chapter 41-firestarter

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• Our love to hide   66-No manual for miracle

  It started with a phone call at 10:47 p.m.Nathan was brushing his teeth. Ethan was half-asleep on the couch, a novel balanced on his chest.The call came from Marsha, the caseworker they'd connected with for the foundation planning. Her voice was low, fast, panicked. “We’ve got a seventeen-year-old. Kicked out tonight. No safe family. He’s queer, scared, and refusing to go to a group shelter. He’s asking for you two.”Nathan was instantly awake.“What’s his name?”“Jayden. But he goes by J.”Ethan, now sitting up, locked eyes with Nathan as he put the phone on speaker.Marsha added, “I know this is early. I know you’re not set up yet. But you said—‘Call us if a kid needs someone.’ This is me calling.”There was no hesitation.“Bring him,” Ethan said.They cleared out the guest room in record time.Micah hovered in the hallway, arms crossed. “Are we getting another one?”Nathan smiled. “Not replacing you, if that’s what you’re asking.”Micah looked away. “Wasn’t asking.”But he left

• Our love to hide   65-Room full of Ghosts

  The building smelled like mildew and lost time.Broken windows lined the second floor. The front doors hung crooked on their hinges. Inside, the air was thick with dust, old paint, and something that felt like memory.Ethan stepped through the threshold first.Nathan followed close behind, flashlight cutting through shadows that clung to the walls like smoke.“This is it?” Ethan asked.Nathan nodded. “It used to be a halfway house. Shut down ten years ago. Abandoned ever since.”A single beam of light spilled from a hole in the roof, slicing the gloom like a wound.Ethan looked around slowly. “It feels... haunted.”“Maybe it is,” Nathan said quietly. “But not by anything we can’t face.”They moved through the rooms one by one.Peeling wallpaper. Collapsed ceiling tiles. A mattress left behind in one corner, damp and sagging like a forgotten promise.But there were signs of life too.A drawing etched into the corner of a wall stick figures and a sun.A message scrawled in faded Sharpie

• Our love to hide   64-Not Broken, just Becoming

  The studio lights were warm, almost gentle.Nathan sat across from the radio host, a calm woman named Mara with soft eyes and a voice like honey steeped in midnight. The show was live, the topic clear: From Controversy to Compassion: Queer Families in the Public Eye.Nathan had done interviews before. Plenty.But not like this.This one wasn’t about defense.It was about legacy.And he wasn’t ready.Mara smiled across the table. “So tell me, Nathan, what has surprised you most about building a new life after everything you and Ethan have been through?”Nathan opened his mouth.But nothing came out.His heart jumped. His breath snagged.The silence stretched. Mara leaned in, gently.“Nathan?”He blinked once. Twice.And then it hit like glass cracking beneath the skin.The weight.Of the years.Of the hiding.Of Lucas.Of Elijah.Of holding Ethan while pretending he didn’t want to fall apart himself.His throat closed.“I… I don’t know,” he croaked, eyes suddenly wet. “I thought I was

• Our love to hide   63- flesh and Blood

  Vanessa arrived with two things: a homemade peach pie and a look in her eyes that told Ethan she was about to drop a bomb, one of the good ones, but still explosive.Ethan set down the dish on the kitchen counter. “You only bring pie when someone’s about to cry.”Vanessa smirked. “Guilty.”Nathan glanced up from the couch, where Micah was curled up reading an old graphic novel Ethan had left out. “Everything okay?”Vanessa took a deep breath.“It’s Isabelle,” she said. “She wants to change her last name.”Ethan blinked. “To what?”“Hale-Volkov.”The room went still.Micah looked up from the couch. “That’s your name, right?”Nathan nodded, slowly.Vanessa chuckled softly. “She said she wants people to know where she actually came from.”Ethan sat down at the table, stunned. “But… why now?”Vanessa sat across from him, a smile faltering just slightly. “She told me she watched your roundtable three times. Said it felt like she finally saw a version of herself that didn’t flinch. And I th

• Our love to hide   62-letter to the future

  Ethan paced the front of the classroom like he used to pace the edges of the lake nervously, always questioning if he belonged. But today, he felt steadier. The topic on the board read: “Write the story you thought you’d never be allowed to tell.” He turned to his students. “You can write it as fiction, memoir, poetry, whatever you need. Just… write what was once forbidden.” A silence settled, not out of fear but reverence. And then pens started moving. By the end of the week, Ethan had read over twenty stories. Each one gutted him. A trans girl’s poem about her childhood name feeling like a haunted house. A nonbinary student’s short story about a tree that only grew crooked when no one was looking. A gay student who wrote a letter to a father who never spoke again after he came out. Ethan wept alone in his office after reading the last one. And when he got home, he didn’t speak much, just hugged Nathan tightly, burying his face into his chest like the world was too heav

• Our love to hide   chapter 61

  Chapter 61 – The Quiet AfterwardsThe first thing Ethan noticed was the quiet.Not the peaceful kind. The kind that made your ears ring. The kind that echoed through you when you’d lived too long with noise.He stood in front of a classroom of twenty-two students, bright eyes, notebooks open, laptops humming. A few whispered, a few smiled. But most just stared at him like he wasn’t real.He cleared his throat.“Welcome to Queer Storytelling: Writing Identity in a Changing World.”He waited.Silence.Then a voice from the back. A girl with close-cut hair and dark lipstick:“You’re the one from the livestream. The love letter guy.”A few students nodded. Someone clapped once before stopping awkwardly.Ethan blinked. “Yeah. I guess... that’s me.”The class warmed slowly.He told them about narrative voice, about writing as survival, about shame as a story passed down that you didn’t ask to inherit.But he also told them about beauty. About joy. About how sometimes, the stories we’re most