Gordon’s POV
We build a relationship in the shadows.
It's not what I imagined—not the triumphant coming out, not the public declaration, not the version of this story where Simon takes my hand and announces to the world that he's chosen me.
Instead, we see each other in private. My apartment after dark, his truck parked in empty lots on the edge of town, corners of the city where no one knows our names and no one cares what two men do in the front seat of a pickup.
"I'm not ashamed." Simon says this every time I catch something flickering in his expression, every time the secrecy feels like it's pressing down on my chest. "You know that, right? This isn't about being embarrassed."
"I know." I reach across the console, lace my fingers through his. "I understand."
"I just need time. To figure out what I am now, what we are, before everyone else gets to have an opinion."
He squeezes my hand, brings it to his mouth, presses a kiss to my knuckles.
"My parents, my brothers, the guys at the gym—they all have this idea of who Simon Hale is. And I'm not ready to watch that idea shatter."
"Take whatever time you need." I mean it. After three years of nothing, I can wait longer. After three years of invisibility, these stolen moments feel like more than I ever thought I'd have. "I'm not going anywhere."
The gym routine resumes, and everything is different.
We still spot each other through sets, still share benches and trade weights and move through the familiar rhythm of a workout we've perfected over three years.
But now every touch carries voltage. When Simon's hands hover beneath my bar, I feel the heat of his palms like a brand.
When I position myself behind him for squats, the proximity makes my pulse stutter in ways it never did before—because now I know what those muscles feel like under my hands, what sounds he makes when I touch him, what his face looks like when he comes apart.
"Eyes on the mirror." His voice cuts through my distraction, teasing. "You're supposed to be checking my form, not my ass."
"I can do both." I smirk at his reflection. "Multitasking."
He laughs—that full, open laugh I've loved for three years, and something in my chest expands. This is new.
This ease between us, this permission to joke about wanting him, this acknowledgment that the electricity goes both ways. For so long, I buried every flicker of desire beneath performance and denial. Now I can look at him and let him see me looking.
Sometimes I catch him watching me in the mirror too. His expression goes unreadable in those moments—not cold, not warm, just distant in a way I can't interpret. I wonder what he sees.
The best friend he's known for three years? The avatar who deceived him for six months? Something new that's both and neither, a composite image he's still trying to bring into focus?
I don't ask. Some questions are better left for later, when we're both stronger.
Home is a different story.
Lily moves through the house like a ghost—there and not there, present but unreachable. She exits rooms when I enter them, keeps her door closed, her earbuds in, her eyes fixed on screens that give her an excuse not to meet mine.
The sister who once teased me relentlessly, who pounded on my door to drag me to dinner, who watched me with sharp eyes that saw too much—she's vanished behind a wall of silence I don't know how to breach.
I try anyway.
"Lily." I catch her in the kitchen one morning, positioning myself between her and the exit. "Can we talk? Just for a minute?"
Her face goes blank. Not angry—I could work with angry. Not hurt—hurt would at least be honest. Just empty, like someone pulled a curtain down behind her eyes.
"I'm late for class." She sidesteps toward the door. "Maybe later."
"It's Saturday. You don't have class on Saturday."
"Study group, then." She's already slipping past me, her shoulder brushing mine without acknowledgment. "We can talk later, Gordon. I promise."
She doesn't promise, she just leaves, and the kitchen feels colder without her.
I try again two days later—stand outside her closed door, knock twice, wait through a silence so complete I wonder if she's even in there.
"Lily."
I press my palm against the wood, imagine I can feel her on the other side.
"I know you saw us. On the porch. I know that wasn't how you should have found out, and I'm sorry. I wanted to tell you, I've wanted to tell you for so long, but I didn't know how, and then everything happened so fast, and…"
"Gordon." Her voice comes through the door, flat and tired. No emotion, no accusation. Just my name, spoken like it doesn't mean anything anymore.
"Can I come in? Please? I just want to explain…"
"There's nothing to explain." A pause. The door doesn't open. "You made your choice. I get it."
"Lily, that's not… it's not about choosing between."
"I said I get it." Her voice hardens slightly, the first crack in the emptiness. "I'm not mad. I'm not going to tell Dad. I'm not going to do anything. I just need some space, okay? Can you give me that?"
I stand in the hallway with my hand pressed against her door, and I don't know what to say. This isn't the Lily I know—the one who would scream, who would threaten, who would wield her blackmail like a weapon.
This quiet withdrawal is something new. Something that scares me more than her anger ever did.
"Okay." The word scrapes out of my throat. "Okay, Lily. I'll give you space. But when you're ready to talk, whenever that is, I'll be here. I'm not going anywhere."
Silence. Then, so quiet I almost miss it: "Yeah. I know you're not."
I tell myself she needs time. That's what I tell myself, over and over, every time she slips past me without making eye contact, every time her door closes before I can catch it, every time I hear her footsteps on the stairs and know she's timing her movements to avoid me.
She's processing. The same way Simon is processing, the same way everyone needs space to adjust to truths that reshape the world.
Discovering your brother is gay, discovering he's been secretly in love with a man you had a crush on—that's a lot to absorb. She'll come around eventually. Siblings fight and forgive. Blood is thicker than whatever this silence is made of.
I don't push harder, don't force the conversation, don't corner her again or demand answers she's not ready to give.
I don't notice the way she checks her phone sometimes, scrolling through messages with an expression I can't read. Don't notice the way her eyes flick to the screen every time a notification buzzes, the slight tension in her shoulders when she reads whatever she finds there.
Don't notice because I'm not looking—because I'm distracted by Simon's hands on my body, by stolen moments in parked trucks, by the terrifying joy of finally having something I never thought I'd get.
For now, I let myself be happy.
It won't last. Happiness never does, not for me.
Some part of me is still waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Simon to wake up one morning and realize he made a mistake, for the fragile thing we're building to shatter under the weight of everything we've done wrong.
But I hold onto it anyway. This happiness, fragile and precious and probably temporary. I hold it with both hands and hope that if I just wait long enough, everything will somehow work out on its own.
Hoping is easier than knowing.
And I've always been good at looking away from things I don't want to see.
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