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“That’s worse.” Her voice climbs. “Don’t you see how that’s worse? You’re not confused, you’re not struggling, you’rechoosingit. You’re supporting it. You’re standing next to it and putting your name on it and everyone back home can see.”

“See what? Me training? Me winning fights?” I ask.

“Flaunting it.”

I lean against the counter and close my eyes. “I’m not flaunting anything. I go to practice. I fight. I come home and make chicken and rice like every other fighter in the sport.”

“Dad says?—”

“I don’t care what Dad says.” It comes out sharp. “Sorry. I just. Emily, I haven’t spoken to Dad in two years. He made his position clear.”

“Because you refused to repent. Because you fight people, like it was something to announce, like it was news wewere supposed to celebrate.” Her voice shakes now. “Do you remember Deuteronomy? Do you remember Romans one? You memorized those verses, Brady. You stood in the living room and recited them.”

I remember. Thirteen years old, caught looking too long at Tyler Brooks during youth group, and Dad’s solution was scripture as punishment. Stand straight. Recite. Again. Again until the words meant nothing and everything.

“I remember being a kid who was terrified of his own father.”

“He was protecting you.”

“He was breaking me.”

Silence stretches between us, a thousand miles of it.

“I have children now,” she finally says. “Caleb is six. Ruthie is four. They ask about their uncle sometimes, and I have to decide what to tell them. I have a responsibility, Brady. I have to protect them from influences that would confuse them.”

“I’m not an influence. I’m your brother.”

“You’re a man who chose sin and built his whole life around it.” The words come out rehearsed. Practiced in a mirror, maybe, or coached by Dad over Sunday dinner. “Dad’s right. He’s been right this whole time. Accepting it would’ve been enabling it. Sometimes tough love is the only love that works.”

Something in me goes very quiet and very cold.

“Do you even care about me? Does being my sister mean anything, or did you trade it all in for a doctrine that lets you feel self-righteous about abandoning me?”

Her voice cracks. For one second, one heartbeat, my actual sister surfaces through the catechism. “I love you. God knows I love you. But I love Him more, and His word is clear, and I can’t—” She stops, breathes, rebuilds the wall. “I can’t condone your choices. I can’t maintain contact with someone who embraces sin and refuses to repent. I’m praying for you. Maybe hittingbottom will bring you back to Christ. Maybe losing us is what it takes.”

“Losing you.” I laugh. “Emily, I lost you years ago. You’re just making it official.”

“Don’t contact me. Don’t contact Aunt Carol or anyone. Dad’s made it clear. Anyone who keeps a relationship with you is choosing you over God, and that’s not a choice we’re willing to make.” A breath. “I hope someday you turn back. I really do.”

The line goes dead.

I stand in my kitchen holding the phone against my ear long after there’s nothing left to hear. The chicken has stopped steaming. The rice cooker clicks over to warm. Somewhere outside, a car door slams and a dog barks and the world keeps turning like my sister didn’t just close the last door my family left cracked open in my face.

My hands are shaking.

Here’s the thing that guts me: they’re not even rejecting me for the truth. They don’t know about Dakota, about Cruz, about Dante, about Eli. They don’t know I fell into something with four people that doesn’t have a name in any church bulletin. They cut me off forproximityto the LGBTQ community. For training at a gym that lets people exist. For standing near acceptance without even claiming it.

I slide down the cabinets until I’m sitting on my kitchen floor, and the dam I’ve been reinforcing since I was thirteen years old finally fails.

I cry like I haven’t cried since Dad looked at me across the dinner table and called me an abomination. I cry for the sister who used to shield me from his belt and now can’t stand to hear my voice. For Caleb and Ruthie, who will grow up with an uncle-shaped hole they’ll be taught not to ask about. For the boy who spent a decade trying to be good enough, straight enough,quiet enough to earn back a love that was only ever offered with conditions and judgment.

My phone buzzes against the tile. A text from Dakota.

Dinner? I’m starving, and Cruz ate all my leftovers like a raccoon

I stare at the screen through blurred eyes. Type nothing. My thumbs won’t work and the tears won’t stop and I can’t figure out how to saymy family just amputated mein a text.

Ten minutes later: