“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” I scoffed. Billy’s shoulders slumped. “It’s nothing personal, but I’m building a good life for myself in Annandale. Sometime, you should come out and visit.”
“And by life, you mean you’re working yourself to the point of exhaustion so you don’t have to admit that you have no life?” Billy’s retort stung, but from what he knew of me, it wasn’t far from the truth. He had no way of knowing how hard I’d worked to re-invent myself since I left. “Sorry, that was shitty of me.”
“Yeah, it was.” I crossed my arms over my chest and pursed my lips. “For your information, I have a damned good life at home. I have a boyfriend who loves me, friends who will go out of their way to make sure I’m okay, and a job I’m good at. I love it there, and I don’t need you trying to guilt me into moving back home. No one coddles me there or tries to act like I’m an idiot for who I am. Yes, there are times it sucks to be so far from you guys, but the rest of the time it’s a relief. Maybe that’s hard to hear but moving away forced me to stand up for myself, and I don’t regret that a damned bit.”
Billy let out a low whistle. “Damn, baby brother’s got some bite to him. Now, you just have to reel it in a bit. I’m not the enemy here, just someone who worries about you. I know Michael fucked your head up pretty good, and I’m still pissed at him for that.”
“It is what it is. I don’t want you making his life miserable just because he dumped me.” That was the first time I realized that I’d truly moved on from my ex. Because of his little parting gift, I’d been able to escape this small town while he was trapped here. I felt sorry for him now, because he had dreams he’d never be able to achieve as long as his dad controlled the purse strings.
“You’re a better man than me. I’m not sure I’d so easily forgive and forget.”
Billy didn’t realize that I hadn’t forgotten at all. The way things had ended between us still hurt, but I knew I was in a better place because of him. I was infatuated with the older man, but I’d never felt about him the way I did Blake. “What good would it do me to hold a grudge forever?”
“Wow, you really have grown up, haven’t you?”
My heart raced as we drove down Main Street. So much was familiar, and now I felt a pang of longing for everything that I’d left behind when I ran away from Michael. The infrequent but unmistakable Pride flags had me wondering if I’d done myself a disservice by leaving this sleepy little town I never expected to join the twenty-first century.
“I think staying here, where you all wanted to coddle me, held me back.” I didn’t mean it to be shitty, but with three older brothers and the small-town mentality, I’d never been forced to prove I was capable of standing on my own two feet. Now, I knew that was possible, even if I still wanted someone to take decisions out of my hands.
I sucked in a deep breath, feeling like a weight had been lifted off my chest. For the first time since Billy had driven me to the bus station, I knew I could stand on my own two feet.
“So, a boyfriend, huh?” Leave it to Billy to wait until we were only a few blocks away from home before he grabbed onto that little nugget. “Does he treat you right?”
“He’s amazing,” I gushed. As a reminder to myself, I squeezed my legs together, feeling the weight of the cage between my legs. “And before you ask, no, I didn’t jump into bed with him the second I got to town. Hell, I tried to avoid him for a long time because I thought I needed to stay single until I figured out who I was.”
“There was never anything wrong with you, Danny.” Billy pulled up in front of our family home but didn’t turn off the ignition. “I think you got caught up in what you thought you wanted, and Michael did the same. The two of you were a disaster in the making.”
A lump formed in my throat at the mention of Michael. What Billy said only partly made sense, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask him to clarify. Doing so would bring Michael to the forefront of my mind, and there was no place for him there anymore.
The one thing we could agree on, now that I’d found a healthy relationship, was that things never would have worked out with Michael. He couldn’t give me what I wanted, and I was never going to be the boy he was looking for, despite all the sweet nothings he whispered when we first got together.
“Yeah, we were. I see that now, but I guess it’s a lesson I needed to learn for myself.” I got out of the car and waited for Billy to open the trunk. Talking about the past wasn’t something I wanted to spend my short vacation doing. Hopefully, my abrupt end to the conversation was enough to get Billy to drop it.
The front door opened and Mom stepped onto the porch. She wasn’t the type to rush down the steps and throw herself into my arms. She’d always given us space. Today, I wished she was the type of mother to smother us with affection. The contrast between her jeans and simple tank top and the apron that protected her clothes from whatever she’d been working on was ridiculous, but it made me realize how much I did miss my family.
She pretended to pick dead blooms out of the baskets hanging from the overhang until I set down my suitcase next to the door. “Hi, Mom.”
“Did you have a good flight?” She leaned against the railing, allowing her gaze to travel the length of my body. I resisted the urge to fidget under her silent scrutiny. I’d been a scrawny kid who couldn’t gain weight to the point my parents had taken me to a number of specialists to figure out what was wrong with me. Even with a clean bill of health, she still worried.
“I did.” Tension crackled in the air between us. Even though she let me go, I knew she didn’t approve of my decision to be alone to lick my wounds. I closed the distance between us and pulled her into a hug.
Her hair smelled like strawberries with a hint of vanilla, the same as it always did. I closed my eyes as she softly rubbed my back, settling my mind. This would always be a piece of home for me, even if the town itself no longer felt like home. “You’re looking well. Are you taking care of yourself?”
“I am,” I promised.
Mom placed her hand on the inside of my elbow and led me into the house. Billy grumbled when she requested that he take my suitcase to my bedroom, muttering something about moving away so the other brothers would have to wait on him hand and foot. I glanced over my shoulder and stuck out my tongue at him.
I took my seat at the kitchen table and allowed Mom to make me a late lunch while we caught up on everything that had been happening in Harmony Grove since I’d left. Hint: there was nothing new in town. I seriously could have lived without the latest town gossip.
Or so I thought, until Mom dropped a bombshell. I’d only been half-listening, a bad habit I regretted when I caught the end of her monologue. “…I don’t know what Harmony Haven is going to do if they move forward with the development plan they keep talking about.”
“What are you talking about?” Harmony Haven was the local youth center and it had been my sanctuary when I was a kid. The assholes in school were way too cool to hang out at the youth center, and the staff worked damned hard to make sure LGBTQ youth in town knew there was nothing wrong with them. “I thought they were solid?”
“They are, but money talks.” Mom sighed and shook her head. “You know how people in this town can be. They’re scared of anything that disrupts the way things have always been, but now they’re diving into the deep end with trying to bring the downtown area back to life. There’s some hot-shot investor who wants to tear down a bunch of the buildings and update the aesthetics, whatever that means.”
“They can’t do that!” My chair screeched as I shoved back from the table. “If people want a city, it’s not even thirty minutes away. Harmony Grove already has a reputation for being a charming small town.”
“But this developer has everyone convinced that’s the exact reason things are dying.” She shrugged and frowned. “If we can’t find someone to stand up to him and show the people who live here why they’re wrong, I’m not sure there’s anything that can be done.”
