30. Eli #2
I swallow hard, looking down at my hands again while Julian’s palm settles warm between my shoulder blades, steadying me without taking over.
The room goes quiet except for Mila’s continued war against the cloth book.
“They did the same thing to me, sort of. Different reason, same structure.” I laugh once, bitter as hell. “Apparently our generation’s big family tradition is conditional love and financial threats.”
I tell him about Mila coming into my life four months ago, the DNA test, my parents telling me to marry Celeste, and refusing to hear anything I said about being manipulated or assaulted.
About my father calling her a bastard child, and them standing on my steps today and acting like disowning me was some kind of burden I’d laid on them instead of a choice they were making with both eyes open.
When I finish, Brendon is silent for a long second after giving angry little comments while I spoke. Then he says, voice low and heartbreakingly close to understanding, “Fuck, I’m really sorry, Eli. I wish I could say I’m surprised.”
“I know, Bren. I knew it would happen, but I… I at least had some hope for my mother, you know?”
He exhales again, and this time there’s a different note in it. Something steadier. “For what it’s worth, it gets easier to breathe after a while.”
We sit there with that for a second, two cousins connected by a thread of shared damage nobody told us we were both carrying. It’s awful. It’s also, strangely, the first time I’ve ever felt less alone in this particular kind of wound.
I glance at Julian then. His eyes are on me and softer than they have any right to be after the month he’s had, too. “That sounds fake,” I mutter, finally responding to him.
Brendon gives a tiny huff of laughter. “I know. I hated hearing it too.”
That gets a real smile out of me for a brief second, and I’m about to ask him what he’s been doing without his parents’ help. But there’s a rustle on his end of the line, and then that same deep male voice from before drifts nearer, not directly to me this time. “You still on with your cousin?”
Brendon lowers his voice immediately. “Yes.”
“Tell him I said hi.”
My brows shoot up before I can stop them. “Okay, hold on. Who the fuck is that?”
Brendon goes quiet. That, more than anything, is suspicious. “It’s… the guy who answered the phone.”
“Yeah, I got that,” I say slowly. “You sound weird about it, though.”
Brendon groans. “That’s because… I live with him now and he kind of…” Another pause. Another muttered something I don’t catch. “Ugh, it’s… complicated.”
Julian lifts one brow at me and Luca’s mouth starts doing that dangerous little twitch it gets when he’s trying not to laugh at someone else’s suffering.
“Brendon,” I say slowly, “what are you not saying?”
“I hate this.” I wait him out, though, and it only takes about four seconds. Then he says, very quickly, “I’m…sortofhissugarbaby.”
Mila, because she has no respect for timing, chooses that exact second to let out a delighted squeal.
“You’re sort of a what?” I ask.
Brendon makes a sound of pure humiliation. “Can we move on now?”
“No,” I say immediately. “Absolutely not. We cannot just move on from that.”
“I knew you were going to do this.”
“I didn’t do anything yet because my brain is still buffering.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Brendon says.
“Of course it is,” I say. “But I still need you to say some more words immediately.”
He groans again. “I had nowhere else to go!”
“That part I understand,” I say quickly, because despite the absurdity, I do. God, I do. Money gets real very fast when parents weaponize it. “I’m not judging you for that. I’m judging you for making me drag this out one horrifying detail at a time. Who is he?”
There’s more silence before he lets out a tiny exhale that feels loaded.
“Brendon.”
“I’m thinking.”
“You’re stalling.”
“Yes.” Another pause. Then, in the most sheepish voice I have ever heard from my cousin in my life, he says, “Dominic Volkov.”
Julian coughs abruptly into his fist, and I know for a fact he’s hiding a laugh. Luca doesn’t even bother hiding his when he says, “fucking knew it”. I’m too stunned to do anything but gape.
“Dominic… Volkov,” I repeat. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I’m not,” Brendon says miserably.
“As in Lakehaven Dominic Volkov?”
“Yes.”
“As in Dominic Volkov who went pro last season, Dominic Volkov?”
“Yes, Eli, how many Dominic Volkovs do you know?”
What a fucking whiplash of a damn conversation. “Brendon Lane—preacher’s son, law student—is living with Dominic Volkov and calling himself a sugar baby.”
He scoffs, sounding scandalized. “That is a grotesque oversimplification.”
“That sounds weirdly specific for somebody denying it.”
On the other end, I hear the low rumble of Dominic’s voice again, too muffled to make out words, and Brendon’s immediate hissed, “Stop laughing, you asshole,” which only makes this funnier.
I can’t even process this in a straight line, and not only the fact that Brendon curses openly now, holy shit.
Because no. Absolutely the fuck not. Dominic Volkov is a name every Blackthorne athlete knows even if they’ve never met him.
Star player. Talent for days. The kind of man people talk about with equal parts respect and caution.
And apparently my cousin, who got outed by video and cut off by his parents, is now living with him as a so-called sugar baby.
I can’t help it—a laugh bursts out of me, half shocked and half hysterical. My life has officially gone past reasonable plot twists and into something that feels scripted by a drunk lunatic.
Julian finally loses the battle and laughs properly, the sound warm and a little shocked, and even I can’t stay wrecked through that.
Brendon makes a deeply offended noise. “Are there other people there?”
“I have you on speaker with Luca and Jules,” I say.
“Great. Fantastic. Love that for me. Hi, guys.”
Luca leans in just enough to be heard and says, “Tell Volkov I’m impressed and disturbed.”
Brendon groans. “I hate all of you.”
I look at Mila in the playpen when she starts making disgruntled noises and let the warmth of her pull me back into myself. “Are you safe?” I ask suddenly, because under the absurdity, that matters first.
“Yes,” he says immediately. “I’m safer than I’ve ever been.”
“Do you love him?”
Julian makes a face at me that says maybe do not go full therapist in the middle of his sugar baby confession. But then Brendon sighs and says, “Yes. And I was just joking about the whole sugar baby thing. He takes good care of me, and not just because we’re in a relationship.”
“Okay,” I say. “Okay. That’s… good. I’m glad you’re being taken care of, Bren. And… I should’ve called sooner. About all of it. About you.”
“You had your own shit you were dealing with, Eli,” he says. “You called now; that’s more than enough.”
It’s the same kind of grace he gave me earlier, and I don’t know if I deserve it any more now than I did then.
“We should talk properly,” I tell him. “Not just over the phone.”
“Yeah,” Brendon says. “We should. Maybe we could have something together for Thanksgiving—”
On the other end, Dominic says something again, and Brendon lets out a breath that sounds suspiciously fond for a man who just claimed to be humiliated.
“Do you need to go?” I ask.
Brendon huffs softly. “Apparently my… host thinks I haven’t eaten enough.”
I grin. “Host, huh?”
“Shut up, oh my god.”
“Sugar baby Lane.”
“Go to hell, Eli.”
We talk a little longer after that, despite him saying he needed to go. Not about Dominic too much because I can hear there are parts of that story he’s not ready to hand over all at once. Honestly, I’m not sure I’m ready to receive all of them without making a face he’ll hear through the phone.
When I finally end the call, I look at Julian and Luca. Neither of them says anything for a second. Then Luca points at me and says, “I need at least twenty-four hours before we unpack the fact that your cousin is Dominic Volkov’s sugar baby.”
“That’s fair,” I say weakly.
Julian looks at me and asks the real question. “You okay?”
I think about my parents on the front steps. About Brendon’s tired voice on the phone. About what it means that both of us got thrown out for refusing to live inside some bullshit version of family honor.
I let out a slow breath. “No,” I say honestly. “But I think I’m less alone than I was an hour ago.”
Julian’s expression softens. Luca’s too, though he covers it faster.
Right now, that’s enough.