Chapter 16 #2
Matt shifted his weight, attention keen and soft at once on me.
His breath fogged the air, and I inhaled—damp leaves, distant traffic, the low murmur of a creek somewhere near the house.
Gravel shifted under my shoes as I took a step toward him.
Another. The house glowed behind him, voices and laughter blurred through glass.
Reid. But who else?
I stopped a couple of steps away, the ground a little unsteady with more than just the shift of stones. “You wanted to talk.”
“Yeah. I—uh.” He cut himself off, as if he’d prepared a whole speech only to find it had slipped fresh out of his grasp. A second passed as he watched me, his face open in a way that thrummed along my spine. Then he cleared his throat. “My parents would love to meet you.”
His—
His parents.
His parents?
“They…” I lost the thought. “What?”
The faintest upward tug to his mouth. “Cole, too. Properly.”
I stared at him and couldn’t make the pieces fit, too many dizzy thoughts spinning at once. Light caught one side of his face and the edge of his jaw, faint tiredness still hanging under his eyes.
“What’s going on?” I asked, too low and hoarse.
“I told them.” He lifted one hand, then dropped it again as if unsure what to do with it.
With himself. “Not everyone. But the people who matter. I kept waiting until I felt, like… ready enough, I guess. Like there was some easier version of it if I just waited it out. Turns out losing you was a lot scarier than telling the truth to people I actually trust.”
Wow. That… wow.
“So you told your parents?”
“Yeah.” He said it like it was no big deal when it was, of course it was.
“How did it go?” I asked, and maybe I shouldn’t care—but, fuck. I’d walked away from something that shrank me. Not from the way I felt about him.
A real smile broke through his expression, small yet bright, still carrying a trace of disbelief. “Terrifying for about thirty seconds. Then… really well.”
Something behind my ribs loosened by an inch. “And Cole? You told him, too?”
“Yeah.” Matt’s focus was steady on me now, a little raw. “Told him he’d only been half-right.”
“Half-right?” I echoed, everything moving just a little too fast, the ground still shifting where I stood.
Another smile, this one crooked. “That yeah, you were into me—he’d had that right.” A tiny pause. “But that he’d missed the part where I’m really into you, too. And that I handled that conversation really fucking badly and said some things I shouldn’t have and didn’t mean.”
My lungs fluttered, nervous like a moth’s wings. Warm light from the house stretched pale across the path between us, someone inside moving past with a bottle of wine. Matt’s dad?
Who wanted to meet me. Matt’s mom, too.
“And this place?” I asked, partly just for something else to hold onto. “What is this?”
Matt glanced over his shoulder, then back at me.
“I rented it for tonight.” He shrugged one shoulder in a gesture that didn’t come out entirely casual.
“I wanted privacy, you know? Not a glass box high up in the sky, but something kind of tucked away. A dinner with the people in our lives who matter the most—mine, and yours, too.”
Ronan. Naomi.
“Matt…” Just that, nothing else. Right now, it was all I had.
“I thought we’d have room here,” he said, voice dipping low and careful. “A chance to be honest with the lights on.” He stopped abruptly, eyes on me. “Like how I’d want us to be. If you could want that, too.”
The creek rushed in my ears. Or maybe it was just me and my heart hammering away inside my chest.
“I’m not asking you back into the same thing,” he added, a little rushed. “That’s not what I mean. I mean something better. Something that doesn’t force us to hide, at least not where it matters.”
It sounded honest, reflected but not rehearsed. I dragged in a breath and felt it right down to the soles of my feet. “What does that mean?”
“For one…” His gaze dipped, just briefly, then returned to me as if he’d picked up his courage. “I’d like the important people in my life to actually meet the guy I love.”
Love.
“You…” I couldn’t finish. Wind and water in my ears, something light bursting behind my ribs.
“Yeah.” He nodded, one side of his mouth tilting up. “You’re not the only one who fell. I did, too. I was just a little slower in admitting that to myself.”
I wanted to reach for him. Didn’t. “That matters. But it’s not a solution.”
“I know. But I thought—maybe, if we could have honest corners…” He swallowed, and suddenly, he looked young, unsure and hopeful at once.
“I’m not asking you to decide everything tonight, okay?
Like… you don’t have to choose forever on the doorstep.
I’m just asking you to come in with me. See if that could be a life. ”
God, I… yes.
“But if it’s too much right now,” he said before I remembered how to use my words, “or if you can’t—I understand. I do. It’s your choice.” A pause. “But I would really love for you to come inside with me.”
Matt. Standing there in the winter cold, eyes dark and open and so honest it almost terrified me. Nerves clear in how he held himself, the slightly too tight line of his shoulders. He didn’t reach for me, giving me space to decide, and that—yes.
“I’m not ashamed of you,” that’s what he’d told me, only it’d been hard to believe when we’d fit so neatly into the shadows. But this, here, was different. A house with the lights on and people Matt wanted me to meet.
I inhaled winter air that tasted fresh and clear. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll come in. I want to see it.”
He blinked.
Then something inside him lit right up—not triumph, nothing that cheap. Relief, maybe. A startled kind of happiness that made everything else fall away for a moment.
He reached out as if to touch my face, then seemed to catch himself and brushed a hand down my arm instead, warm and light, gone in an instant. “Thank you.”
“I haven’t decided yet,” I said, more to remind myself than him.
He nodded, serious, but no less bright for it. “I know.”
“Good.” I let myself smile at him, just for a second, my ribs expanding with a breath. Then I waved for Naomi and Ronan to join me.
I’d walked away once. This, here—choosing a step toward him with my eyes open?
That was a choice, too.
“Oh, good. You decided to join us.” Planted right by the door, Reid fixed me with a look that was trying very hard not to be pleased, then darted a quick, warm glance at Matt, and another at Ronan and Naomi. “Welcome, I guess.”
“Ever the gentleman,” Naomi said, sarcasm layered thick, and he shot her a smile like a knife.
“That’s me,” he said. “Shoes off, emotional baggage on the hook by the door. Dinner’s almost ready. I helped plate the potatoes.”
Right.
I shrugged off my coat while next to me, Matt did the same and then took both of ours to hang them up.
Ronan was a step behind, eyes sweeping the space like he was assessing load-bearing walls, while Naomi brushed past with the easy confidence of a woman who’d never once doubted her right to enter any room, ever.
“You plated nothing,” she told Reid. “At most, you hovered with commentary.”
“I elevated the atmosphere,” he said, unbothered.
“By existing?” she asked.
“Exactly.” He waved for us to follow him into the living area of the house. I trailed a step behind Matt, who kept sneaking glances at me and smiling whenever I caught him at it.
“Jesus,” Ronan muttered, mostly meant for me. “Are they always like this?”
“Naomi and Reid?”
“Yeah.”
“Pretty much,” I said, and Matt grinned wide enough it tugged on something in my belly.
We stepped into warm light and the smell of garlic and something roasting, rich enough to remind me I’d skipped lunch. Polished concrete underfoot, wood everywhere, a brick fireplace and windows that showed the dark silhouettes of trees and a faint black ribbon of water outside.
It felt like the polar opposite of Matt’s apartment.
“Wine?” Cole offered.
Because, yeah—okay. Kitchen. Cole in dark jeans and a button-down, looking slightly too loose for this to be his first glass.
Matt’s dad was at the stove, broad-backed and solid, stirring something in a pan.
His mom rounded the island, carrying a wooden board with slices of bread and a bottle of olive oil, her dark hair clipped back, face warm.
“Hi,” she said, gaze landing on me. Before I could work out whether I was meant to offer help or a smile, she set the board down and came toward me. “Stellan, right? I’m Marlis. We’ve been so looking forward to meeting you, dear.”
Oh. Okay.
“Hi,” I echoed. “Yeah, I—hi. I’m Stellan.”
Matt’s mouth curved up more, his attention locked on me with such naked intensity it made my cheeks feel hot. Not bad, not at all. Just… a lot.
His mom grasped my hand, eyes kind. “Thank you for coming.” Her eyes flicked to Naomi and my brother. “All of you.”
To his credit, Ronan managed a “Yeah, sure,” that sounded reasonably sincere. I’d raised him all right.
Matt’s dad turned to face us, cheeks red from the kitchen heat, eyes smart and steady. “I’m Rob,” he said. “You lot hungry?”
Straight to the essentials.
“Uh,” I said, slightly thrown, as if we’d arrived halfway through a movie. Nice, kind of, just disorienting. “I could be.”
“Good,” he said, mustache shifting with a smile. “Because this one”—he nodded his chin at Cole—“has been hovering for half an hour.”
“I was trying to help,” Cole protested, laughing a little. I wasn’t sure why, but it made my shoulders loosen. Maybe because this felt like a good room to be in, good people to be with—warmth and a hint of chaos, Reid lining up wine glasses while Cole poured generously.
Matt was still next to me, watching, something almost lost about his expression. As if he’d done all the hard parts and hadn’t dared plan beyond them.
“Honestly, Matt,” Reid said just then, with an exasperated sigh that tilted fond. “You look like you’re waiting to be allowed out of the kennel.”
“Fuck off,” Matt mumbled with a hint of a laugh tucked into his voice.
“Don’t argue with truth,” Cole said.