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Isaac freezes, his eyes narrowing before glancing at me. “Dean?MyDean?”
Biting my bottom lip to keep me from grinning, I reply, “Well, he’s sort ofmyDean now.”
Isaac couldn’t look more shocked. “Really?”
And that’s how I end up telling my little brother everything about how I pushed Dean away twelve years ago and how he reentered my life recently. I leave out the dirty details, of course.
“So, you’re…” he starts.
With the beer bottle at my lips, I finish the sentence for him. “Bisexual, I guess.”
This makes him laugh. “You guess?”
“Listen, this wasn’t supposed to be about me,” I argue, setting my drink down. “This was supposed to be about you.”
“No,” he argues. “I like hearing about you. I’ve…missed a lot.”
“Yeah,” I mumble to myself. “You have.”
Before I know it, our beers are gone, and it feels like time is slipping through my fingers. I’m not ready to let him go again.
I pay the bartender, and we slide the empty bottles to the inside edge of the bar. Then we stand and face each other for a moment. He walks to the door first and I follow.
This whole thing feels like a fever dream. Did any of this really happen?
As we stand on the sidewalk in front of the bar, we shuffle our feet a bit, putting off this goodbye. I need to say something, but I don’t know how to express this.
“Thanks, Caleb,” he mutters under his breath. “I appreciate you coming.”
“I’d come to all of them if I could. But I want to give you your space, Isaac. I’m just happy that you’re free now.”
His head pops up. With a scoff, he says, “I’m not free.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“You think because I ran away from our dad that I’m free? You think there’s anywhere I can go to be free from him and people like him?”
“I—” The words are caught on my lips.
“Caleb, I didn’t run away to feel free. I ran away because I knew that if I stayed there, I’d hate myself just like he wanted me to.”
My chest is heaving as I receive this information. This entire time, I thought Isaac was free. And meanwhile, I’ve been trying to promise my family that same sense of freedom. To hear him say he’ll never have it is devastating.
“So we just have to live with his voice in our heads forever?” I ask. “Constantly telling us we’re not good enough.”
Isaac shrugs. “Music helps me drown the voices out.”
Glancing away, I stare unfocused at the glow of streetlights on the dark buildings. What is my distraction? What helps me drown out his voice?
There’s no hesitation—Briar, Abby, Dean.
We were never going to outrun other people’s judgment or my father’s hatred. There’s nowhere we could move that would give us that freedom. But we can give each other peace.
If we let Dean go, we’d be letting them win. Truett Goode would get exactly what he wants.
I can’t let that happen.
“Everything okay?” Isaac asks.
