LOGINLEON'S POVSunday dinner ran long that week, the way it does whenever there's good news to stretch out over, and by the time the last plate got cleared everybody had spilled out onto the lawn to catch the sunset, Noah's announcement having turned an ordinary evening into a small, unplanned celebration.I ended up just standing at the edge of it for a minute, doing nothing, watching. Sadie and Wren with their heads bent together over something on a phone. Marcus, somehow taller than he was in June, teaching Ella a handshake so complicated I genuinely don't think he remembered the steps himself. Maya and her husband arguing cheerfully with Patricia and Thomas about who was hosting Thanksgiving this year, an argument they'd apparently been having, on and off, for a decade. Micah, home again, already talking a mile a minute about bringing his girlfriend around to meet everyone. Denise laughing at something Rose said, loose and unguarded in a way that still occasionally catches me off guar
LEON'S POVThree weeks later we had everyone over for what Noah's kids had started calling "recovery pizza night" I don't know exactly when that became a tradition, it just sort of happened, the way most of our family's traditions do, somewhere between one crisis and the next slice of pizza.The backyard was doing its usual loud, glorious chaos thing. Emma and two of her cousins were locked in some kind of blood feud over the tire swing. Marcus and Micah home for the weekend, hair longer than I remembered, taller too, when did that happen were deep in an argument about hockey stats that neither of them was going to win because neither of them was actually right. Ella sat pressed against Denise's side with a paper plate balanced precariously on her knee, and for the first time in weeks she just looked like a regular nine-year-old eating too much cheese, which honestly might've been the best thing I saw all month.Sadie and Wren had gotten back from their honeymoon two days earlier, bot
LEON'S POVThe house was too quiet when we finally got home, which was strange, because it's not like it's ever loud at two in the morning. But there's quiet and there's quiet, and this was the second kind â the kind where you keep waiting for a phone to ring.Aaron went straight for the freezer without even taking his shoes off, digging around until he found the bag of peas we keep for exactly this purpose, apparently, because we've needed it more times over the years than any two people should. He pressed it to his jaw and winced and didn't say anything, just stood there in his wrinkled suit pants leaning against the counter like his legs had finally decided they were done holding him up."Sit," I said."I'm fine.""You got punched in the face today. Soo Sit down."He sat. I got the good tape out of the junk drawer â not the peas-and-a-prayer version, the actual first aid kit Ingrid's team had insisted we keep restocked years ago â and cleaned up his lip properly while he held perfe
LEON'S POVWe delayed the ceremony by forty minutes â just enough time for Marcus and Ella to be cleaned up and settled, for Aaron's lip to be tended to by a paramedic who insisted on at least a butterfly bandage, for Denise to compose herself enough to walk down the aisle beside Sadie as she'd been planned to do from the very beginning.When the music finally started, the garden had transformed entirely from the scene of terror it had been less than two hours earlier â string lights glowing warm against the darkening sky, our entire, sprawling family gathered close together in a way that felt, after everything, less like simple seating and more like a physical, deliberate wall of protection and love surrounding the two people at its center.Sadie walked down the aisle between Denise and me, her dress slightly wrinkled from the afternoon's chaos, her mascara redone but her eyes still faintly red, and she had never, in my entire life of knowing her, looked more radiant.The vows she an
AARON'S POVThey cuffed Curtis and hauled him upright, still snarling, still fighting weakly against the officers' grip, and I felt something in my chest finally, fully unclench as I watched him actually, genuinely secured, no longer a threat to anyone standing in that gravel lot."You're bleeding," Leon said, his hands still shaking as he cupped my face, examining the split lip with a tenderness that made my chest ache despite the adrenaline still roaring through my veins."It's nothing," I said, though the throbbing suggested otherwise. "Leon, we got them. They're safe."We made our way back toward Marcus and Ella, still wrapped tight in Denise's arms, and I crouched down beside them, my own hands unsteady now that the immediate danger had passed and the full, delayed terror of what could have happened was finally catching up with me."You were so brave," I told Marcus, my voice thick. "Grabbing Ella like that. That was one of the bravest things I've ever seen anyone do.""I was rea
LEON'S POVWe ran as fast as we could I don't remember making the decision to move one second I was standing frozen at the edge of that pond, and the next I was sprinting flat-out toward the east wall, Aaron beside me, Ingrid's team converging from three different directions, Detective Ramirez's sirens finally, blessedly audible in the distance.We reached the tree line seconds behind two of Ingrid's operatives, and what I saw stopped my heart entirely â Curtis, disheveled and wild-eyed, one hand clamped around Ella's wrist while she twisted furiously against his grip, Marcus a few feet away, frozen, tears streaming down his face."Let her go," I said, my voice shaking with a fury I hadn't known I still had in me. "Curtis. Let her go right now.""She's not even mine," he snarled, backing toward the parking structure's shadowed entrance, dragging Ella with him. "None of them are mine anymore, not since your whole family decided you could just take everything from me â my kids, my freed
LEON'S POV The laptop was a heavy, plastic weight against my ribs, a shield I hoped would hide the fact that my heart was trying to kick its way out of my chest. I stood at the threshold of âBow Denâ though the neon sign just looked like a blurry pink smear through my fever. Homosexuality is a si
LEON'S POV Every harsh pump of his hips felt like it was hitting me. I imagined that thick girth piercing me instead, stretching me, filling the ache that several ice baths and self-pleasure always failed to freeze. My breathing became ragged, coming out in a series of short, sharp gasps.Aaron
LEON'S POV After the final bell, I didn't head for the bus. Instead, I slipped through the shadows of the hallway, moving toward the gym.The air here was surprisingly cooler, smelling of damp concrete and decades worth of dusty trophies.After going around and noting down everything I needed, I f
LEON'S POV âAhâŠâ I groaned weakly as I blinked awake at the sound of the alarm beeping. The morning sun seemed a lot harsher than usual as it spilled through the glass windows of my bedroom.âShit,â I groaned, pressing a shaky hand to my temple.The little throbbing I felt at the back of my head







