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1.
The engine turned over and Troy pulled out of Bood’s driveway before Harris had his seatbelt on.
He knew what was coming. He could feel it the way you feel weather. A shift in pressure, something thinning in the air between them. Harris hadn’t said a word since they’d left the party. Hadn’t said a word through the goodbyes or the walk to the car.
Harris, who talked to cashiers and stray cats and once spent eleven minutes making conversation with a woman at a gas pump about her granddaughter’s dance recital, was sitting in the passenger seat like someone had unplugged him.
Troy turned onto the main road. “You’re quiet.”
“Just thinking.”
Troy’s hands adjusted on the wheel. “About what I said.”
He watched Harris in his peripheral vision, the way Harris’s jaw worked, the way he was looking out the window at nothing, dark trees sliding past.
“I guess… I just didn’t know you felt that strongly about it,” Harris said. Measured. Careful. The voice Harris used when he was trying very hard to be just and fair. “We never really talked about it.”
“It never came up.”
Deep sigh. “That’s not the same thing, Troy.”
No. It wasn’t. He knew it wasn’t. But the alternative was admitting that he’d let Harris build a version of their future in his head that Troy had never corrected, and that was a different kind of conversation. A worse one.
“It’s not like I was hiding it,” Troy murmured, heat spreading across the back of his neck, familiar guilt that came with lies of omission, his personal favorite transgression.
Harris turned from the window, and Troy felt the look without seeing it. “You said, 'Fuck no.' Those are the words you used. Fuck no. You said them to Cassie and Lisa, like it was—” Harris waved a hand in front of his face, and then stopped. Closed his eyes and recalibrated.
Troy recognized the pause now, the way ‘Sunshine and Light’ Harris Drover sometimes caught himself before the sentence got too sharp. Even now. Even hurt, Harris was editing himself. With Troy. “I just would have liked to hear it from you first.”
“Well, you’re hearing it now.” Fuck. Troy should have stopped drinking two pilsners ago.
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”
Troy said nothing, continuing to take the coward's way out. The road was straight and dark and empty and there was nowhere to look but forward.
“Why?” Harris asked, the angry note gone from his voice. Sad now, which, of course, hurt more.
“Why what?”
“Why ‘Fuck no.’ Help me understand.” Another deep sigh, Harris pulling at a loose thread on his sweater. "You bought a four-thousand square foot house, Troy. Four bedrooms and a swimming pool. Who is all that for, if not for—"
Troy exhaled. The question sat in his chest like a monster pushing its way out of a box. He could feel the real answer, right there under the surface. The answer that smelled like leather chairs and scotch and a voice that could fill a whole room until there was no air left in it.
“Not everyone who grew up in a big house had a good time in it,” Troy said.
He heard Harris shift in his seat. The quality of the silence changed, softened. Troy hated it. He didn’t want soft. Soft meant Harris was putting it together, and then Harris would want to talk about that, and Troy didn’t have a version of that story that didn’t make him sound like he was pathetic for still feeling this way, even after turning his back on that life.
Turning his back on that man.
“Troy—”
“I’m not… I know what I came from, okay? I know what it looks like when someone has kids because they think they’re supposed to. I know what that house feels like. I’m not doing that to someone.”
“You wouldn’t be like—”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, actually.”
“No, Harris, you don’t.” It came out harder than he meant it to. He felt Harris flinch. Not visibly. Harris didn’t flinch visibly. But there was a pulling-back, a quiet recession, and the distance opened up between them like a crack in ice. A mile of road. Two.
“I’m not trying to talk you into anything,” Harris said quietly. “I didn’t know you felt that… strongly about it.”
“Now you know.”
“Yeah.” Harris’s voice was small. Not wounded, exactly. Recalculating. “Now I know.”
Troy wanted to pull over. He wanted to stop the car and turn to Harris and say something that would make this okay, but he didn’t have anything that would make it okay. He had the truth, and the truth was that he’d meant every word he said to the girls when they asked, and the truth was that he’d seen Harris’s face when he answered.
And Harris’s face had looked exactly like Troy was afraid it would, and maybe that was why he’d never brought it up sooner. You're a fucking coward, Barrett.
“If this is a dealbreaker,” Troy said, swallowing hard, “you should tell me now.”
The words came out flat. Controlled. The voice of someone who had learned very young to make his face a wall. He stared at the road and wished they were having this conversation anywhere but here, now.
“It’s not,” Harris said. Almost immediately. No hesitation at all. “It’s not a dealbreaker. You’re enough. You know that, right? You’re enough.”
The car was very quiet.
You’re enough.
Troy heard it the way he heard everything—twice. Once for what it was and once for what it really meant. You’re enough meant Harris had done math in his head, subtracted something he wanted from what he had, and arrived at a solution he could live with.
You’re enough was what you said when someone wasn’t what you wanted, not quite, but you loved them anyway. You loved them enough.
In the end, his mom hadn't been enough for Curtis Barrett. Troy certainly hadn't been enough.
It’s okay. We’re fine. He's enough. We're enough. Lies upon lies upon lies.
Troy felt something close inside his chest. Is that what he was going to do to Harris?
The rest of the drive happened in silence. Not the aggressive silence from before. Something more exhausted. Harris had his hand on his own knee, not reaching across the console the way he usually did.
Troy noticed. He noticed that Harris was giving him space, and Harris’s version of giving space looked exactly like Harris giving up, and Troy couldn’t tell the difference. Had never been able to tell the difference, not when they were flirting with each other, and not now. That was the whole problem with all of it.
Twenty minutes later, he turned off the highway and onto the unpaved road that led home.
Their house was dark. Harris had forgotten to leave the porch light on, or maybe Troy had been the last one out, which meant it was Troy who forgot.
It didn’t matter, really. It was dark.
Troy pulled into the driveway. He put the car in park. He did not turn off the engine.
Harris sat there for a moment, then, “You’re not coming in?”
“I think… No. Not right now.”
Harris looked at him, mouth open.
"This is your house, Troy, not mine." A beat. "Just take me back to my apartment."
Troy kept his eyes on the dashboard. "No."
"Troy—"
"Chiron's already here." His voice came out flatter than he meant it to. "Just go inside. Please." I bought it for you. He'd bought this place because Harris had stood in the kitchen doorway when they were house hunting and said Oh so quietly, so beautifully soft when he was usually so loud and brash, and Troy had loved him so much in that moment. He'd imagined days and nights filled with laughter and naps and apple crisp and dogs.
He'd never imagined kids, never allowed himself that fantasy because that wasn't who he was. Couldn't be who he was.
"Okay." He said it gently, the way he said everything, like the world was a place where people could be honest and kind and it would work out. Because that was what his family was like, what they'd taught him, the values he was raised with.
Troy loved him so much his chest ached with it. Troy loved him and was going to ruin him and the only decent thing to do was leave.
Harris opened the door. He didn’t slam it. He closed it carefully, the way you close a door when someone’s sleeping, and Troy watched him walk to the front steps, watched the door open and the hallway light come on.
Harris didn’t look back.
Troy sat in the driveway for a long time. Thirty seconds. A minute. Long enough for the hallway light to flick off and the bedroom light to come on upstairs.
Then Troy reversed out of the driveway.
He drove without thinking, back onto the highway toward town. He passed through the neighborhoods with old trees and wide lots and houses that sat far back from the street, right on the river. The kind of silence that money bought. .
He pulled up to the gate. The house beyond it was dark. Shane's Jeep gone. Not home from Bood's party yet.
Troy put the car in park and turned off the headlights. He put his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes and waited.
2.
He’d driven here without deciding to, the way you drive home from work, on autopilot, some part of his brain that knew where safety was before the rest of him caught up.
He should text. He should call. He should do literally anything other than sit in a parked car outside his teammates’ house like some kind of—
In the rearview mirror, a pair of high beams swung around the curve of the road, slowed, and pulled up beside him. Troy squinted against the glare. The lights cut off. A car door opened, then closed.
A knock on his window. Troy lowered it. Shane was leaning down, one hand on the roof of the car. Behind him, Ilya was getting out of the passenger side, moving with the unhurried ease of someone who had assessed the situation and decided not to be alarmed by it.
“Hey,” Shane said. Careful. Reading him.
“Hey.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Few minutes.”
Shane studied him for a moment. Whatever he saw made him straighten up and step back from the window. “Pull in behind us.”
Troy followed their car through the gate and up the driveway. Troy parked and sat in the car for another thirty seconds, watching as he house lit up in sections as Shane went through—porch light, foyer, hallway—before he made himself get out, following them inside.
Anya greeted him as he entered, and he pet the top of her soft head before she took off after Shane, following him to the back door. Ilya was already in the kitchen, shoes off, pulling glasses down from a cabinet. He set three on the counter without asking what Troy wanted, filled all three with water, and pushed one toward Troy across the island.
“Sit,” Ilya said.
Troy sat on one of the barstools. The kitchen was enormous and warm and smelled like the candle Shane kept on the counter, something with patchouli in it. There were dishes in the drying rack, and unread mail on the counter.
A normal house. A good one.
Shane hadn't returned. Troy could hear his voice, low and murmured, from somewhere deeper in the house. On the phone.
“He’s calling Harris,” Ilya said.
Troy’s jaw tightened. “He doesn’t need to—”
“He does, though.” Ilya leaned against the counter across from Troy, arms crossed, water untouched. “Harris is home alone wondering if you drove into a ditch. Shane is going to tell him you didn’t. That’s all.”
Troy stared at his glass. The water caught the light from the pendant lamp above the island, and he watched it because it was easier than looking at Ilya.
Shane came back after a few minutes. He put his phone on the counter and leaned next to Ilya. The two of them across from Troy like some kind of domestic tribunal, except Shane’s face was soft and concerned, while Ilya’s was patient in that particular way that meant he’d already knew things would be okay in the end, because he'd make sure they were. It reminded him of Harris.
“Harris is okay,” Shane said. “He said to tell you he’s okay.”
Troy nodded. His throat tightened.
“You want to talk about it?” Shane asked.
“Not really.”
“Okay.” Shane pushed off the counter. “Guest room’s made up. Towels are in the—”
"I told Harris I don't want kids."
It came out flat. Dropped into the kitchen like a stone into still water. Shane stopped moving. Ilya didn't react at all.
"Okay," Shane said again, slower this time.
"He didn't know. I said it at Bood's. Cassie and Lisa were talking about Cassie's—" Troy pointed at his stomach. Bood and Cassie's second child. Cassie was barely showing, but she had that glow about her already. "They asked if I wanted any kids of my own, and I said no." Troy snorted. "What I actually said was 'Fuck no.' And Harris was right there. He heard me say it to them. Then in the car he—" Troy stopped. Pressed his thumbnail into the side of his finger until the pressure hurt. "He said it wasn't a dealbreaker. He said I was enough." Troy took a sip of his water and shook his head. "So, of course I left."
The kitchen was quiet. Shane looked at Ilya. Something passed between them, the silent communication of two people who had been together long enough to have entire conversations without speaking, the kind of shorthand Troy had always envied.
Until Harris.
Shane pulled out the barstool next to Troy and sat down. "Why don't you want kids?"
"Because I'll be bad at it."
"You don't know that."
"Yeah, I do." Troy's voice was harder than he meant it to be. The old reflex—go sharp, go cold, make it a wall instead of a wound. He caught himself and took a breath. "My dad was awful. You saw him, you know what he was like," he said with a glance at Ilya.
Ilya nodded slow.
"I don't know how to do it differently," Troy said. "I don't have, I don't have a model for it. I have him. That's what I've got. And everyone says Oh, you'll be different, you'll know what not to do, but that's bullshit. That's not how it works. Knowing what not to do isn't the same as knowing what to do, and I—" He stopped. His hand was shaking. He put it flat on the counter. "Harris would be an incredible dad. His family is amazing. They're good people. Harris learned from good people. I learned from Curtis Barrett."
The name sat in the air,, even now, poisoning the room with his presence.
Ilya uncrossed his arms, picked up his water glass, and took a long drink. Set it down. When he spoke, his voice was quieter than usual, stripped of the usual edge.
"My father was not a difficult man." Ilya's mouth curled up into something that wasn't a smile. "But he was cruel. To my mother. To Andrei. To me. He was a cruel person who did cruel things. For a very long time, I believed what you believed. That was—" He paused, murmuring something in Russian to Shane.
Shane's face scrunched up, then— "Inherited."
"Yes." Ilya nodded with a grateful smile. "Inherited. That what he was would become what I was, because that is how I understood families to work. You get what your parents give you, and you pass it along."
Troy nodded. He'd known all of this. Everyone on the team knew the broad strokes, the parts Ilya had made public through the foundation, the parts that had come out in interviews. But what he was sharing now felt deeper, more intimate.
"I want kids," Ilya continued. "Very badly. Shane knows this. We talk about it." He glanced at Shane, a quick, private look. "And I am also—I have depression from my mother. Real, clinical, medicated depression. You know this. So I think—what happens when I have a bad day, or a bad week. What happens when I cannot get out of bed, or I am angry for no reason, or I am the worst version of myself and there is a child in the house who doesn't understand why Papa is—"
He stopped when Shane took his hand.
Something moved behind his eyes, the effort of keeping composed when the thing you were saying was so honest and true and painful it hurt to say another word. But Ilya recovered fast, the way he always did, especially when Shane was around.
"I worry about this. My therapist and I talk about it. I worry that my moods, my… whatever this is—" He gestured vaguely at his own head. "That I'll pass it to them. Or that I'll hurt them with it without meaning to. But I still want them," Ilya said. "Because I am not my father. And I know this because I am afraid of being my father, and my father was never once afraid of being himself. He thought he was right. Always. About everything. The fear is—" He tapped the counter once with his index finger. "The fear is the proof, Troy. You understand? If you were going to be Curtis, you wouldn't be sitting in my kitchen worrying about it. You'd be home right now, certain you were right. You'd have already decided Harris would get over it. You'd never think about it again."
Troy's vision blurred. He blinked hard and looked down at his hands, still flat on the counter.
"But," Ilya said, and his voice shifted, lighter now, a degree of the usual Ilya returning, "also. If you don't want kids, you don't want kids." He shrugged. "That's allowed. Not everything has to be a wound. Some things are just what you want."
Troy nodded. His throat was tight.
"He said I was enough," Troy said. Almost to himself. "And all I heard was my mom, the way she suffered, so fucking unhappy all the time. I can't do that to him."
Ilya tilted his head at Troy. "Did Harris ask you to leave?"
Troy looked at him.
"Did Harris ask you to leave," Ilya said again, patient, like Troy was the one translating words in his head from one language to another, "or did you decide for him?"
Troy didn't answer.
"You took what he said," Ilya continued, "and you made it mean what you were afraid of." He said it matter-of-factly. "I think that is what your father does, probably. Decides he knows what everyone is thinking, so no one else's words matter." Ilya tapped his fingers on the counter. "You are not your father," he said. "But tonight you did the thing your father does."
Shane's voice was quiet as he added, "You don't have to want kids. You don't owe Harris a reason beyond I don't want to. But you have to let Harris decide what he can live with. That's not your call."
The simplicity of it, which was almost worse. It shouldn't be this obvious, this clear. And yet he'd driven through the dark and sat outside a gate and waited for someone to come home and tell him the thing he should have known. The trust he should have had.
Ilya watched Troy with an expression that was completely unguarded and honest. “You should sleep,” Ilya said. “And tomorrow, you go home and talk to Harris like he’s Harris and not like he’s everyone who ever hurt you.”
“Yeah.” Troy’s voice came out rough. Wrecked. “Yeah, okay.”
Shane got up, put his hand on Troy’s shoulder, brief and firm, and left the room, Anya scrambling behind him. Ilya stayed at the counter, refilling Troy’s water glass without being asked, and for a few minutes they stood in the kitchen together in silence, the kind where someone has said the hard thing and was giving you room to sit with it.
“Ilya.”
“Mm.”
“You’re going to be a good dad.”
Ilya looked at him. For a moment, something cracked open in his expression—surprise, or gratitude, or the particular vulnerability of hearing someone say the thing you most want to believe about yourself. Then he smiled. A real one. Small, crooked, nothing like the performance smile he wore for cameras.
“Yes,” Ilya said. “I know.”
Troy almost laughed. It came out as something closer to a breath, but it was there, the ghost of it, the muscle memory of what it felt like to be okay. Not okay yet. But almost there.
Shane came back and handed Troy a t-shirt and sweatpants. “Guest room’s upstairs at the end of the hall,” Shane said. “If you need anything—”
“I know where everything is,” Troy said, and it came out softer than he expected, because he did. He’d been here a hundred times. He knew which floorboards creaked and which bathroom had better water pressure, and where Ilya hid his sugary snacks. "Thanks."
Troy took the clothes and walked up the stairs. Behind him, he heard Ilya murmur something to Shane in the voice he only used when they were alone, low and tender, in the soft Russian accent, gentle in a way that people who didn't know them would never believe.
Troy closed the guest room door. He sat on the edge of the bed in the dark and held the clothes in his hands and thought about Harris.
Harris, who had said You’re enough and meant it, actually meant it, not as a surrender but as a fact, the way Harris said everything. Plainly, honestly, without subtext, without the double meaning Troy searched for in every sentence because he’d grown up in a house where words were weapons.
Harris, who would be asleep by now, or not asleep, lying in their bed with the space next to him empty and Chiron curled in the gap Troy had left.
Troy lay down. The house was quiet around him, the low hum of a place that was lived in, a home that held people gently whether they deserved it or not.
He thought about getting up. Washing his face, taking a shower and shedding the whole fucked up mess of this night under hot water until the mood loosened its grip. He didn't move.
This room was a guest room now, neutral and tasteful. One day it wouldn't be. One day Shane and Ilya would turn it into a nursery, then a child's bedroom. Their child would sleep here, right where he was laying, and his eyes went wet before he could stop them.
He stared at the ceiling until they cleared, then got up, and went to take a shower.
3.
Troy sat in the driveway for the second time in twelve hours. Third time if you counted Shane and Ilya's place.
The garden hose was still coiled wrong by the front steps where he'd left it last weekend, and Harris's running shoes were on the porch, where Harris always left them after walking Chiron. The bedroom curtains were open. Harris was up.
Troy turned off the engine. He sat there.
He'd been awake most of the night, staring at the ceiling, and somewhere around five in the morning the thing Ilya had said had stopped feeling like an accusation and started feeling like a fact. Not the fathers and sons part, though that too. The other part. Did Harris ask you to leave, or did you decide for him.
He hadn't decided to be his father. But he'd just done the thing his father did, quietly, without the scotch or the yelling, in the front seat of a car on a dark road while Harris sat next to him and tried to be fair.
He'd gotten up at seven and driven home.
The door was unlocked. Harris never locked it when Troy was out, some old holdover habit from growing up in the country where nobody locked anything, and Troy had argued with him about it a dozen times and right now it made his throat tight, that Harris hadn’t locked it, that even last night…
The front door was open. Harris left the door open.
The sound hit him first. Nails on hardwood, scrabbling, that full-body Bernese scramble that had no business coming from a dog that size. Chiron came around the corner from the kitchen like a freight train made of fur, tail going so hard his whole back half swung with it, and hit Troy in the thighs with his head and leaned.
Troy put his hand on Chiron’s head. The dog leaned harder.
“Hey, buddy.”
Chiron looked up at him with that expression, the one that wasn’t complicated, that didn’t mean two things, that was You’re here and I’m happy and that’s the whole story and Troy dropped into a crouch and let the dog push into his chest. Chiron’s big stupid beautiful head against his collarbone. Ninety pounds of uncomplicated devotion and Troy pressed his face into the dog’s neck and breathed and did not, absolutely did not, fall apart in the front hallway at seven in the morning.
Mostly did not.
“He didn’t eat dinner.”
Troy looked up. Harris was standing at the end of the hallway. Sweatpants. His old university t-shirt with the cracked lettering. Arms crossed, but loosely. He looked tired.
“He wouldn’t eat dinner and he wouldn’t eat this morning,” Harris said.
Troy’s hand was still on Chiron’s back. The dog had settled against his legs, the full lean, the one that meant I’m not moving until you make me.
“Harris—”
“Do you want coffee?”
It wasn’t forgiveness. It was Harris giving them both something to do with their hands. Troy recognized it. He nodded.
Chiron followed Troy to the kitchen table and lay down directly on his feet, as if Troy might leave again and this was a countermeasure.
Harris put the steaming mug in front of him. Sat down across the table. Not next to him, Troy noticed. Harris always sat next to him. The across was a distance Harris was maintaining on purpose. Troy understood, and deserved it.
But it still hurt. “I’m sorry,” Troy said.
Harris wrapped his hands around his mug. Waited.
“I’m not—I don’t know if I’m ever going to want kids. I can’t promise you that. I can’t sit here and tell you I had some revelation and now I’m—” He stopped. Started again. “That’s not what this is.”
“Okay,” Harris said. Neutral.
“But I left last night because I decided what you were feeling. You told me it was okay and I decided you were lying, and I… I made that choice for you. I took what you said and I turned it into something else and then I punished both of us for the thing I made up.” He was looking at the table. “That’s not—I don’t get to do that. You said what you said. I need to believe you.”
Harris was quiet for a long time.
Finally— “I meant it,” Harris murmured. “Last night. I meant what I said. But I need you to actually hear me when I say things, Troy. Not run it through whatever’s happening in your head and come out the other side with a different sentence. That’s not fair to me. I can’t fight the argument you’re having with someone who isn’t in the room.”
Troy looked up. Harris’s eyes were steady. Not the usual Harris warmth, the easy sunshine of him. Something quieter. Something that had been up all night too.
“I know,” Troy said.
“Do you?”
“I’m trying to.”
Harris studied him. Troy let himself be studied. He owed Harris that, the willingness to be looked at.
“I don’t need you to want kids,” Harris said. “I need you to stop leaving. I need you to stay in the room when it’s hard and let me be the person who’s actually here.”
Troy nodded. His throat tightened.
“And I need you to stop making decisions about my happiness. That’s mine. You don’t get that. I decide what I can live with and I told you last night… and you drove away.” Harris’s voice cracked slightly on the last two words. “Don’t do that again.”
“I won’t.”
“I mean it, Troy.”
“I know. I won’t.”
The kitchen was quiet. Morning light coming through the window over the sink, the one that faced east, that Harris had specifically wanted when they’d looked at this house. I want morning light in the kitchen, he’d said, like that was a reasonable criterion for choosing a place to live, and Troy had agreed because Harris wanting something had always been enough reason for Troy to make it happen, and maybe that was its own kind of love letter, the fact that they were sitting in a kitchen that faced east because Harris had wanted to drink his coffee in the sun.
Under the table, Chiron shifted and rearranged himself so he was lying across both their feet now, half on Troy and half on Harris. Bridging the gap with his ridiculous body, the way he’d done since he was a puppy and hadn’t yet realized he would grow into something the size of a small couch.
Harris looked down at the dog. Then up at Troy. His mouth did something that wasn’t quite a smile but close.
“He really didn’t eat,” Harris said.
“I’ll feed him breakfast.”
“Okay.” Harris exhaled, his shoulders relaxing a fraction.
Troy got up. Chiron exploded off the floor like the word breakfast had activated him. Troy went to the pantry and scooped up the high-protein kibble they ordered online, and set the bowl down. Chiron dove into it like he hadn’t seen food in a week, and Troy stood there in his kitchen, in the morning light that Harris had wanted, listening to his dog eat.
Stay. Stay in the room. Stay when it’s hard. Let the person in front of you be the person in front of you.
He turned around. Harris was still at the table, both hands on his mug, watching Troy with an expression that was careful and bruised and open all at once.
Troy crossed the kitchen. Pulled out the chair next to Harris and sat down.
Harris looked at him. Troy looked back, leaned in, and kissed Harris soft and sweet, blinking back the wetness in his eyes as they pressed their foreheads together.
Chiron finished his breakfast, walked over, and lay down on their feet again with a sigh the way big dogs sigh, that full-body exhale like the weight of existence was almost too much to bear.
They sat in the morning light. It wasn’t fixed. It wasn’t finished. But Troy was in the room, and he was staying, and for right now that was enough.