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It didn’t take long for us to start sending almost every moment together. We would ride our bikes through the woods. We would go fishing together. Whenever we could, we would sleep over to each other’s house. And it didn’t take long before I started realizing that I liked him more than I should have.
He was the first person I fell in love with. It was because of him that I realized I liked guys as well. So, when he got sick and my mother explained that he wouldn’t be getting better, it hurt. Eventually, he had to be taken to a hospital a few states over. And before I could convince my mother to take me to see him, he died.
I had never felt pain like that. It was like someone had reached into my chest and had ripped my heart out. It hurt too much to pretend that I would be all right. And when I read the note that he had left me knowing that his time was almost up, I became inconsolable.
From the grave he had admitted that he had loved me too. In fact, the reason he had started talking to me that first time was because he had had feelings for me from the moment he saw me in kindergarten. It had just taken him that long to gather the courage to say hello.
I couldn’t go through that type of pain again. I had to shut down my ability to feel just to be able to get out of bed in the morning. Food lost its flavor.
Now, here Hil was making me feel things I had promised I never would. I was struggling. So, I wasn’t in the mood to be teased about it by my brothers.
“You’re not really upset with us, are you?” Titus asked, appearing like he felt bad.
“Nah, it’s all good.”
“Are you sure? You know we love you, right? We brothers have to stick together. No one is going to have our backs like we do. All three of us have been lied to our entire lives. They’re still not telling us the truth. But we will always be there for each other. You know that, right?”
As much as I might not have been ready to feel that, I knew it.
“I know,” I said, feeling better than I had.
Maybe I wasn’t looking to talk about what happened between me and Hil. Maybe I just needed to hear that someone had my back. Titus and Claude did. I knew that. Whatever damage I had done between me and Hil, I would figure out. And if I needed them, my brothers would be there to help me.
“Do you know if Quin is hosting a game night anytime soon?” I said, changing the topic.
“Probably. You know Quin,” Titus said.
Titus always assumed that I knew Quin better than I did. It was probably because he and his boyfriend both knew Quin so well. Titus’s boyfriend Lou has been roommates with Quin for the past three years. And it was because Quin and his boyfriend had come to our town looking for Quin’s boyfriend’s birth parents that Titus decided to enroll in East Tennessee University.
The two of them went back a few years. I was younger than all of them. I was more like the roommate Titus allowed to tag along when the group hung out together.
“Could you find out?”
“Of course. What’s up? Feeling like losing to Quin and Cage at a board game?”
Quin was a literal genius, and he and his boyfriend we’re considered the power couple in our group. There was no beating Quin at any game that required strategy. And there was no beating the two of them when they teamed up together.
“It’s just that Hil was telling me that he didn’t have many friends growing up. So, I thought it would be good to introduce him to a few of mine. A game night would be the least intimidating way, I’m thinking.”
Both Titus and Claude stared at me. The length of time it was taking for them to speak was making me uncomfortable.
“You got it, bro,” Titus eventually said with a smile. “We got your back,” he confirmed with a tight-lipped nod.
Chapter 7
Hil
“I told you. We got up early, went to his truck, drove to a spot in the woods, hiked for about a quarter of a mile, and then picked berries,” I said to Dillon.
“And this whole time he didn’t say anything weird?” he asked with the serious tone he got when we were trying to figure out a problem together.
“Something weird? I’m lucky if I can get him to say anything at all.”
“And after that, he just dropped you back and took off. He didn’t call you letting you know that he wasn’t coming home or something?”
“No. He said he would be visiting his mother for the rest of the day. But I was expecting him to come back for dinner.”
“Do you think something could have happened to him?”
