Page 84 of Catching Sparkles

“You don’t think he’ll try anything if you’re with me?” I asked, and he let out a surprised little huff of breath. My dad wasn’t a small guy, but he was nowhere near Rhys’ height or musculature.

“He’s not going to lay a finger on you. I can promise you that.”

The idea that he’d be with me changed things. A lot. I was terrified of my dad. I always had been. I knew he would probably still yell at me or snap at me, but… he couldn’t actually hurt me with Rhys around, could he?

I took in a deep breath, wondering what it would be like to face him with a protector at my side. I’d always felt transparent in front of him, like he could just look at me and see inside my head and know all of my thoughts. He’d known what I was before I even had, that I’d liked boys.

Would he be able to look at me and know that I was in love with Rhys? Maybe he wasn’t as all-knowing as he’d seemed in my childhood, since he still seemed to be clinging to the idea that Benji and I had been secretly messing around behind everyone’s back, which had absolutely never been the case.

“Okay,” I finally said. “Do you think maybe we could go today? Now? I just really want to get it over with.”

“Yeah. Of course. Whatever you need.”

“Do you want me to put their address in for you?” I asked, gesturing to the maps app on my car’s screen.

He snorted, giving me an odd look. “I know where your parents live. I picked you up and dropped you off there plenty of times.”

“I didn’t know if you remembered. It’s been a long time.”

It was like a shadow passed over him, his fingers tightening on my steering wheel for a moment. “I should have never left. I was such a fucking idiot.”

“You were never an idiot,” I denied. “You left for your dream. And it didn’t exactly work out, but now you can have a different dream.”

“Yeah,” he agreed softly. “I… I don’t want to leave again. I think I belong here.” He stopped, then let out a shocked laugh tumble out of his mouth. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

“It’s a good thing,” I said, unreasonably happy to hear him finally speak it out loud. “And I think you’re right. You’re exactly where you belong.”

With me.

RHYS

I PULLED UP to Kendall’s childhood home, where his parents still lived. It was in an older neighborhood where most of the houses were kind of run down. Many of them, despite the obvious lack of money, had clearly put a lot of effort into making their homes a cheery place to live with blooms in the flower bed, and cute decor placed around the porch or yard. The Austin place had an American flag mounted off the porch rail, and an ornately detailed metal cross staked into the garden soil.

Once I’d parked, I glanced over at Kendall, who was eyeing the house with obvious trepidation. I was pretty sure that once he’d left to stay with my parents, he had never come back here. I’d already gone away to college by that point, and we’d only talked about it a handful of times.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked. “We don’t have to. We can just leave.”

He let out a sigh, rubbing a hand over his other arm as he stared down into the dashboard. It was getting later into the evening, and the warm glow of the setting sun was pooling in through his window, washing over his rosy hair and casting shadows onto his face from his long lashes. He’d put on an oversized, slouchy t-shirt after our shower, and those tended to drift to the side on his slim shoulders to let his collarbone peek out. He was so pretty and delicate, like a living doll.

“You probably think I’m such a psycho,” he said, looking amused and a bit wistful.

“Why would I think that?”

“I cried over you last night,” he reminded me, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling. “Just because I was so relieved that you came home to me. And now I can’t even manage to muster up a single tear for my sick mom.”

“You don’t have to feel bad about that,” I said, my chest aching for this sweet and selfless person who’d been treated so badly by his own parents that all the empathy he might have had for them was just gone, leaves in the wind. “No one blames you for cutting them out.”

“I know I probably seem callous, but… I already did all the grieving I can do over this,” he said. “And now I’m just numb to it.”

I reached out for him, because some part of me was just aching to touch him and try to make things better, brushing my knuckles over his smooth cheek before tucking a loose strand of his silky hair behind his ear. I loved the way he felt under my fingertips, always so soft and warm. And there was just something about the adorable ponytail he almost always had his hair pulled back into. It was so cute, and so him, and I loved pulling the tie out myself to watch it tumble down to his shoulders in those beautiful waves.

I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye, and realized Hayward had come around the side of the house, presumably to see who had pulled up. My hand dropped from Kendall’s hair out of habit, but I realized in that moment I really didn’t care if he suspected anything about us. His opinion was worthless to me. No one who would treat their own kid like that, regardless of bullshit reasons like religion, deserved an ounce of my respect.

Hell, no one who treated anyone like that deserved anyone’s respect. The fact wasn’t lost on me that his hatred of queer people would extend beyond Kendall. And despite it being a pretty new discovery about myself, that included me, too. He might have perceived me as a typically masculine all-American guy, which I supposed I was, but his feelings about me were going to totally change once he realized I was no different than the glittery, pink-haired, strawberry-scented doll next to me.

Noticing Kendall’s worried face, I gave his thigh a comforting squeeze, the way he’d done to me so many times. “Don’t worry. I won’t let anyone hurt you. Ever,” I promised him.

He nodded a little, rewarding me with all that adoration he was so good at radiating from his eyes. It made my whole body feel like I was rising up into the air like a balloon. We got out, and I hurried around the car to be by his side.