Page 33 of After the Rain

After we hung up, I sat in my living room acknowledging a truth I'd been avoiding. Wade needed space to understand his feelings without pressure from me. But I also needed to protect my own heart while he figured things out.

The balance felt impossible to strike.

Before sleep, I made a decision that felt both mature and terrifying. I would give Wade space, but I wouldn't disappear. I would maintain professional boundaries, but I wouldn't pretend nothing had happened between us. I would protect my career, but I wouldn't sacrifice my chance at happiness on the altar of other people's comfort.

It wasn't stepping back completely, and it wasn't fighting recklessly. It was something in between—a careful dance between hope and self-preservation.

As I turned off the lights, I found myself wondering what Wade was doing right now. Was he lying awake thinking about our kiss? Was he regretting it? Was he missing me the way I was missing him?

Some questions would have to wait for answers. But unlike every other time I'd fallen for a questioning man, this time I wasn't willing to disappear while he figured himself out.

This time, I was going to stay visible and let him decide if I was worth the risk.

It felt terrifying and empowering in equal measure.

And for the first time since waking up this morning, it felt like hope.

NINE

WHAT AM I?

WADE

One AM, and I was still staring at the ceiling like it might provide answers to questions that were tearing me apart from the inside.

The kiss played on repeat in my mind—Ezra's soft lips, the way he'd kissed me back with such careful tenderness, the rightness of it that had shattered everything I thought I knew about myself. My pulse raced just remembering it, my stomach doing those impossible flutters that felt both familiar and terrifying.

Shouldn't I know my own sexuality by now? Shouldn't this be settled territory, mapped and understood like the architectural blueprints I drew for a living?

But lying in the dark, I couldn't escape the truth that was clawing its way to the surface: kissing Ezra had felt more real, more right, more honest than anything I'd experienced in fifteen years of marriage.

What the hell did that mean?

I got up for water, nearly stumbling over the laundry basket I'd left by the bed. My hands shook as I filled the glass, andI caught my reflection in the kitchen window—hollow-eyed, disheveled, looking like a man coming apart at the seams.

The face looking back was the same one that had married Sarah in a church full of people who thought they knew who I was. The same face that had gone through the motions of heterosexual life, building a career and a family and a reputation as a good husband, good father, good man.

But if I was gay—and Christ, even thinking the word made my chest tight with something between panic and relief—what did that say about everything I'd built? Was my marriage a lie? Had I been lying to Sarah for fifteen years without even knowing it?

Back in bed, I found myself cataloguing memories with new eyes. College. My fraternity brother Jake, whose attention I'd craved in ways I'd convinced myself were about admiration. The way I'd felt devastated when he'd started dating seriously, like I was losing something precious I'd never known I wanted.

My wedding night. Sarah in the hotel bathroom, getting ready, and me sitting on the bed feeling like I was about to perform in a play I'd never auditioned for. The hollow sensation in my chest when she'd emerged in white lace, beautiful and radiant and completely wrong for me in ways I couldn't articulate.

Even during sex with Sarah, I'd felt like I was following a script. Touch here, kiss there, make the right sounds at the right moments. I'd thought that's what intimacy was supposed to feel like—mechanical, dutiful, performed rather than felt.

By the time my alarm went off at six, I'd maybe slept two hours. Cooper found me in the kitchen, staring at the coffee maker like it might provide answers to existential questions.

"Morning, Daddy. You look tired."

"Just didn't sleep well, buddy. Bad dreams."

"About what?"

About kissing your teacher and feeling more alive than I have in years, I definitely didn't say.

"Just work stuff. Nothing for you to worry about."

I made breakfast while Cooper chattered about his day ahead. When he mentioned Mr. Mitchell, my stomach did that fluttering thing again—part anticipation, part terror, part something I was finally starting to recognize as want.

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