
Chad lifted his head and looked at him. “Aren’t I?”
Hank’s heart fluttered. “I hope so.”
“Then I’ll handle the cooking.” Chad settled back against his shoulder. “Your turn. Ask me something.”
“What do you want? If you could have anything.”
Chad was quiet for a moment. “I want to paint something that matters. Something that makes people feel the way I felt tonight, listening to that music.” He paused. “And I want someone to come home to. Someone who gets it. Who gets me.”
“That’s not too much to ask.”
“It’s felt like too much. For a long time.”
Hank tightened his arm around him. “It’s not.”
They sat in the quiet, the city muffled outside, the rain a gentle static against the glass. Hank let himself feel it—the warmth, the rightness, the sense that something had finally clicked into place.
This is it. Tell him.
His phone buzzed on the coffee table.
He ignored it.
It buzzed again. Then again.
Chad’s phone lit up on the side table. Ricky’s name on the screen.
“Popular tonight,” Chad said, silencing it without looking away.
“Mmm.”
Hank’s phone buzzed twice more. He reached over and flipped it face down.
“Whoever it is can wait,” he said. “I’m not done with you yet.”
Chad smiled and kissed him again, and for another moment there was nothing else—just the two of them, the rain, the warmth—
Hank’s phone rang.
Not a text. A call.
He glanced at the screen.
Frannie.
She never calls this late.
Something cold moved through his chest. He sat up, and Chad felt the shift, pulling back to look at him.
“What is it?”
Hank answered the phone. “Frannie?”
Her voice was tight. Controlled. “Hank. Have you been online in the last twenty minutes?”
“No. Why?”
A pause. Then: “Check your texts. I’ll hold.”
Hank lowered the phone. His hands weren’t steady as he opened his messages.
Forty-seven notifications. The first was from Cathy: Have you seen the Post?
The second was a link.
He clicked it.
The image loaded slowly. A photograph, slightly grainy but unmistakably clear.
Two men walking across the Kennedy Center plaza, hand in hand.
One in a charcoal blazer, blond hair catching the light.
The other, in a navy suit, face half-turned toward his companion, his whole heart visible in his eyes.
The headline read: FAMILY VALUES FRAUD: Georgia Senator’s Secret Gay Lover Exposed on Coming Out Day
Hank couldn’t breathe.
Chad was beside him now, looking at the screen. Hank watched his face—the confusion, the recognition, the color draining from his cheeks.
“Oh God,” Chad whispered.
Outside, the rain had turned into a downpour, sheeting against the windows.
Frannie’s voice came through the phone, tinny and distant: “Hank? Hank, are you there?”