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“You could say that,” Kane said.
Hayden couldn’t just sit here cross-legged and stare at the bloke like the dimmest lawyer ever to be admitted to the roll of barristers, could he? “Why could you say that?” he asked.
“Plays for Racing 92,” Nyree said. “Paris. Tighthead prop. That’s the front row. Also captain for England for the internationals. Here for the wedding, and missing two matches for it. That’s loyalty, eh.”
“Captain the last two seasons, that’s all,” Luke said, the first time he’d opened his mouth. “Doesn’t mean I will be again.”
“Right,” Nyree said. “After you won the Six Nations last year? The European Championship,” she told Hayden.
“Excuse me,” he said. “That much rugby knowledge, I have. I’m Zora’s brother, remember? I also know that a prop’s in the front row, thank you very much. I am a Kiwi.”
Luke wasn’t looking at Hayden, and he seemed not even to have heard him. Had he been that obvious? Please, no. Luke was looking away, though, so probably yes. In fact, he picked up a brush and began studying the outline of trees that Nyree had sketched onto the end wall as if they fascinated him. One mangled, deeply cauliflowered ear was glowing red, though, and the color was creeping up the back of his thick neck, too, all the way to the edge of his close-cropped dark hair.
Oh, bloody hell. He had noticed. Hayden wanted to laugh, it was so squirm-worthy. On the other hand, he was also pathetic, so maybe not so much on the laughing.
Luke was the size of a boulder. He was the size of a tank. His voice seemed to come all the way from his barrel of a chest, quiet and deep and powerful as the waters of the Waiau River, born in the harshness of the Southern Alps and flowing to join some of the coldest waters in the world.
At least that was how he seemed to Hayden, and he couldn’t get his breath, even though, yes—pathetic. Luke’s thighs were the size of tree trunks, his forearms corded with muscle and sinew. His nose had been broken much more than once, and he had a scar over one eye, another on his cheek, and, Hayden was sure, heaps more under his neatly-trimmed scruff of dark beard. Even his hands looked strong, and Hayden knew they would be. A prop’s job was to hang onto his man in the front row of the scrum and push against the opposite line like a freight train. A prop didn’t do any kicking, and he almost never carried the ball. All the guts and none of the glory, but when he tackled a man, that man went down.
Hayden kept painting grass, wishing that his usual cheerful line of chat hadn’t deserted him, that his body wasn’t tingling, that his very scalp wasn’t prickling. He hoped nobody was watching. He hoped nobody could see.
“And I don’t know whether I’m meant to say,” Nyree went on, painting furiously but precisely on her bird, “but the secret’s out to half the New Zealand rugby world since Luke turned up unexpectedly at our hen-and-stag night and spilled it, and anyway, secrets block my painting chi. Last chance to stop me, Luke. Three, two, one—everybody, Luke’s gay. If you wanted to tell Kane privately, sorry and all that. But you’re not here for long, and you never tell anybody anything, and he needs to know now, I reckon, so he has time to absorb before you leave again. Come to think of it, the gay thing is probably why you never tell anybody anything, and why you never stay long, either. How have you kept that secret? Why haven’t you told us before?”
Everybody stopped painting. Everybody but Nyree, that is, who’d moved on to another bird, this one clutching a tiny envelope in its talon.
“I …” Luke said, then stopped. “I don’t know what you want me to say. That I told my oldest mate the other night and it got so awkward that I had to leave his house, and he doesn’t know how to be my mate anymore? That I know more of that’s coming my way? I knew it wouldn’t be easy. I knew not everybody would accept it. And I said it anyway, so here I am. Out.”
Hayden couldn’t be silent anymore. “You tell yourself,” he said quietly, “that it’s practice for the tough ones, but it turns out they’re all tough ones. And if you’re a rugby player …”
Luke didn’t answer. He said, “Right. Trees. Painting.” And then stood there and didn’t, until he turned around again and looked. Not at Hayden, and not at Nyree, who wasn’t painting anymore, either. He looked at Kane.
His brother.
Kane said, “I’m sorry, bro. I didn’t know that was what you wanted to talk to me about. So you wouldn’t have to say it in front of everybody.”
“Yeh,” Luke said, and that was all. The moment stretched out, and Nyree said something, but Hayden wasn’t listening. He was watching Luke. And Luke was still watching Kane.
Hayden knew about your sibling who was there for you when your parents weren’t. He knew how much it mattered. He held his breath and thought, Please. Say the right thing. Nobody deserves to be hurt like this.
“I don’t know what to say here,” Kane finally said. “What the … the protocol is.” Which didn’t sound good.
“There’s no protocol,” Hayden said, because somebody had to say it, and he was the one who knew how. “There’s just telling the truth, and asking for the truth. It’s what you don’t say that puts up the barricades, and it’s too hard to get over those barricades.”
Kane said, “Then I guess … it’s that I can’t see you any differently. Still my brother, aren’t you. Still the one who taught me how to be a man. Maybe a decent man. The only one who taught me that.”
Luke’s ears were redder than ever now, and he stared at his brother, mute, like he couldn’t believe it. Like he couldn’t hope for it.
Kane went on, still slowly, “That’s why you never stick around. It’s why you went to France, and why you stayed there. Why it felt like you didn’t want to … to know me anymore. I thought it was like Mum and Dad. That we weren’t meant to share, or to say. That we were meant to be OK alone. Strong, like they said.”
Luke said, “I didn’t … I couldn’t …” And stopped. He was still holding the paintbrush, but his hand was shaking. He looked at it as if he couldn’t believe it, then put his hand out. For support, maybe, but his hand must have touched wet paint, because it jerked back, and he said, “Sorry, Nyree. I didn’t …”
His legs were shaking now, too. He crouched down, dropping the brush, and put a hand over his eyes. His body turned away. Hiding.
Hayden knew about hiding.
Nyree was there, then, her movements quicksilver. Crouched beside him, her pregnant belly against his side, her arms around him. “You’re my brother,” she said. “And I love you. Nothing will ever change that. Ever.”
Luke’s entire body was shaking now, and he must be crying, but he was still hiding his face, so Hayden couldn’t see. Hayden would bet that he hadn’t cried for years. For decades. Now, he couldn’t help it, because when that dam broke, there was no holding back.
