30. Eli
Eli
I don’t realize just how hard I’m shaking until I’m inside and the door shuts behind me.
My parents are gone. Their voices are gone. The threat in my father’s face, the sick little sorrow in my mother’s, the whole ugly performance of family and shame and money and control—gone from the front steps, at least for now.
Inside, it’s warm and bright and full of people who look at me like I matter for reasons that don’t need church language or obedience attached to them.
Julian is standing with Mila tucked against his chest, one broad hand splayed across her little back. He doesn’t say anything right away, and that helps. I probably would’ve cracked straight down the middle if he did.
I stand there for one beat too long, trying to get my breathing under control and pull my expression into something less obviously wrecked. It doesn’t work. I know it doesn’t from the way Julian’s whole face changes when I finally meet his gaze.
He shifts Mila a little higher against his chest. “Eli.”
That’s all he says, just my name again. I walk toward them because standing alone in the foyer suddenly feels impossible.
“Can I take her?” I ask.
He hands Mila over immediately, and she settles against me with a little sleepy sigh, warm and solid and real enough to keep me upright. I bury my face against the top of her head for one second and breathe in baby lotion, milk, and the clean softness of her skin until I can trust my voice again.
I’ve just told my parents they mean nothing to me now, and the first thing my body does when they’re gone is anchor itself to my daughter.
Luca walks out of the kitchen with some of the other guys, his face already sharpened by whatever he read in mine before I even crossed the threshold.
Killian is farther back in the hallway, holding his phone, expression carved into that cold control he slips into whenever something threatens the house.
Thorn pushes off the wall, and Adrian lingers half a step behind him, mug in hand, gaze steady and unreadable as always.
Roman and Ryan are still in the kitchen doorway, both of them bristling visibly, Roman more obviously because subtlety was never part of his design.
“What happened?” Luca asks first.
I laugh once, but it comes out ugly and tired. “Apparently, my family’s even more fucked up than I thought.”
I look around at all of them and realize I don’t have enough hands for what I’m carrying. Mila, the fight, the revelation about Brendon, the fresh wound of hearing my father compare me to his sister’s son as if disowning children is just some family tradition people pass down like recipes.
“They came to threaten me again,” I say. “Same old shit. Marry Celeste. Do the right thing. Stop embarrassing the family. Pride dressed up as God. I told them to keep their money and stay the fuck away from me and my daughter.”
“Beautifully done,” Roman mutters under his breath.
Normally, that would get at least half a laugh out of me, but not today.
“My dad said something out there about Brendon,” I tell them. “My cousin from Lakehaven? Apparently, my aunt disowned him. They cut him off for being with a guy.”
Julian’s eyes widen. “What?”
“Yeah,” I say, looking between him and Luca. They’ve met Brendon before, and we always have a few drinks together whenever we play against Lakehaven. “That was pretty much my reaction too.”
Julian mutters something in Afrikaans under his breath that I don’t fully catch, but I know enough by now to hear the curse in it. He reaches out and touches my elbow lightly. “You didn’t know any of it?”
“No,” I say, and hearing the helplessness in my own voice pisses me off immediately. “I had no fucking idea.”
Luca watches me carefully. “You want to call him?”
I wanted to call Brendon the second my father mentioned what happened. “Yeah, I do.”
Julian glances down at Mila, then back at me. “You want privacy?”
I look at him and then at Luca, both of them standing there like they’d follow me into hell if I asked. The thought of being alone right now makes my stomach twist.
“No,” I say quietly. “Can you two come with me? No offense, guys. Luca and Jules know Bren, and—”
“None taken, Matthews. Go call your cousin,” Thorn says and walks into the kitchen, pulling Roman in with him.
Up in my room, Julian takes Mila from me and sets her in the playpen by the window with a soft football plush, blissfully unconcerned by the fact that my family keeps shattering itself in fresh and inventive ways.
Luca leans against the dresser with his arms folded, saying nothing, just present in that solid, captain-like way of his.
I stare at Brendon’s name on my contacts for a second longer than I should before I hit call and put it on speaker. It rings four times, and I start thinking maybe he won’t answer, and then on the fifth ring the line clicks.
“Lane residence,” a man says dryly, and there’s enough amusement buried in the words that I can’t tell if he’s joking or just naturally insufferable.
I blink. “Uh… I’m looking for Brendon?”
There’s a beat of silence, then a low chuckle that makes something in Luca’s face shift immediately into recognition. “You are looking for him,” the man says. “That’s cute.”
I squint at the phone. “Who the fuck is this?”
That gets an actual laugh from the other end. It’s deep, smooth, infuriatingly calm. “Who the fuck are you?”
I open my mouth and then shut it because Luca has just mouthed something that looks suspiciously like Volkov? at me.
Before I can answer, there’s muffled movement on the other end, and then Brendon’s voice comes through, anxious and alarmed. “Give that to me! Why are you answering my damn phone like you’re the butler?”
“I said residence, not manor, Little Sin,” the other man replies, now farther from the receiver.
“Go away. You’re impossible.” Then there’s a scuffle, a muttered curse, and finally Brendon comes on properly, breath a little uneven. “Eli?”
“Yeah,” I say, and some awful mix of relief and grief hits me all at once because it really is him—same voice, same flat little edge he gets when he’s trying not to show too much. “Hey.”
There’s a pause. Not awkward, more like surprise finding its footing. “Hey. I wasn’t expecting your call.”
“No,” I admit. “I’m guessing not.”
He’s quiet for another second, and I can practically hear him bracing. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
The fact that he goes there first, to what’s wrong, tells me more than I want to know.
“Nothing new,” I say quickly, then immediately grimace because that sounds terrible.
“I mean—something is wrong, obviously. My parents were just here, and my father said something about your parents. About you.” I drag a hand through my hair.
“I only found out five minutes ago, Bren. I swear to God, I didn’t know. ”
“Oh,” he says quietly.
The quickness of that “oh” makes my throat tighten. It hurts in its own way because it means somewhere in the middle of everything he was cut off from, he still gave me the benefit of the doubt I’m not sure I deserved.
“I’m sorry,” I say anyway.
“Don’t be,” he answers. “You didn’t do it.”
“Yeah, but still.” I close my eyes briefly. “What exactly happened?”
There’s a little rustle on his end, as if he’s shifting position or sitting down somewhere more firmly.
“My parents found out I’m gay because someone sent them a video,” he says, and the words come out flatter than I remember from him.
Not emotionless but controlled so tightly it’s obvious there’s a reason.
My eyes snap open. “A video of what?”
“Of me… with him,” he says, then he sighs. “I basically got revenge porned.”
My stomach twists as I think about Brendon in all the stiff, tightly wound little snapshots I have of him over the years.
Good grades. Church clothes. The sort of man who apologized to the furniture he bumped into.
The idea of someone filming him in an intimate moment and sending it to his parents feels so violating that I actually have to grit my teeth.
“Do you know who sent it?” I ask.
“I… it’s been taken care of.” I can hear the bitterness creeping in now. “But it doesn’t matter because my parents got the video before I got the chance to come out to them. Not that they would have accepted me either way, but I would have liked to prepare myself first, you know?”
I can’t help but sigh at that. “Yeah, I know. Did they do this over the phone, or… ?
“They both came to Lakehaven and confronted me in my office, then told me they were cutting me off when I told them I wouldn’t take their offer to be ‘fixed,’” he says, and I hear the sound of fingers tapping on a counter.
“Being a pastor apparently means he knows people in conversion camps, which honestly tracks for him.”
I look down at my hands and feel the room tilt slightly around the edges. Fixed… as if there’s something wrong with him.
“They just…” I stop because there’s no word in the language for how obscene it is that parents can do this so clinically. “I’m so sorry, Bren.”
This time when I say it, he doesn’t brush past it. “Yeah,” he says again, softer now. “Me too.”
“For what it’s worth, I still love you and accept you for who you are,” I say, then I look up at Julian and give him a small smile. “I’m… uh, going through something similar, and I’m not just talking about my recent bi-awakening.”
There’s a beat of silence on the other end, so sharp I can almost hear Brendon’s brain tripping over itself before he says, “I’m sorry, your what awakening?” And despite everything, despite the ache in my chest and the sick weight of what my parents did to me, a laugh slips out of me.
I rub a hand over my face, cheeks heating because apparently telling my cousin I might be in love with my best friend is easier when I bury it under emotional wreckage and then immediately regret having a mouth.
“Yeah,” I mutter. “That part’s new.”
“Well, welcome to the rainbow side of life, I guess,” he says with a low chuckle, then his voice softens into something careful and stunned. “What happened with your parents?”