Page 175 of Twisted Needs

I’LL ASSUME YOU’RE HOMOPHOBIC

PARKER

The one morning everybody decides to eat breakfast together just happens to be the morning after Luca finds out I’m in love with his brother. I keep telling myself that it’s a coincidence, and that Emelie and Jen didn’t coordinate this over champagne last night like it’s some kind of elaborate performance. But I’ve known them long enough to understand that the word coincidence isn’t really part of their vocabulary.

Anders and I step into the kitchen and the room shifts before either of us says anything. It’s not even the silence itself that gets me, as much as it’s the way it arrives so easily. Loud and boisterous one moment, then forks pause mid-air while conversations break mid-word. My stomach tightens immediately because there are twelve people in here and somehow it feels like all of them are looking directly at me. Nothing about this little shit show feels normal.

Jen and Em sit next to each other, splitting a bottle of champagne and sparing the orange juice. Their respective men are on either side. Luca’s two oldest girls are sitting across from them, rubbing elbows with Jen’s oldest set of twin boys. All the younger, messier kids file onto a plastic picnic table.

Lucky for them, we’re not trying to hide a thing. Anders walks beside me in one of my old Sentinels shirts that hangs nearly to his thighs, his sleep shorts just barely poking through.

Even the older kids look suspiciously alert this morning, which means Emelie and Jen absolutely orchestrated this as some sort of humiliation ritual.

“Do you want me to make you coffee?” Anders asks quietly beside me, like there aren’t twelve people openly dissecting our relationship two feet away. His fingers brush my wrist when he says it, a touch so small it almost doesn’t register until it does, until it sends a quiet heat through my chest.

“Yes,” I say, exhaling. “Please.”

“Okay, love.”

He rises slightly onto his toes and kisses me like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like kitchens full of witnesses have never been unusual for us, and for a second my brain goes completely still at how ordinary he makes it feel.

The reactions around the room are immediate. I hear Luca before I fully process the rest of everyone’s reactions, his voice flat in a way that carries more weight than shouting ever could. “In front of the entire family?”

Anders doesn’t even look at him. He just keeps moving toward the coffee maker like Luca never said anything. I can feel Luca watching him the whole time, something bouncing between guilt and betrayal shaking his expression.

I take my mug from Anders when he hands it to me a moment later, then he pauses like he’s recalibrating, takes it back again, switches it out, corrects himself out loud. “The other one has sweet cream. This has hazelnut.”

“Thanks, sweetheart,” I say before I can stop myself.

Jen immediately points at me like I’ve committed an offense against tradition. “Oh, absolutely not.”

I blink at her. “What?”

“That is my nickname for him. You cannot steal custody of sweetheart in the divorce.” Something in me almost laughs despite everything, because of course this is the first thing Jen picks an argument over.

“This is weird,” Vince mutters dryly into his mug like he’s trying to disappear behind it.

Silence settles again, heavier this time, like everyone is waiting for whoever moves first to truly define what kind of morning this is going to be. It’s Emelie who breaks it, leaning back in her chair. “I say we kick him out. Send him back to Siberia.”

“He’s a naturalized citizen,” Anders says immediately.

“That isn’t helping,” I mutter under my breath, and Anders shoots me a look like I’ve personally betrayed him.

“Family announcement,” he says.

Oh no.

“Anders and Parker are in love,” Emelie blurts before Anders can get another word out. For half a second there’s nothing. It’s like the room is deciding what it’s supposed to do with that information, and then everything breaks out into lively turmoil.

“That’s right.” Anders doesn’t flinch through any of it. If anything, he looks mildly satisfied, like he’s finally corrected a long-standing misunderstanding. “If anyone has a problem with it,” he adds smugly, “I’ll assume you’re homophobic.”

Jen laughs into her champagne. “Anders, sweetheart. I used to be married to him.”

“I was too young to remember that,” he says without missing a beat.

Emelie loses it completely, head in her hand, laughing like this is the most entertainment she’s had in years. “This is such an original experience.”

Luca’s oldest immediately latches onto the most important part of the conversation. “Wait…Uncle Pet’ka’s your boyfriend?” Laura asks. “Like, actually?”