Page 11 of Like the Season

Oh.

Nowit clicked. Not that he’d ever heard them talking about the “family name” before likethat, but he wasn’t an idiot.

Whatever self-worth his father—and his mother by default—had wrapped up in that “distinction,” of being part of a founding family, had to be part of what was fueling this.

And the fact that they were raging homophobes, but inadditionto that.

Part of it was wrapped up in their “common man” versus “the elite” bullshit they’d gotten roped into believing, thanks to their hours spent unquestionably soaking up every bit of garbage Fox News spewed at them every night.

That, and the garbage their preacher also spewed at them, that gays were ruining the world, and that the Apocalypse couldn’t come fast enough to suit them.

If he hadn’t earned a scholarship to college, he never would have gone. No way his parents would have helped him, even if they had been able to pay for it. His parents scoffed at people who went to college as book-smart and common-sense-stupid.

Including him, apparently.

I’m the same guy I was growing up as their son, I just happened to go to college because I wanted to be a civil engineer.

Hell, he’d loved playing Sim City as a teenager on the second-hand desktop computer he’d received for Christmas when he was thirteen. Obviously, the real-life version of that wasn’t a fraction as fun or glamorous, but he enjoyed the work, even the boring minutiae.

He inhaled again, envisioning Boyd’s blue eyes as he did.

I’ll talk to Sir once we’re together again.

Maybe even wait until they were on the flight home to tell the man what happened. He didn’t want his family drama overshadowing Boyd’s time with Ella.

I’m going to be a step-dad!

He sadly smiled. It wasn’t exactly something he’d be able to brag about to his parents, or anyone in his immediate family.

Except…knowing it was Boyd he’d spend the rest of his life with, the terror of being alienated by them no longer froze him the way it used to.

All because of Boyd.