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“How our parents are going to react to us.”
I’d tried to not think about it, but the closer we got to Malibu, the more it weighed on my mind.
“Oh.”
“With our parents out of the picture, it’s been easy to ignore the fact that we are, in fact, stepbrothers. They assume we’ve been hanging out like, I dunno, bros or something.” I took a deep breath. “The second they get back, reality returns, Matty. They’ll figure it out pretty quick. I guess I want to know what happens when they walk back through the door.”
64
MATTHIAS
Ciaran was right. We’d been living in our own bubble ever since our parents jettisoned off on their world tour.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t ready to face the harsh truth of our reality as I drove back to Malibu. It was that I was so caught up in Ciaran and wanting to resolve the hectic chaos that was my life that I hadn’t fully considered how our relationship might work once some sort of normalcy came into existence.
The truth of it all was that I hadn’t expected to fall in love.
Ciaran’s gaze pinned me to my seat, though his expression was more of curiosity than worry, so that felt encouraging.
“Dad and Dante both know I’m pansexual, so it won’t be a surprise to them that I’m dating a guy. What will surprise them is that I’m serious about the guy. That’s kinda never happened before.”
“Okay,” Ciaran said with a cautious tone. “But that’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, I love that you’re serious about me. Hello, I’m serious right back.” He smiled. “Whether we like it or not, we are stepbrothers and we live together. I can’t imagine our parents are going to give us a thumbs-up about the whole thing.”
I studied the road signage ahead. We were an hour from Santa Monica. An hour where it was just us, in my car, by ourselves, where we could pretend to be anyone we wanted. Ciaran would be a world-famous author and I would be an Olympic gold medalist swimmer, and we’d live in a cliffside mansion and just be us.
Except we weren’t those people yet. We might never become those people. I was twenty-one and Ciaran was eighteen. We still had so much to learn.
All I really knew was that Ciaran was it for me. Ciaran and swimming.
“Do you think we should keep it quiet from them?” Ciaran asked when I didn’t respond right away.
His hand squeezed my thigh and I placed mine over the top of his.
“How do you think your mom would react, if she knew?”
“That’s a two-fold answer,” Ciaran said. “She could care less about my sexuality and I think she knew before I did that I was super into boys. So that’s part one. She’d be happy that I’m dating someone who made me happy.”
I gave him a quick smile at that because it made me happy that I made him happy. “And the other part?”
“It might give her pause,” he answered thoughtfully. “But in the end, because we’re not blood related and didn’t grow up together, I think she will come around to the idea of us being together if she knows it’s serious and we’re not just us fooling around. Sleeping together, however…” He trailed off.
“Maybe not so much into the idea of that part?”
“Again, my mom is super sex-positive, and as long as we are being safe, I think she’d be cool with it once she got over the familial tie thing. I believe her main hangup will be that we live together and that our bedrooms are literally next door in the guesthouse.”
I zipped around a few cars that were going well under the speed limit. “Just means our parents won’t hear us at night.”
“Not helping, Matty,” he said with an exaggerated groan. “What about your dad?”
Ciaran already knew about the orgies I’d witnessed. I’d seen my dad fuck complete strangers—all women—since before I was a teenager. So Dad didn’t really have a leg to stand on.
Still, Ciaran was my stepbrother, and like he said, we didn’t grow up together and didn’t have that family tie all our lives.
“It might take a few days for my dad to get used to the idea. My guess is, if Theresa doesn’t object, then he won’t.”
Ciaran’s eyes narrowed. “That seems too easy, Matty.”
“Probably. Okay, here’s the truth. My dad will pull me aside and ask if I’m fucking you to get back at him for marrying your mom.”
