“Eight,” Kane said, counting them off in his head. “Six boys and two girls. They were thinking about only having one after Quinn, but that one turned out to be twins. Mom was ready to get Dad clipped after Ian snuck up on her after Braeden and Riley. She made the appointment when she started throwing up because of Ryan.”
“Aren’t you guys Catholic? Irish or something?” Miki nodded to the gold cross at Kane’s neck. “Isn’t that against the rules or something?”
“Yeah, but so is murder, and that’s pretty much where it was heading if Dad didn’t go in.” Kane grinned. “Only fair. Mom went through the pain of childbirth. Dad could sit on frozen peas because his nuts got trimmed.”
“You guys talk about stuff like that?” He handed Kane the other half of his sandwich when the man finished off the last bit of the pastrami. “Don’t give me any shit about the chips. You don’t like ’em, don’t eat them.”
“I’ll give it a go.” He nodded. “And yeah, we talk about everything in our family. Nothing’s sacred.”
“Do they know?” Miki hesitated, then waded in carefully. “About you liking other guys. Like that, I mean.”
“Yeah, eventually,” Kane admitted. “Quinn… he’s the runt… came out to me first. He was scared a little bit, so he thought he’d try it out on me. I thought he knew I’d been with both… guys and girls… but he didn’t. So, Q had a bit of a shock. Then I told him if he wanted me to talk to the family with him, I would.”
“You weren’t going to?”
“Never really thought about it, I guess.” He shrugged and bit into Miki’s leftover half sandwich. The chips were weird, a sweet onion-spice taste on top of the roast beef, but it was doable. “I figured if ever I found that one person to introduce to the rest of the asylum, they’d figure it out then if he was a guy.”
“How’d they take it?” Miki leaned back in his chair. He tossed a piece of crust over to Dude. The dog caught it in midair and fell down over it, rolling the bread into crumbs.
“That dog’s fucked in the head,” Kane remarked. “How’d my family take it? Dad was… it was hard for him, I think, but he took it pretty good. He kind of adjusts in midstream and keeps paddling. But Mom… she started crying. I think she was… angry.”
“Angry? How come?” Miki leaned forward to tug on the dog’s ears and pursed his lips to make noises at Dude.
“Don’t know.” Kane concentrated on eating the sandwich as slowly as he could. “But then Ian spouted off some shit about Mom blowing the ten percent rule for homos, and she flew across the table to beat him with the wooden spoon she had in the veggies. Peas were flying everywhere, Ian was screaming blue bloody murder, and Mom was yelling at him that I was his brother, and he better get his shite together or she’d get it together for him.”
“Fucking hell,” Miki muttered.
Kane waved the remainder of the roast beef at Miki and grinned easily. “Never piss off an Irishwoman when she’s made a Sunday roast and two of her sons have just told her they’re gay.”
“I’ll try to remember,” Miki drawled. “Maybe you shouldn’t have done it on a Sunday.”
“Seemed like the best time. Most of us are there then.”
“You guys were older though, right? Like out of the house?”
“Yeah,” Kane said, nodding. “I’d been with someone for a bit, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Quinn was solo. He just needed it out there.”
“What did your dad say? Afterwards, I mean.”
“Honestly? Right then at the table? Nothing.” Kane leaned over and fed the dog the last of the bread. “Later, he asked me if I was being safe. He was worried more about that than anything else. Dad doesn’t… it’s not like he goes out and starts giving you a piece of his mind. He’s one of those stone-faced guys you go to when your life’s gone to shit, and then he says a couple of sentences and boom, things are all good.”
“He wanted you to use condoms?” Miki laughed. “That’s kind of funny.”
“More like he wanted me to take care of myself. To fall in love or at least give a shit about who I was going to bed with. A lot of gay guys he knew something about were sluts.” He shrugged. “Dad always said we needed to at least like the person we were with. He doesn’t care if we weren’t married before we had sex or if we fucked a guy. That’s not important to him. He wants his kids to be happy. Unless we’re doing a sheep, in which case he’ll disown us, ’cause you know, we’re Irish, not some Scot come down from the hills.”
Miki snorted. “Is that supposed to be funny?”
“Dad thought it was.” Kane nudged him, and Miki bent sideways to avoid his sharp elbow. “What about you? Tell anyone?”