Page 569 of End Game

Maybe because I expected worse.

Maybe because I've spent years expecting exactly that.

I look at him. “Why?”

“You know why.”

“No. Explain it.”

Dad's mouth tightens. “You know what your mother wanted for you.”

“And what about what I want?”

He doesn't answer.

“That isn't rhetorical.”

“Micah—”

“What about what I want?”

Dad looks away first.

I knew he would.

Mom speaks instead. “We wanted you to be happy.”

“I am.”

She looks at me—really looks—and I wonder what she sees.

The tattoos she learned to tolerate because at least they were art.

The gauges she hated.

The hair I stopped cutting the way she preferred sometime in my twenties.

All the small ways she's adjusted her idea of me for years without realizing none of those were the important part.

“You don't look happy right now.”

“No.” My voice almost breaks—almost.

“Because I'm sitting here telling my parents something I knew might cost me them.”

Mom shakes her head immediately. “You will never lose us.”

Hope is a stupid reflex.

Mine moves anyway.

Dad looks at her.

Then at me.

“But we can't accept this,” Mom says.

The hope dies so fast it almost feels physical.