Page 36 of Wild Obsession

I’m tempted to blame it on my parents. After how cruel they were to me on the phone, I was looking for some sort of comfort. Seeing Keannen there looking horrified, possibly on my behalf, offered an opportunity my aching heart couldn’t deny, but somehow it made things worse. It made this all hurt more. I understand Keannen only paid attention to me on this tour in order to mess with me, but it was starting to feel like more than that. The night we snuck into his tour bus didn’t feel like a mean trick to me. His desire was real — and so was mine. I’m some kind of idiot to think it would ever be more than desire, though. We can’t go back in time to when we were kids falling in love. I ruined that when my parents ripped me out of Baltimore and sent me away, and apparently there’s no fixing it in Keannen’s eyes.

Someone nudges my shoulder. I blink and find myself staring at the fold-out table on the bus. Erin and Kelsey are gone, and Emmett isn’t yelling at us on speaker phone anymore. Shit. When did the call end and most of mybandmates leave? I didn’t even notice.

Cameron is beside me on the bench seating. He leans close, even though I don’t see the girls anywhere in the main cabin, and whispers, “Hey, man, you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course.”

Cameron stares at me with dark, piercing eyes. Suddenly, I pity his boyfriend, Julian. That guy must get this look all the time. It’s the gaze of a hard-boiled detective in a crime novel, a gaze that pries your secrets out of you.

“I’m okay,” I say. “Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

Cameron raises one eyebrow, making it clear I’m not getting out of this so easily.

“Kind of,” I say. “Sort of. I mean… Okay, not really.”

“I could tell,” Cameron says. “Do you care to elaborate?”

I squirm on the bench, but there’s nowhere to go on a tour bus. They’re big, but I can’t exactly leap off while we’re doing seventy on the interstate. One more East Coast stop, then we turn west and start heading for home. I can’t freaking wait. This side of the country has never meant anything good for me.

I sigh out an exhale as I surrender. “I tried to call my parents when we were in Baltimore.”

Cameron’s frown deepens. I don’t tell the band much about my family or my past, but they’ve gathered that I never visit my folks, and they never visit me. No one haspried into why, but I’m starting to think it’s not as big of a mystery as I might have hoped.

“That’s where you’re from, right?” Cameron says.

I nod. “I thought maybe…” I shrug as though flicking my whole life off my shoulders. “I thought we could get dinner or something while I was in town.”

“I’m guessing that didn’t happen.”

I can’t look at Cameron. Suddenly, a lump clogs my throat. I shake my head instead of replying. I guess you never really get over your parents flat out disowning you, no matter how many years they’ve hated you.

Cameron doesn’t ask more questions. In perhaps the most shocking moment of my life, he puts an arm around my shoulders and pulls me in against him. He holds me without a word, and it’s like having an older brother for the first time in my life, someone who’s in my corner no matter what. My sisters would never do something like this for me, yet I don’t need to explain the rest to Cameron; that arm around my shoulder says more clearly than words that he understands.

“I’ll never be good enough for them,” I say, “because I’m…”

I’ve never told him this, even though he’s queer. I’ve never told anyone. Only Keannen ever knew I wanted to kiss the boys at band practice and not the girls, but the words trip past my lips, and they’re not as heavy as I always thought they’d be.

“Because I’m gay.”

“I know,” Cameron says.

I jerk out of his hold to sit up straighter. “You know? How do you know?”

Cameron shrugs. “A hunch.”

“But…”

“It’s nothing you ever said or did,” Cameron says, “but I know you. We all know you. Kelsey and Erin suspected too, but we all thought we should let you tell us in your own time.”

After the one-two punch of rejection that was my parents and Keannen, I’m not sure what to do with this. I gape at Cameron, floundering for words.

“We’re family,” Cameron says. “Family knows shit about each other.”

That’s such a Cameron way of putting it that I can’t help laughing. He relaxes and squeezes my shoulder.

“Don’t let your parents tell you you’re worthless,” Cameron says. “You aren’t worthless to us. You still have a family, and it’s us. We’re going to love you no matter what, and if someone says you deserve any less than that, we’ll make sure they know exactly how wrong they are.”

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