Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last

you wouldn’t be expelled for your perversion.
    Yeah, ’cuz getting hitched to someone you weren’t attracted to or in love with, and lying to them about sustained infidelity, was so much more honorable than the truth.
    But God help you if you were a male and had a boyfriend on the up-and-up—as he had had for the last twelve months or so.
    “I…ah, I broke up with someone.”
    Annnnd now it was crickets on his mother’s side. “Really?” she said after a moment, like she was shocked, but trying to keep from showing it.
    You think that’s a surprise, guess what’s coming next, Mom, he thought.
    Because, holy shit, he was going to…
    Wait, was he really going to do this now, over the phone? Shouldn’t it be in person?
    What exactly was the protocol here?
    “Yes, I, ah…” He swallowed hard. “I’ve been in a relationship for most of the past year, actually.”
    “Oh…my.” The hurt in her tone stung him. “I—we—your father and I never knew.”
    “I wasn’t sure how to tell you.”
    “Do we know her? Or her family?”
    He closed his eyes, his chest compressing. “Ah…you know the family. Yes.”
    “Well, I’m very sorry it didn’t work out. Are you okay…? How did it end?”
    “It just died, to be honest.”
    “Well, relationships are so very difficult. Oh, my love, my dearest heart—I can hear how sad you are. Would you like to come home and—”
    “It was Saxton. Qhuinn’s cousin.”
    There was a sharp inhale over the connection.
    As his mother went utterly silent, Blay’s arm started shaking so badly he could barely hold the phone.
    “I…I, ah…” His mother swallowed hard. “I didn’t know. That ah, you…”
    He finished what she could not in his head:
I didn’t know that you are one of
those
people.
    Like gays were social lepers.
    Oh, hell. He shouldn’t have said a thing. Not
one
fucking thing about this. Goddamn it, why did he have to blow his whole life up at the same time? Why couldn’t his first real lover break up with him…and then he’d wait a couple of years, maybe a decade, before he came out to his parents and they shut him down? But noooooo, he had to—
    “Is that why you’ve never talked about who you were with?” she asked. “Because…”
    “Maybe. Yes…”
    There was a sniffle. And then a hitched breath.
    Her disappointment coming over the connection was too much to bear, the crushing weight settling on his chest and rendering it impossible to breathe.
    “How could you—”
    He rushed to cut her off, because he couldn’t bear to have her sweet voice say the words. “
Mahmen
, I’m sorry. Look, I didn’t mean it, okay? I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m just—”
    “What have I or we ever done—”
    “
Mahmen
, stop. Stop.” In the pause that followed, he thought about quoting her some Lady Gaga, and backing it up with a whole lot of it’s-not-your-fault, you’ve-done-nothing-wrong-as-a-parent stuff. “
Mahmen
, I just—”
    He broke down at that point, weeping as quietly as he could. The sense that in his mother’s view, he had let down his family just by being who he was…was a failure of acceptance that he was never going to get over. He just wanted to live, honestly and out front, with no apology. Like everyone else. To love who he loved, be who he was…but society had a different standard, and as he had always feared, his parents were a part of that—
    Dimly, he was aware of his mother speaking to him, and he struggled to pull it together and end the call—
    “…to make you think you couldn’t come to us with this? That it’s something that would change how we feel about you?”
    Blay blinked as his brain translated what he’d just heard into some language that made any kind of sense. “I’m sorry…? What?”
    “Why have you…what did we do to make you feel that anything about you would make you somehow…diminished in our eyes?” She cleared her throat, as if she were gathering herself. “I love you. You are my heart beating outside of my chest. I don’t care who you are mated to, or whether they have blond hair or black hair, blue or green eyes, male or female parts—as long as you are happy, that’s all I worry about. I want for you what you want for yourself. I love you, Blaylock—I love you.”
    “What…are you saying…”
    “
I love you
.”
    “
Mahmen
…” he croaked, tears forming again.
    “I just wish you hadn’t told me over the phone,” she muttered. “I’d like to hug