Page 145 of Dirty Hit
The way he sayshimmakes it clear Dominic isn’t a person in this equation; he’s a symbol. A stand-in for everything they’re afraid of—lust, deviance, scandal.
I think about saying I didn’t choose to be attracted to men. I think about unpacking the years of denial, the girlfriends I used like bandages, the nights I stayed up begging God to change me. I think about telling them how many times I almost came out, and didn’t, because I knew this was waiting.
What comes out instead is, “I didn’t choose to love him. It just… happened.”
My father’s face shutters. “Then you need immediate repentance. There are ministries that help young men like you. We can fix this.”
The wordsministriesandfixmake bile rise in my throat.
“I’m not broken. I’m not some project you can send to a camp and expect to come back straightened out and ready for a wife. I’m—” I break off, because what I am feels too big and raw to put into words right now. “I’m still me. I’m still the son you raised. I’m still the guy who calls Mom when she’s sick, and sends you sermon ideas, and takes notes in church over Christmas. I just also happen to be in love with someone you don’t approve of.”
My mother presses her fingers to her lips, shoulders shaking harder. My father looks at me for a long, long moment, and I can see the war in his eyes. Love and doctrine. Pride and horror. The image of me as he wanted me to be, battling the reality of me as I am.
He slips the phone back into his pocket with neat precision, like he’s sliding a blade back into a sheath. When he speaks again, his voice is flat. “Then you have made your choice, so we’re making ours.”
A chill goes through me. “What does that mean?”
“It means, we will not fund your rebellion,” he says. “We will not pay for you to wallow in sin. We will not be complicit in your damnation. Effective immediately, we are cutting off your financial support: tuition, rent, stipend, everything. You want to live like this, you pay for it yourself.”
For a second, all I hear is static. “You’re… you’re cutting me off,” I repeat slowly. “Completely.”
His jaw tightens. “Yes. You’re an adult, and you’re making adult choices, so you can live with adult consequences.”
Panic flares, white-hot. All the emotional noise in the room strips away, and my brain does math instead. Tuition bills. Rent. Utilities. Food. Jericho’s vet visits. The scholarship covers a chunk, but the gap is still big enough that my parents’ support has been the difference between grinding poverty and barely comfortable.
Without it, I’m looking at taking on more loans than I ever wanted, and probably dropping out for a semester to work full-time and catch up. If I even can. TA positions don’t pay enough to bridge that gap, and they definitely don’t love scandal.
“You can’t,” I say, even though I know they can. “Dad, please. I’m halfway through this degree. I’ve worked so hard. I—”
“You worked hard and then you decided to throw your integrity away. I can’t stand at the pulpit and preach holiness on Sunday, then write checks so my son can dishonor everything we stand for on Friday night. I would be a hypocrite. I will not be that man.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I ask, my voice cracking. “Just… drop out? Move back home? Sit in the pew and pretend none of this ever happened, while you ship me off to some ‘program’ to fix me?”
“That would be a start,” he says.
“If you repent, if you come home, we will help you,” my mother interjects, eyes pleading even as her words line up with his. “Wewill get you counseling. We will help you leave this lifestyle. But as long as you keep choosing this, we can’t. We can’t support you living in open defiance. We can’t pretend everything’s fine, when it’s not.”
A hysterical laugh bubbles up before I can swallow it. “Open defiance,” I echo. “You found out because someone in the bushes filmed us without our consent and sent it to you like revenge porn for Jesus, andI’mthe one in open defiance.”
“Watch your tone,” my father warns. “You are still our son.”
“Am I?” I ask because the way he’s talking doesn’t sound like it.
“Yes, but you are not welcome in our home while you are living like this,” he says, precise and formal. “If you choose to marry a woman, and walk away from this, we will talk. Until then, you’re on your own. We’re letting you face the consequences of your choices. Alone.”
I knew, deep down, this was always where the road would end once they found out. There was never a version of this where my father said, ‘I love you, I just want you safe, let’s talk.’ There was only ever this: conform or be cast out. It still hurts, though.
“That’s a very pretty way of saying you’re disowning me,” I reply, because if I don’t keep talking, I’m going to cry—and I refuse to give them that satisfaction.
Mom is crying enough for all three of us, silent tears slipping down her cheeks. “Please, Brendon,” she whispers. “Don’t do this. Don’t throw your life away for some boy who doesn’t care about you.”
The worst part is that he does care. Dominic cares so much that he tried to leave me to keep me safe, and then broke when he couldn’t. He cares enough to chase me through a forest, just because I mentioned that thing about fear once. He cares enough to admit, drunk and bleeding on my couch, that he never wanted to feel this way about anyone.
But I can’t explain that in a way they’ll hear, and I won’t drag his name into this mess any more than it already is.
“I’m not coming home to be your cautionary tale,” I snap, the fear igniting into anger for the first time. “I’m not letting you parade me in front of the congregation as the prodigal son who was ‘saved’ from the evil gays. I’m not going to stand up there and lie about who I am and who I love, so you can keep your church tidy.”
My mother lets out a strangled sob. “Honey, please,” she says, reaching for me again. “Please don’t do this to yourself. To us. That boy… he’s not worth losing everything over. He’s not worth your future.”
