Page 103 of Strut

My heart dropped.Here we go.“Yeah, well, you might get your wish sooner than I expected. Cage has cancelled my contract. I shone a bad light on the agency, apparently. I’ll be coming home.”

My comment was greeted by a wall of silence, followed by a hushed conversation, before my father finally spoke.

“Don’t you let them run you out of town, son.” My dad’s deep voice rumbled through my body in that reassuring way I hadn’t realised I missed. “We didn’t raise you like that.”

What the hell?My eyebrows shot up and even Hunter gave a surprised look.

“Jeez, Dad, how about you let Alec speak for a bit,” Lachlan huffed.

“I thought you wanted me home?” I countered a little icily. “You’ve been telling me exactly that for the entire last year, Mum.”

More silence.

“Well... yes.” My mother hesitated and I could picture the frown that she wore when she was uncertain of her ground, which wasn’t often. “I might’ve been a bit...” She trailed off.

“Elise,” my father pressed, surprising me again. He rarely challenged my mother.

She huffed in irritation. “Apparently, I owe you an apology for that. I’m sorry.”

What the hell?

“I didn’t understand. Well, at least not until Tui talked to us and I met that nice young man Kip on Skype.”

Kip? Nice? Kip and my mother? Holy Moly.

Hunter stifled a laugh and I shot daggers at him, taking a slug of my soda to quench my dry throat as my mother continued.

“Anyway, we just want to say we’re proud of what you’ve achieved over there, Alec. By the sound of it, you’re... special, which we always knew, of course, but you’ve also worked hard and achieved a great deal.”

I choked and sprayed soda down the front of my jacket, certain I hadn’t heard right.

“Alec, are you okay?”

“Yes, fine,” I croaked, then cleared my throat while Hunter wore a grin from ear to ear as he wiped the soda from both our jackets. I kicked him in the shin, and he shot me a what-the-fuck look.

“We’vealwaysbeen proud of you,” my father chimed in. “I get that maybe we didn’t tell you enough.”

Or at all.

“Shocker,” Lachlan weighed in and I almost laughed. Lachlan was never short on balls. “Be honest, you never understood Alec, either of you.”

I could tell from the silence that Mum had Lachlan pinned by her infamous glare.

“That’s... true, I suppose,” she admitted. “You boys were always so different, right from when you could walk. Lachlan was always at home on the farm, like us. It was easier with him. But that doesn’t mean being different isn’t good. Because it is.”

Tears welled in my eyes. Hunter saw and tipped my chin up with his fingers, kissing me gently. Twenty-two years of thinking I didn’t stack up against my older brother lifted off my chest and I could breathe freely for the first time.

“It was wrong of us to push you to come home,” my mother continued softly. “But it wasn’t because we didn’t value what you were doing. Okay, that’s not entirely true. I guess we still don’t understand what you see in modelling, but mostly we wanted you home because we missed you.” She broke off and I swore I heard a sniffle. “But we want you to do what makes you happy. And if modelling is it, then you shouldn’t let us or anyone else try and stop you. And we’ll always be proud of you.”

Oh, fucking, fuck, fuck.I swallowed hard around a lump lodged like granite.I will not cry. I will not bloody cry.

Hunter drew me close but I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t make a sound.

“He’s a little overwhelmed,” Hunter spoke into the phone as I stared into his eyes like a complete idiot.

My mother sighed. “I’m sorry, Alec. We should’ve said something much sooner. We’ve let you down.” She hesitated. “Is he listening, Hunter?”

“Of course he is, Mum,” Lachlan interrupted.

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