Chapter 46 #2
She grinned. “I think we’ve both established that’s no longer His department.” Then she stood. “I should go. Tomorrow will be a long day. And if you should need me before morning, I won’t be in my room.” She flushed.
Message received.
I got off the bed and walked her to the door. I hugged her, then kissed her cheek. “I don’t need to say Sweet Dreams, do I?”
Her smile made her face radiant. “No, you don’t.”
I closed the door behind her, and went to message Dean. Before I could type, my phone rang. I stared at the screen.
My mother rarely called this late.
I answered, my heartbeat quickening a little. “Hi, Mama.”
“Luka. Thank goodness.”
I closed my eyes to hear the note of relief in her voice. “Are you all right?”
“We’re fine. We’ve been trying to reach you.”
Self-loathing surged through me. I knew I’d been avoiding them.
I’d known this conversation was coming.
I could hear my father in the background. He said something I couldn’t make out, and a moment later my mother switched the call to speaker.
“Hello, Papa.”
“Luka.” The familiar warmth in his voice made my chest tighten.
For a few minutes we talked about ordinary things, but all the while it felt as though the three of us were skating around a topic none of us wished to confront.
“The federation contacted us,” my mother said at last.
I stood at the window, staring out at the city lights. “What did they want?”
“They’re worried about you.”
I laughed. “That makes one of us.”
Neither of them laughed.
My father sighed. “Luka. They saw the gala last night.”
“Most of the world saw the gala,” I remonstrated.
“Luka.” This time it was my mother.
I scrubbed a hand across my face. “I know.”
The silence that followed wasn’t hostile. It never was with my parents.
“We don’t want you throwing your future away,” my father said eventually.
I stared at my reflection in the glass.
The same argument, the same fear, only now it was coming from people I loved.
“My future isn’t disappearing.”
“No?” It wasn’t a question uttered sharply, but in a hopeful tone, as though he wanted me to convince him. “You have a career. You have a federation behind you. You have opportunities people spend their entire lives chasing.”
“And conditions attached to them.”
I caught my mother’s sharp inhalation, and I knew she’d heard the truth in that.
The problem was that knowing something and accepting it weren’t always the same thing.
“We saw the kiss.”
I realized that was the moment where everything had changed for them.
For me too.
I rested my forehead against the cool glass. “Mama…”
My father spoke before I could finish the sentence.
“What we’re asking is whether this has to cost you everything else.”
I stared out across the city.
Neither of them were trying to hurt me. They were trying to save me. At least, a version of saving that made sense to them.
“You want me to come home.”
“Yes.” My father’s response arrived without a second’s hesitation.
Home meant my parents, my grandparents, the house where I’d grown up, the language that lived in my bones.
It also meant federation officials sitting in conference rooms deciding how much of me was acceptable.
Interviews carefully managed and statements carefully worded.
Pretending certain parts of my life didn’t exist because acknowledging them would make other people uncomfortable.
“You come home,” my mother said gently. “You let things settle. People will stop talking eventually.”
My throat was suddenly scratchy, my vision blurred. She genuinely believes that.
Maybe she needed to.
I drew in a deep breath.
“What if I don’t want them to stop talking?”
The silence that followed was heavier than any I remembered.
My father cleared his throat. “Luka…”
“What if I’m tired of apologizing for things that aren’t wrong?”
Neither of them answered. Even I wasn’t sure there was an answer.
My mother sighed. “Luka, nobody is asking you to apologize.”
I laughed. I didn’t know how to explain it to her.
“Mama, I’ve spent ten years apologizing.”
The silence on the other end of the line was immediate.
“I knew when I was fourteen. Before that, if I’m being honest.” My throat tightened. “I knew, and I didn’t tell anyone.”
Neither of my parents spoke.
I was past choosing my words carefully. They’d lived inside me too long for that.
“I didn’t tell my coaches. I didn’t tell my friends. I didn’t tell my partner.” My voice cracked. “I didn’t tell you.”
“Luka—”
“No, please.” The interruption slipped out before I could stop it. I closed my eyes. “You keep asking me to come home, and I don’t think you understand what you’re asking.”
My mother made a small sound of distress. “I understand more than you think.”
“Do you?” The question escaped before I could soften it.
For a moment nobody spoke.
“I spent ten years being afraid.” The admission left me feeling exposed. “Every time somebody made a joke. Every time a politician said something. Every time a commentator talked about values or tradition or family.” I stared out at the lights of Milan. “I listened.”
My father’s voice was quiet. “We never gave you a reason to be afraid of us.”
The words hurt because he believed them, and because part of me wished they were true.
“No,” I said gently. “You just gave me reasons to be afraid of what you’d say.”
The silence that followed felt endless.
I swallowed. “I know you love me.” My eyes burned. “I have never doubted that.” That much had always been true. “But I also know what would have happened if I’d come to you at fourteen and told you I was gay.”
My mother inhaled sharply once more.
I pressed on before I lost my nerve.
“You would have told me not to rush.”
Neither of them answered.
“You would have told me I was confused.”
Still nothing.
“You would have told me I was too young to know.” The ache in my chest deepened.
“Maybe you would have prayed for me. Maybe you would have found somebody to talk to me. Maybe you would have convinced yourselves it was a phase.” I swallowed hard again.
“But neither of you would have said, ‘Thank you for trusting us.’”
My mother started crying, and the sound nearly broke me.
“Mama—”
“We were trying to protect you.”
“I know.” That was the tragedy of it. The city beyond the window blurred. “I’ve always known.” I rested my forehead against the glass one more time. “But protecting me and accepting me aren’t the same thing.”
The words hung between us, heavy and impossible to take back.
When my father finally answered, his voice sounded tired.
“We didn’t know.”
I closed my eyes. “No, you didn’t.” A lump rose in my throat. “And I never gave you the chance to know because I was terrified of this conversation.”
For a long moment all I could hear was my mother’s quiet crying.
Then she whispered, “Why didn’t you tell us?”
The question nearly undid me because there was no anger in it, only heartbreak.
I thought about the man waiting somewhere in the Village for me to call and say, ‘You can come back now.’
“Because I thought you would ask me to choose.” My voice cracked again.
My mother made a sound that was almost a sob. “Luka…”
I swallowed. “I know now that you love me.” The words came slowly, carefully. “I just don’t know whether you know how to love all of me.”