“I was thinking—” I paused, not sure how to say this. “Do you ever think about that? Having a family? Kids?”
He was quiet for a long moment. “Sometimes. Why?”
“Watching them today, I thought—could we ever have that? Would we even want to?”
Another long silence.
“My family would never accept it,” he said finally. “My mother would never see our kids as her grandchildren. TheChurch wouldn’t bless them. Society would judge them, judge us. It’s not—it’s not something I let myself think about.”
“But what if we could? What if we came out, got married someday, adopted or used a surrogate? What if we built that life anyway?”
“That’s a beautiful fantasy, Étienne. But we can’t even go to Thanksgiving dinner without falling apart.” His voice was gentle but firm. “How are we supposed to build a whole life?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I want to try.”
“I know you do.” He pressed closer. “And that terrifies me. Because I want it too. But wanting it doesn’t make it possible.”
We fell quiet after that. I held him and listened to his breathing deepen into sleep.
For the moment, it would have to be enough.
Even though I was starting to realize it might never be.
All I knew was that something had to change.
Before the hiding broke us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Étienne
The email came Friday morning while I was still in bed.
Marco was up early—I could hear him downstairs making coffee. I grabbed my phone from the nightstand, intending to check the practice schedule, and saw the email notification.
Subject: Apt. 3B Restoration
My stomach dropped.
I opened it, already knowing what it would say.
Dear Mr. Savard,
We’re pleased to inform you that the restoration work on Apt. 3B has been completed ahead of schedule. The apartment is ready for occupancy. Please contact the building manager to arrange a walkthrough at your convenience.
Ahead of schedule. They’d estimated another month, maybe six weeks. It had only been three weeks since that estimate. Seven weeks since the fire.
Seven weeks since everything had changed.
I lay there staring at the email, my gut clenched.
I could move out. Today, if I wanted to.
I didn’t want to.
The realization smacked into me like a truck. I didn’t want to leave Marco’s house. Didn’t want to go back to living alone, to separate spaces, to not waking up with him beside me.
But what did Marco want? We’d never actually discussed this. We’d been living with a deadline—“until the apartment is ready”—and now the deadline had arrived sooner than expected.
