50. I’ll Assume You’re Homophobic
I’LL ASSUME YOU’RE HOMOPHOBIC
PARKER
The one morning everybody decides to eat breakfast together just happens to be the morning after Luca finds out I’m in love with his brother.
I keep telling myself that it’s a coincidence, and that Emelie and Jen didn’t coordinate this over champagne last night like it’s some kind of elaborate performance.
But I’ve known them long enough to understand that the word coincidence isn’t really part of their vocabulary.
Anders and I step into the kitchen and the room shifts before either of us says anything.
It’s not even the silence itself that gets me, as much as it’s the way it arrives so easily.
Loud and boisterous one moment, then forks pause mid-air while conversations break mid-word.
My stomach tightens immediately because there are twelve people in here and somehow it feels like all of them are looking directly at me.
Nothing about this little shit show feels normal.
Jen and Em sit next to each other, splitting a bottle of champagne and sparing the orange juice.
Their respective men are on either side.
Luca’s two oldest girls are sitting across from them, rubbing elbows with Jen’s oldest set of twin boys.
All the younger, messier kids file onto a plastic picnic table.
Lucky for them, we’re not trying to hide a thing. Anders walks beside me in one of my old Sentinels shirts that hangs nearly to his thighs, his sleep shorts just barely poking through.
Even the older kids look suspiciously alert this morning, which means Emelie and Jen absolutely orchestrated this as some sort of humiliation ritual.
“Do you want me to make you coffee?” Anders asks quietly beside me, like there aren’t twelve people openly dissecting our relationship two feet away. His fingers brush my wrist when he says it, a touch so small it almost doesn’t register until it does, until it sends a quiet heat through my chest.
“Yes,” I say, exhaling. “Please.”
“Okay, love.”
He rises slightly onto his toes and kisses me like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like kitchens full of witnesses have never been unusual for us, and for a second my brain goes completely still at how ordinary he makes it feel.
The reactions around the room are immediate. I hear Luca before I fully process the rest of everyone’s reactions, his voice flat in a way that carries more weight than shouting ever could. “In front of the entire family?”
Anders doesn’t even look at him. He just keeps moving toward the coffee maker like Luca never said anything. I can feel Luca watching him the whole time, something bouncing between guilt and betrayal shaking his expression.
I take my mug from Anders when he hands it to me a moment later, then he pauses like he’s recalibrating, takes it back again, switches it out, corrects himself out loud. “The other one has sweet cream. This has hazelnut.”
“Thanks, sweetheart,” I say before I can stop myself.
Jen immediately points at me like I’ve committed an offense against tradition. “Oh, absolutely not.”
I blink at her. “What?”
“That is my nickname for him. You cannot steal custody of sweetheart in the divorce.” Something in me almost laughs despite everything, because of course this is the first thing Jen picks an argument over.
“This is weird,” Vince mutters dryly into his mug like he’s trying to disappear behind it.
Silence settles again, heavier this time, like everyone is waiting for whoever moves first to truly define what kind of morning this is going to be. It’s Emelie who breaks it, leaning back in her chair. “I say we kick him out. Send him back to Siberia.”
“He’s a naturalized citizen,” Anders says immediately.
“That isn’t helping,” I mutter under my breath, and Anders shoots me a look like I’ve personally betrayed him.
“Family announcement,” he says.
Oh no.
“Anders and Parker are in love,” Emelie blurts before Anders can get another word out. For half a second there’s nothing. It’s like the room is deciding what it’s supposed to do with that information, and then everything breaks out into lively turmoil.
“That’s right.” Anders doesn’t flinch through any of it. If anything, he looks mildly satisfied, like he’s finally corrected a long-standing misunderstanding. “If anyone has a problem with it,” he adds smugly, “I’ll assume you’re homophobic.”
Jen laughs into her champagne. “Anders, sweetheart. I used to be married to him.”
“I was too young to remember that,” he says without missing a beat.
Emelie loses it completely, head in her hand, laughing like this is the most entertainment she’s had in years. “This is such an original experience.”
Luca’s oldest immediately latches onto the most important part of the conversation. “Wait…Uncle Pet’ka’s your boyfriend?” Laura asks. “Like, actually?”
“Hells yeah, babe,” Anders says, and Luca visibly pinches the bridge of his nose like he’s trying to physically hold himself together.
“But he’s our uncle,” Laura’s younger sister tries, still working through the logic out loud in her poor middle-schooler brain.
“I’m your uncle, too, Inesa,” Anders corrects, completely serious. “Your real one. He’s the imposter.”
The table spirals from there, overlapping voices and half-questions and laughter threading through confusion, but even as it all continues I can feel Luca withdrawing into himself in real time, like he’s signing off from the entire moment.
Then he stands. His chair scrapes, and the sound cuts through everything so piercingly loud the entire room resets at once.
He walks to the island, picks up his wallet and keys with careful precision, and when he finally looks at me, everything else fades.
“We’re going for a drive.”
My stomach drops. It’s not a suggestion. It’s a demand. Anders starts to react, but I stop him without thinking, my hand settling at the back of his head because I can feel him ready to spiral. “Hey.”
He stills instantly. I take my mug and press it into his hands, and his eyes find mine with a question I don’t need him to say out loud.
I answer it the only way I can by shaking my head once, small and steady, before leaning in and kissing him right there in front of everyone.
Not to prove anything to them, but to anchor myself because I know I’ll need all the self-restraint I can muster.
When I pull back, he looks at me like the rest of the room doesn’t exist. “I love you,” I say quietly.
Silence fills the room, unintentionally heavy. But I don’t care. Not anymore. “Park,” Emelie whispers, like she’s watching something cross a point of no return. “He will murder you…”
I ignore her, focusing instead on Anders. “Love you too,” Anders says, just as certain. And when I finally look back toward Luca, he’s still standing there waiting, not angry exactly, but something that recognizes the fact that everything is different now in a way that’s scarily permanent.
So I follow him out, the sound of his keys faint against the quiet that follows us, and I tell myself this is just another step, even as it starts to feel like the beginning of something I can’t quite name yet.
I slide into the passenger seat of Luca and Em’s massive black suburban, immediately lifting my feet up so I don’t accidentally step on some Cheerios and a half-eaten McDonald’s cheeseburger that sits disgustingly beneath the dashboard.
Absentmindedly, I kick it to the side. Something tells me Luca isn’t in the mood to hear how disgusting his wife’s car is.
Luca’s the one to cut the uncomfortable silence. “Patsy’s is open in ten minutes.”
“Hmf,” I laugh, shaking my head and smiling despite it feeling wrong at the moment.
“Just so you know…I’m not going to yell,” Luca tells me.
Do I believe him? Hell no. Only an idiot would take Luca de Sousa on his word when it comes to voice levels. The man fucking yells when he’s happy.
“So…is this, like, a murder me and dump my body in the lake situation…or—”
He turns and looks at me like I just accused him of doing something far worse than murder. Mind you—the man hasn’t even put the key into the ignition yet.
“I’d watch your fucking mouth if I were you,” he threatens.
“Got it,” I say immediately, leaning against the passenger seat.
The server isn’t surprised to see us stumbling in at ten in the morning. “Bar doesn’t open until noon, you two,” the older lady chuckles.
Luca flashes her a smile. “Did you get botox, Miss Rose? You look good.”
“You look rejuvenated,” I add.
“I’ll pour it in a coffee mug,” she says. “Go sit in the back corner in case my husband gets back from his appointment early.” We slide into our usual booth. A few seconds later she returns with two white coffee mugs filled generously with scotch.
Golden sunlight pours through the dusty windows. I absentmindedly fiddle with a Splenda packet until Luca clears his throat. “I don’t know how to start,” I admit.
Before he says anything else, Luca shoots me a look. “Is that a fucking hickey?”
“What?” Fuck. I rub my neck immediately.
Luca huffs. “I don’t like this at all.”
“I know you don’t.”
“I asked you to stay away.”
“You did.”
He hesitates. “You...love him.”
My whole body softens. “It’s more than love. He’s life. I can’t breathe without him.”
He stares into his mug for a long moment. “I spent eighteen years trying to keep him safe.” The words are quiet. “I barely knew him before I adopted him,” he says. “People forget that part. Everybody acts like I was always his brother, but I wasn’t. I was a stranger with the same mother as him.”
“He didn’t know me. Hell, most days I don’t think he even liked me.” A bitter laugh escapes him. “I was twenty years old, Parker. Twenty. I had absolutely no fucking clue what I was doing.”
“I spent years trying to figure out what he needed from me. When he woke up screaming from nightmares, I was there whenever I could be. When he got suspended from hockey, I was there. When he got into fights, I was fucking there. When he spent half of middle school acting like he hated me, I was still there.” His jaw tightens.
“We both know a twenty-year-old NHL player had no business trying to raise a toddler on his own.”
“Do you know how many times he looked at me like I ruined his life?”
I do.
“I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing,” Luca says quietly. “So every time something happened, I called you.” His eyes finally meet mine. “I called you because you were the person I trusted most in the world. You’re family. You always have been.”
My stomach twists.
“When he wouldn’t listen to me, I called you. When he got suspended, I called you. When he ran away, I called you. Every single time I felt like I was failing him, I called you.”
His laugh sounds hollow. “You always knew exactly what to say.” Luca swipes his thumb across his jaw. “I practically handed him to you.”
The words land like a body check straight to the chest. Luca looks out the window at a family walking past the diner.
“I look at the two of you now and sometimes I wonder where I fucked up.” His voice is barely above a whisper.
“Sometimes...I wish I’d never introduced you to him in the first place. ”
“You think he picked me over you.”
His silence tells me everything.
“You’re his brother, Luc.” I swipe my hand down my face. “You keep acting like this is some competition you lost. But it’s not.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No. I do.” I lean forward. “You think if he needs me, then somehow he doesn’t need you.” Luca looks away. “That’s not how this works.”
“He loves you, Luca.” A lump forms in my throat. “He loves you so much that half the reason this has been so hard is because he couldn’t stand the idea of hurting you.”
For a long moment, Luca says nothing. “I still hate this,” he mutters after a second. “I hate that you’ve known him since he was a kid.”
“I do, too.”
He looks back at me. “I hate that every time I look at you, I remember his little face lighting up every time he saw you.” He reaches for his mug. “You don’t get to be another person who leaves him.”
“He’s had enough of those.”
I nod. “I know.”
“No, seriously.” His voice is quiet but unwavering. “You break his heart, Park, and they’ll never find your body.”
For the first time all morning, I huff out a laugh. “Anders would dismember me without a second thought.”
Finally, Luca smiles. “Yeah.” He swipes a hand down his face. “He got that from Emelie.”
The first customers begin filtering into Patsy’s. Luca lets out a long sigh. “You seriously couldn’t have chosen anyone else?”
I shake my head. “Luca, I love him. I can’t control that.”
He finishes off his scotch before reaching over and emptying mine too. “Ugh,” he mutters, making a face. Then he studies me. “The moment I saw that picture of you holding him on the ice, I wanted to fly to D.C. and beat the shit outta you.”
I laugh. “Would you feel better if I let you?”
“Yeah, but…” He thinks about it for a moment. “I’d settle for a broken nose.”
“In exchange for your blessing?”
“No,” he answers immediately. “But I’ll still give you a bloody nose to stroke my ego a little.”