“Says the man who’s never been in love,” Connor pointed out.
“No, I have. And you know what? It hurt like fucking hell because I wasn’t what he wanted. But I tried. Sometimes, Con, you’ve got to just try.” Quinn sighed, fighting with a knot in his laces. Connor took the shoe from him, then worked the tangle free.
“I don’t want to spend my life fighting, Q. I’ll admit it.” He shrugged. “And I don’t even know if this thing I feel for him is solid. Yeah, I’ve had these kinds of… hits happen to me before. He’s not the first guy I’ve thought about. He’s just the one that seems to be digging into me.”
“Then isn’t he worth fighting for? Aren’t you worth fighting for?” Quinn cocked his head at his older brother, unerringly echoing their father. “What you’re saying here is, you don’t want to go through what I went through—still go through sometimes. You don’t want to be called faggot by people you work with or maybe even find cocksucker scratched into your car’s paint. Is that it?”
“People still call you names?” Connor’s head came up, his temper sharpened by Quinn’s words. “At work? You’re a goddamn professor! At a damned university. Shit like that isn’t supposed to happen to you anymore, Q. Not—”
“And you’re a cop. You’ve got a gun. Someone calls you a name, and you could shoot them,” his brother snarked. “The most I could do is possibly call their mother something nasty and hope they don’t speak Wu.”
“I’ve been on the wrong side of that tongue of yours. And yeah, I could shoot them, or I could just walk away.”
“Yeah, you can walk away and not have to worry about someone picking a fight with you because you leaned over to kiss another guy in public. Because it’ll be safe. Because you’re so safe now—like going on drug raids in places God’s scared to look at with only a prayer and a gun. That kind of safe. You already spend your life fighting. You’re stupid if you can’t see that no one is safe in this world, Con. You’re na?ve if you think I am—or anyone else. There’s always going to be someone hurting someone else.
“Thing is, you’re not a coward. Don’t start being one now. You’re stronger than that, Con—better than that. Be the brother I know I have. The one who did battle with the Delanys. The one who pulled me off the roof. Even the one who sometimes pushed me onto the dodgeball court in school because he knew I’d enjoy the game even when it scared the crap out of me. Be that brother, Con—the brother that won’t be ashamed to love another man, even if the world might hate him for it.”
“Da told me it doesn’t matter who I love so long as I love,” Connor whispered.
“Then you’re a fucking idjit more if you don’t take a chance,” Quinn declared, taking his unlaced shoe from his brother’s hands. “Because no one’s more right than Da—and I don’t know anyone who loves more than him. No one.”
“Ever thought about being a priest, Q? You’re damned good at it.” Connor grabbed his brother’s foot, then tied his sneaker as if Quinn was once again three and looking to his older sibling for help. “And you kind of already dress like one.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t think I’d like celibacy.” Quinn’s eyes snapped with humor. “Besides, Quinn éanna Morgan, gay Irish priest, way too much of a cliché.”
FOREST HEARD the door open behind him, but the cold was back, and he hurt in places he didn’t even know could hurt. The nurse promised pain medications, but he wasn’t sure. Especially after swimming in the slurry ocean of his mother’s conversation, Forest felt dragged down enough. He didn’t want to add a morphine drip to the mix—even if he sorely wanted to drug himself to oblivion so he didn’t have to feel anymore.
And despite his best efforts, he couldn’t get the clammy feel of his mother’s proposition out of his mind. It nested there, curling its sticky talons around his thoughts, reminding him of the times he’d been—if not eager, then at least willing—to do anything she’d wanted him to do.