Page 80 of Just Say Christmas
“Ugly,” Luke said. “Yeh, I’ve heard that one.”
“You’re not ugly,” she said. “Of course not. You’re just . . .”
“Strong,” Hayden said quietly. “Yeh. He is. That’s why I love him.” Luke looked at him, startled, and Hayden shrugged and said, “Seems I can be brave, too. Too soon? Oh, well.”
“No,” Luke said, and something softened in his face. “Not too soon. Me too.” He cleared his throat, took a breath, and said it again. “Me too.”
“Yes,” Miriama said, ignoring that. “Strong. That’s what I meant.” Luke’s dad, on the other hand, looked like hehadheard it, and like he still couldn’t believe it. Like he’d wake up any moment and discover that this was his nightmare of his least-favorite almost-child’s wedding day, and not, thank God, the real thing.
“Well, my goodness,” Miriama said next, and gave a little laugh. “I need some time to let that sink in. Maybe, darling, we should go sit a minute and do that,” she suggested to Grant. A suggestion that Hayden would guess had a probability of success of—oh, call it slim to none.
He was right. “If you are—that,” Grant said, “why tell everybody about it? Why spoil Nyree’s wedding with it?”
“He’s not spoiling it.” That was Kane, speaking up for the first time. “That would be you. So far. Still time to back off.” His big frame was nearly shaking with tension, but he had a hand on his brother’s shoulder, his fingers gripping hard.
“You knew.” Grant’s gaze landed on Kane. “And you did nothing.”
“No,” Kane said. “I did something. I told him I loved him. What else was there to say? He’s my brother. He’s a good one. Why wouldn’t I want him to be happy? Why wouldn’t I want the same thing for him that I’ve got? To be able to bring the person he’s fallen in love with to Nyree’s wedding?”
“When did I ever tell you life was about being happy?” Grant asked.
“You didn’t,” Kane said. “That’s why I said it.”
Grant’s voice was rising. “You aren’t saying this to anyone outside the family,” he told Luke. “You aren’t sharing it with anybody in rugby. You’d never hold up your head again.”
“Too late,” Luke said. “I already did.”
“He shared it with me,” Rhys said, “for one.” He’d stepped up, too, then. Literally.
“And you’re telling me you wouldn’t show him the door pretty smartly, if he was one of yours,” Grant said.
“That’s what I’m telling you,” Rhys said. “New Zealand Rugby’s committed to diversity. I got a memo about it. You probably did too.”
Grant’s face had gone brick-red, and the eyebrows were practically standing up on their own. “And who’s going to be willing to strip down in the sheds with him? Who’s going to be packing down with him in the scrum? Would you?”
Rhys shot a measuring look at Luke, and Luke stared back at him, impassive. Hayden sensed, though, the beating of his heart under the white shirt, saw the muscles bunched beneath the jaw where he’d shaved carefully around his well-trimmed beard, trying to look his best for the day, for Nyree. Rhys asked, “Grabbed anybody’s bum in the showers so far, mate?”
A gasp from Miriama, and a bark of a laugh from Kane. Luke’s jaw relaxed a fraction, and he said, “Not yet.”
“They’re pretty safe, then, you reckon?” Rhys asked.
“I reckon so.”
Grant said, “PC crap. You know what this is as well as I do.” His finger was out now, nearly stabbing into Rhys’s chest, because somehow, Rhys was right there. “It’s signing his death warrant in rugby.”
“If it is,” Rhys said, “I’d say that’s his risk to take. Whatever you think, whatever you feel, don’t you think he’s felt it and thought it already?” He asked Luke, “How long have you known you were gay, would you say?”
“Since I was five or six,” Luke said.
Miriama gave a little moan, and Grant said, “Not possible.”
“Yeh, Dad,” Luke said. “Possible.”
Another voice. Nyree’s. Marko was with her, and Kiri, too. “Luke?” she asked. “Mum? What’s going on?”
Miriama opened and closed her mouth, then said, “Luke is, ah . . . having a word, darling. It’s a bit fraught at the moment. No need to worry. Five minutes.”
“Five minutes?” Grant said. “Fiveminutes?Five minutes before you leave, is what it is,” he told Luke. “Spoiling your sister’s wedding, spouting this rubbish.”
