Page 100 of Arctic Titans of Northwood U: Volume 2

Dad had said the graces before eating. He asked the Lord to protect his children from the sinful influences of the modern world, pointedly looking at me afterward. If I hadn’t ripped my heart out to set the one guy I loved free, I would have thought Dad was starting to suspect me.

This way, it hardly mattered. I was going to be alone because nobody in the world deserved to be pulled down into this vat of toxic waste.

As I looked around the table, my heart sank lower. I didn’t know what to do in two days when I had to return to Northwood. Would I even bother returning? What for? To see the consequences of what I’d done to Tyler? To chase the puck until the last game and then search for work washing dishes or bagging groceries? Maybe I was better off here, drawing lines for a battle over Eryn’s future. I might help give her a chance to escape.

I looked at Mom. Her hair was perfectly still, curled overnight, and dyed brown. Her red lipstick framed her lips in a pinched, almost angry way. Since I was a child, she had been teaching me the differences between men and women, who did what around the house, and what was expected from each in life. She was perfectly happy with the division of labor based on sexist ideas. I half-expected her to discourage Eryn from reading.

Michael was here. He’d made a point of attending nearly every dinner while I was home. Becoming a general practitioner was the greatest achievement of humankind, according to him. There was nothing more noble. Even more so, there was nothing as challenging. He was the most important, knowledgeable, and wisest person in any room at any time. To him, there was no question about it.

And Dad, at last, who had been rubbing his hands whenever there was silence, pondering, mulling, contemplating, and finally spitting out some homophobic bullshit as though someone had asked his opinion.

It was safe to say that I hated my life.

It was also fair to say I deserved nothing less.

They were right about one thing. I’d shot my shots and they had all missed the mark. I wasn’t particularly good at anything except sharing the spotlight with someone better and drawing happiness from those who could create it out of thin air. Like Tyler.

I gritted my teeth when I thought about him. Every single time his face floated before my eyes, I wanted to cry and smash stuff.

“Stop playing with your food,” Dad said gruffly, his fuse shorter than ever.

It took me a little while to realize he had spoken to me. Had I been playing with my food? I looked at the plate and saw how I’d separated the peas from the carrots, how the strings of cabbage weren’t touching anything else, and how the bits of meat were sorted by size. “Mm.”

Dad exhaled through his nose. Few people could portray frustration with as little gesture as my father.

“May I be excused?” I asked in a flat tone. “I’m not hungry tonight.”

“The Lord has given us this meal, Sebastian,” he began, but I already knew the story.

“The Lord has also invented refrigerators so we can eat the leftovers later,” I murmured.

Eryn chuckled and choked, then cleared her throat and grabbed the glass of water to hide her grin.

If anything could lift my heart a little, it was her.

“Now, you listen to me, you ungrateful, petulant boy,” Mom snapped while Dad’s face turned crimson.

“What is the meaning of this?” Dad demanded.

Michael sat straighter if that was possible. He was so stiff I was beginning to wonder if a ventriloquist had an arm up my brother’s ass, parroting Dad’s words at me at all times. “Is this what they’re teaching you at Northwood?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Michael. It’s from Table Manners 101.”

“You stop this nonsense,” Mom said in a threatening tone.

Oh, but it felt good. A little rebellion when all else was lost. It made something flutter deep inside of me. Could my life get any worse? Even if I returned to Northwood in two days, would I ever find a shred of happiness again? I doubted it. I might as well take every chance at a chuckle I got.

“No, no,” Dad said, mediating all of a sudden, his hand raised to request silence at the table. Of course, a man would expect all others to fall quiet when he had something to say. But those opinions weren’t part of my mother’s lessons on gender. “Let’s give Sebastian an opportunity to explain himself.”

I glanced at Eryn. Her grin was wiped away by the seriousness of Dad’s tone. Her face seemed hard, her teeth gritted, and her gaze focused on something on the other side of the room.

“Obviously, something is bothering you,” Dad said flatly. “You wouldn’t otherwise throw temper tantrums.”

I snorted. “This is hardly a tantrum.”

“Don’t play with my words, boy,” he growled. “Apologize to your mother.”

“What for?”