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 thewhile 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.
