Page 6 of Find Me Again

Leaning forward, she rested her elbows on her knees.

"It's fine. I'm more interested in whatever's going on, because pretending like it's nothing is not helping anybody. You don't have to hide stuff from us."

Now, that same laughter got stuck in his throat.

He'd been hiding most of his life—ever since he'd realized there were things to hide. And his mom might think it was so easy to simply talk it out, but it wasn't. It never had been. For all that he believed she was honest when she said it, she didn'tknow.

She didn't understand.

"Is it the same thing you've been hiding ever since you were a teenager?" she asked quietly, tossing Neil's entire world off balance in one sentence.

She could've easily shouted it at the top of her lungs, with the effect it had on him.

He froze, his heart jumping into his throat.

"What do you—" he started, then hesitated.It couldn't be. Could it?

And then the realization hit him full force.

"You knew," he whispered. "You knew back then, you knew about me and—"

"We didn't know," she told him when Neil stopped in the middle of the sentence, unable to finish it. "We suspected, but we didn't know. And we thought about asking, but then you… The two of you had a falling out, and we couldn't figure out how to approach it."

"Icouldn't," his dad corrected gruffly. "It's on me that we didn't ask, back then. I thought it was best not to, when there was no reason to ask anymore. Which is stupid, I see it now. I completely missed the point, and I'm sorry for that, Son."

"We're both sorry for that." His mom glanced at his dad before turning to Neil again. "That's why we didn't want to wait this time around. Maybe it's about that, maybe it's something else, but whatever it is, we want you to know that you can tell us anything. And I meananything."

Burrowing deeper into the armchair, Neil lifted his good leg to press his knee to his chest. It was a tight fit, but he felt better like this as he scrambled to make sense of it all.

His parents had known.

He'd thought he'd hidden it well, but they'd somehow always known.

And now they were asking…

Neil swallowed hard. He could tell them. Not everything—especially not the blackmail part—but he could finally admit the biggest, scariest secret of his life.

As he curled his arms around his bent leg, he looked up tosee his parents sitting side by side, watching him. Waiting.

Were they holding their breaths, like he was?

"I'm gay."

His voice was barely louder than a whisper, but the words were out there, now.

It happened, and the world didn't end.

"Thank you for telling us." His mom leaned closer to rest her hand on his forearm. "We love you so much, and we're so proud of you."

He bit his lower lip hard, blinking fast. His eyes were stinging, but he wasnotgoing to cry.

"Nothing in this world could ever make us stop loving you," his dad added. "And you being gay doesn't change how proud we are."

Now Ryan had to press his fingers to his eyes to hold back the tears.

Fuck. They'd known for years and they didn't care.They didn't care.

"I'm sorry for whatever we did that made you doubt that," his dad continued, and his mom squeezed Neil's forearm. "We should've made you feel secure enough to share, and we didn't. I'm sorry."

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