“Do you really?” Lane wondered.
“I mean all the nitty-gritty details? Maybe not. Trevor’s kind ofbecomemy son, even if he’s not your brother, but I do want to know how it happened. This is a big thing, baby—not just for you and for him, but for ourwholefamily.”
“Right.” Lane wasn’t going to think of it that way, though if hedid, he thought maybe it wouldn’t be as awful as he’d always thought it might be. Maybe theycouldfold their relationship into the greater family structure and that would actually be okay.
Delia took a sip of her coffee. “So, youshouldtell me.”
“Um, well. Trevor’s gonna have to talk about the part where he realized he might not be straight, but he did tell me, actually, on New Year’s Eve, and I . . . I thought, well, I kinda freaked out, if I’m being honest.”
“Well, of course you did. It was everything you’d wanted, but you didn’t know if it meant he likedyou.”
“Yeah, exactly. I might have gone to Nate’s new condo way too early, totally panicking about it.”
She laughed. “How’s he doing? I feel like I barely saw him the other night, at the party.”
“Busy, with football and with his new boyfriend. The guy who owns the bar we told you about? Who plays hockey?”
“Oh, the famous Ramsey. Didn’t you—”
“Not seriously,” Lane said. “Not at all, really, actually. It’s always been—well, you know who it’s been.”
His mom looked at him with a surprisingly reassuring combination of fondness and sympathy. “Yeah,” she said. “So, what happened after you freaked out?”
It was impossible to hold back the flush. “Um, well, you know.”
“Do I?”
“Mom,” Lane whined, even as he realized how good it felt to finally be talking to her about this.
“He wanted some uh . . . practical experience, okay? And I said I’d give him some.”
Her eyebrows skidded upwards. “You’d have been okay watching him move on to someone else once he finished with you?”
“Hano, but I didn’t think about it—didn’t let myself.” God, he’d really been in love with Trevor this whole freaking time, hadn’t he? “And maybe that was better, because I didn’t have a chance to panic about it, not when things got more serious, more intense. Not when Trevor kept pushing us forward.”
“It was him, huh?” She sounded amused. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“Because that’s how he is. You think he’s this good, sweet guy. Helpful and kind, all that shit, right?”
Delia nodded.
“And then you realize that’s not fake, not exactly, but he’s maneuvering you right where he wants you. Frankly whereyouwant, too, but he’s also pushing and prodding you, just in ways you like, the whole goddamn time.”
“Honey,” Delia said, “I don’t think that’s what he does with anyone else—just you.”
It was stupid how Lane hadn’t realized he was in love, but it was even stupider to stand back and see thatno, Trevor didn’t do that with anyone else.
He wasn’t passive by any means, but it wasn’t the same.
“God,” Lane said, scrubbing a hand over his face, “I’ve been pretty blind, haven’t I?”
She just laughed. Maybe that would’ve stung, coming from someone else, but this was hismom. He loved her, and he knew, better than anything else, that she loved him.
“Maybe a little, but then again, you saw pretty clearly, too, from the beginning.”
“Yeah,” Lane said. He had. From the beginning, it had been Trevor for him, and if he had anything to say about it, it wasalwaysgoing to be Trevor.
“I have to say,” Delia said, “I’m fucking relieved, too.”
