“Can I see what you’re working on?”
He flushed. “Maybe when it’s finished. Right now, it’s little more than preliminary sketches.” He set the sketchbook down on the seat cushion beside him. “You told me a lot just then.” He cocked his head. “Maybe it’s my turn? That’s assuming you want to know more about your lodger.”
I gave a small nod. “If you want to tell me, sure.” I was proud of the nonchalance lacing those words. They sounded polite, betraying nothing.
They couldn’t have been further from the truth.
I want to know more about you.
“You’ve been around since I was in my mid-teens, so you probably feel youalreadyknow me, but…” Cameron swallowed, then looked me in the eye. “One thinghaschanged since then.”
“Oh?”
He bit his lip. “I’m gay.” Cameron’s eyes sparkled. “Although you might have guessed that part.”
Shock ricocheted through me.Oh Gary, you really don’t know your little brother at all, do you?
It was a safer thought than the minefield that opened up before me.
Cameron is gay.
Not so off-limits after all.
He’s still untouchable. What did Gary say about not corrupting him?
I regained my composure and arched my eyebrows. “Guessed? I might have suspected. Especially after seeing you in that leather bar.”
Cameron’s eyes widened. “I was there for a friend,” he protested.
“Of course you were. And you were also surrounded by gay men, and you seemed perfectly at ease with that.”
And maybe that was why I had difficulty believing the straight part.My instincts—and my imagination—had already begun to suggest otherwise.
Cameron laughed. “Yeah, okay, so not exactly a plot twist.”
“Gary didn’t mention you being gay. Does he know?”
“Not really. It’s never been something I wanted to talk about with him.” His fingers traced the edge of the sketchbook. “I came close last year, in October. He made some comment about it being National Coming Out Day, something he’d seen on Instagram, I think. And I thought, ‘this is it. This is when I come out to him. It’s perfect timing.’” He paused. “But I couldn’t.”
“How long had you known you were gay?”
“The thing is… I didn’t really have an‘aha’moment. It was more like… something clicked when I met someone older, someone who made me feel safe for the first time. Someone who didn’t even know he was doing it.”
I gazed at him. “That sounds important.”
“It was,” Cameron affirmed. “He made me realise what I wanted wasn’t a phase. It was real. I could want someone, not just theideaof them.” He looked down quickly. “The usual teenage stuff, you know, intense and confusing.”
I studied him, a flicker of emotion behind his calm facade. “Did you ever tell him? This older guy?”
Cameron shook his head. “No. It would’ve been pointless. He was way out of reach.” A pause. “But it mattered, because after that, I stopped trying to be something I wasn’t.”
My chest tightened. There was something about the way Cameron said out of reach that struck too close to home.
I took a slow breath. “I’m glad you found that clarity.”
“Me too.”
“Have you dated much?” I flushed. “That was rude. It’s none of my damn business.”