Chapter 23 #2
I squeezed Xander’s arm. “Listen, I want to bring in some help. This is bigger than us, and I don’t think we can do anything without a whole shit ton of support. I won’t if you’re not ready for anyone else to know. But if you can trust anyone, it’s family.”
“You… you want me to come out to your family? To Hayes and Willa?” Old fears and hurts flashed through his face. His face went pale. “I can't—they don't even know—“
Artie sat down beside him. “You deserve to have support through this.”
“Willa doesn't even know,” he whispered. “My own sister doesn't know.”
“What about Liam and George?” I asked carefully. “Your uncles?”
Xander's face crumpled. “They would have supported me. They would have understood. But my mom... she said it would ruin my career. Said I couldn't be like them if I wanted to succeed in football. She made me promise never to tell anyone, especially not them.”
“Xander,” Artie said softly. “Would you consider telling them now? Just the family? They need to know what they're fighting for.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “What if they hate me for hiding it? For not trusting them?”
“They won't,” I said with certainty. “That's not who the Kingmans are. Or who Liam and George are.”
“You're already family,” Artie repeated. “This just makes it official.”
My own coming out had been easy breezy. I told Flynn, then Jules first. They both acted as if I’d told them I like Cheerios and Fruit Loops instead of coming out as bisexual.
No one in my family treated it like a huge deal, or something they needed to think about and process.
It was just a part of me that they understood and loved.
But not everyone’s family was like mine. “You don’t have to if you can’t yet, and we’ll work hard to figure out another way.”
“No. Shit.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I’m really goddamn tired of feeling so alone in this. I think Willa might already know, or at least has a clue. Hard to hide something this big from your twin.”
“That it is.” I pulled out my phone to start calling the Kingman cavalry, but it started buzzing before I even could. “It’s Flynn.”
I answered and didn’t even get to say hello before he asked, “What's wrong?”
Twin telepathy proving the point. “Sloane has blackmail material on Xander. And me. And others.”
There was a pause. “Emergency game night?”
“Yeah. Call everyone. I’ll start with Jules, you start with Dad, and we’ll work our way to the middle.” God, was I grateful for my family. “Flynn—“
“Nobody threatens our family, Gryff. Nobody. I'll call Chris and the others. They can take the jet. Kelsey has her plane too. We can have everyone here in two hours.”
Two hours later, our living room was packed.
When Flynn said emergency protocol, the Kingmans had mobilized like an army.
Dad, Chris, Declan, Everett, Hayes, and Isak had taken the Kingman jet.
Kelsey had flown down with Penelope, Trixie, Willa, her father, and her guncles George and Liam on her private plane.
Jules just drove on over from UCLA to be here.
Everything felt like another Kingman family gathering, but it got instantly emotional when Xander’s father and uncles, Liam and George, who were being towed by his twin sister, Willa, walked in.
“Where is he?” Willa demanded the moment she walked in. “Where's my idiot brother?”
Xander stood up from where he'd been hiding in the corner, and Willa crossed the room in three strides, pulling him into a fierce hug.
“Whatever it is,” she said into his shoulder, “we're here. We're all here.”
The room settled, everyone finding seats, and Xander stood up. “Before we start, I have something I need to tell everyone.”
Xander looked terrified. I moved to stand beside him, Artie on his other side.
“I'm… gay,” he said, the words coming out in a rush. “I've always been gay. I've been hiding it my whole life because I thought... because I was told it would ruin everything. And now someone's trying to blackmail me with it.”
The silence lasted about three seconds.
Then Liam and George were both on their feet, crossing to their nephew. George pulled him into a hug while Liam stood guard, looking ready to fight anyone who had a problem with it.
“We've got you,” George said fiercely. “We've always got you.”
“Why didn't you tell us?” Liam asked, but his voice was gentle, not accusatory.
“Mom said—“ Xander started, then broke off.
“Ah,” Mr. Rosemount said, understanding flooding his face. “Your mother.”
He shook his head and grabbed Xander into a huge hug that lasted just as long as it needed to. “I’m just sorry that, once again, you didn’t think you could come to me.”
“She said it would ruin my career. Said I couldn't be like Liam if I wanted to succeed.”
“That bitch,” Willa said flatly. “Our mother is a monster, and I'm done pretending otherwise.”
“Willa—“ Xander started.
“No. She kept you from us. From your uncles who would have helped you, from me, Dad, from everyone who would have supported you.” She looked around the room. “From all of this.”
“You're here now,” my dad said, his coach voice carrying across the room. “That's what matters. You're family, and we protect our own.”
“Sir, I'm not really—“
“You're Willa's brother,” Dad said. “So let's skip the part where you try to argue about it and get to the part where we destroy whoever's trying to hurt you.”
Xander looked overwhelmed. “I don't... I don't know what to say.”
“Say you'll let us help,” Dad said. “And then tell us everything about this Sloane person.”
So he did. He told them about the video, the threats, the other players being targeted. “She wants an answer by Friday,” Xander finished.
“She'll get one,” Flynn said grimly. “Just not the one she's expecting.”
“I’ve got some, let’s say, hacker connection, and she’s digging into Sloane’s background.” Tempest said. “We’ll get the goods for you.”
Penelope, Kelsey, and Trixie exchanged looks. Trixie nodded and said, “We’ve all had enough experience with the press that we’ll know exactly what to do with anything you dig up.”
But our three eldest brothers exchanged similar looks between the three of them, then they glanced over at dad, whose scowl would probably make a grizzly bear run away squealing.
“And if we don’t find something that FlixNChill will fire her for, we know what to do.”
I wondered briefly what California’s state flower was.
“Emergency game night protocol,” Flynn announced. “With a twist. Xander, you know how to play Monopoly?”
“Everyone knows how to play Monopoly,” Xander said, confused.
“Wrong,” Isak said. “You know how to play regular Monopoly. You're about to learn Kingman Monopoly.”
“There are only two rules,” Chris said, grinning.
“Rule number one,” all the Kingman brothers said in unison: “Nobody messes with our family.”
“Rule number two,” they continued, “always cheat at Monopoly.”
Despite everything, Xander laughed. Real, genuine laughter.
“But what about the other players she's blackmailing?” Xander asked.
“We reach out to all of them.” I was about to make every queer man in the League my besties and let them all know they had fucking badass allies on their side. No more feeling scared or alone. Not on my watch. “Carefully, quietly. We build a coalition.”
“And then?”
“As a family, we finish this.”
Xander looked around the room, at Liam and George who'd been denied the chance to support him for years, at Willa who was ready to fight the world for him, at Hayes who'd been his brother-in-law all this time without knowing this crucial piece of him, at all the Kingmans who'd claimed him without hesitation.
“Okay,” he said. “Let's do this. Let's take her down.”
“That's the spirit,” Jules said. “Now, who's going to teach Xander how to properly cheat at Monopoly?”
“I will,” George said, putting his arm around his nephew. “After all, I've got years of uncle-nephew bonding to make up for.”
As everyone started setting up for the strangest game night ever, part strategy session, part family bonding, part war council, Vincent and Holly wandered through the crowd, accepting pets and treats from everyone.
Holly had claimed Xander's lap, and he was absently petting her while listening to George explain why you should always be the banker.
“Thank you,” he said quietly to me. “For this. For getting your family involved. For not hating me.”
“I never hated you,” I said. “I was hurt but never hated you.”
“Still. This is... more than I deserve.”
“No,” Willa said, overhearing. “This is exactly what you deserve. What you've always deserved. A family who loves you for exactly who you are.”
“Even though I hid it?”
“Especially because you hid it,” Liam said. “Because now we get to make up for all the years you felt like you had to.”
“This is insane,” Xander said, watching it all unfold.
“This is family,” I corrected.
“Your family's about to go scorched earth on Sloane Mitchell,” Artie said, appearing with a plate of cookies that Holly immediately tried to steal.
And somehow, in the middle of a blackmail crisis, surrounded by chaos and goats and an ever-expanding definition of family, everything made perfect sense.
Sloane Mitchell had no idea what she'd unleashed.
The Kingmans were coming for her, and they were bringing everyone.