Page 73 of The Last Call Home (The Timberbridge Brothers #5)

There’s that thing that happened back in Dallas. When I was doped up on pain meds, drifting between reality and some hazy dream. Waiting for surgery. Waiting for someone to wake me up, shake me, and tell me I was late for the game. That this—all of this—was just a nightmare.

But it wasn’t. And Dustin Haverbrook, my best friend, snuck into the hospital room when no one else dared to.

The kind of moment that, for anyone else, would be considered a small act of friendship.

But for me? For us? It’s a tragedy in the making.

The exact kind of moment my father will try to erase, rewrite, cover up with money and power, just to keep my life from spiraling completely out of control.

Because Dustin—Dusty—didn’t just visit me.

He showed up when I was completely out of it, too far gone on pain meds to keep my mouth shut.

I must’ve said something. Something raw, something real, something that slipped out of the cracks I usually keep hidden away.

Maybe something Dustin’s been waiting to hear.

And then . . . he kissed me in a public place.

I don’t remember everything, but I remember that.

The way his lips brushed mine, soft but with a desperation that felt like a question.

Like a dare. And now, as the fog of medication fades, I’m left with the aftermath.

With the sinking realization that, somehow, my private life has crossed a line I never meant to draw.

My PR team is going to have a field day with this. They’ll have to spin it, clean it up, because if this gets out—if anyone finds out what happened—it’s over. Everything I’ve worked for. Everything my father has built. It’ll all crumble.

And Dad’s right. My career—it’s slipping through my fingers faster than I can hold on to. It feels like I’m watching it disappear right before my eyes, and I can’t stop it. What’s going to happen to me? What’s left when the thing you’ve built your entire life around is gone?

My future is on the verge of collapsing. Just like Dustin’s. Maybe that’s why he kissed me—because deep down, we’re both afraid. Afraid of becoming our fathers. Afraid of losing ourselves to the expectations and the legacies we never asked to inherit.

If only they hadn’t taken her away. If only she hadn’t disappeared all those years ago. The one person who could’ve kept us whole. The one person who might’ve kept Dustin and me from falling apart.

If only.

Maybe then, neither of us would be so fucking broken.

It doesn’t surprise me to hear that my father has taken charge of my .

. . ‘problem,’ as he so delicately puts it.

Jean-Luc Bélanger, in all his self-righteous glory, is working with my agent and PR team to “fix” my image.

After that, he thinks therapy should be the next step.

Not for my recovery—no, that’s not what matters.

There are more pressing issues than my leg.

Jean-Luc’s real priority is making sure his firstborn remains flawless.

Perfect. Not some broken, queer man who defies everything he’s built his reputation on.

That’s not the image Dad, or the league, would stand behind.

Coming out would be like setting fire to everything he’s worked for— our family’s legacy going up in smoke, with me holding the match.

To him, I’m a disgrace—a defect to be corrected. He’s convinced that the last time he sought help for my problem , it wasn’t the right kind. But this time, he’s sure he’s found the perfect solution. A place designed to make me understand just how wrong I am about who I love.

But I’m thirty-four. I know exactly who I am. And I know exactly who I love.

No matter what he’s done, I still love them .

Both of them.

That part has never changed. And do I miss the fuck out of Halsey?

Every day since they took her from us. I wish .

. . Fuck, there’s so much I wish for. So many dreams I’ve clung to, even though they’re impossible now.

But unlike everything else in my life, I can’t reach for them.

I can’t reach out for her. It’s because I love her that I stay away.

And while I’m stuck here in this hospital bed, helpless, he’s controlling the narrative, making sure the headlines say it was the famous musician Dustin Haverbrook caught kissing another man—not me.

Some outlets are even spinning it into a story about a friendly kiss on the cheek.

Everyone knows we’re childhood friends, but there’s only so much Dad can do to erase one of his worst nightmares from the world.

But the truth? The truth is so much more complicated. We are . . . everything and nothing.

We’re what’s left of a dream.

Hals created that dream, and when they ripped her away, we couldn’t survive the absence. We were shattered without her. Now, we take what we can, when we can. Mostly when I’m too exhausted—too exhausted by the world, by the lies, and too fucking drunk to care.

But even then, it’s never enough. Not really. No matter how much we try to fill the emptiness, no matter how many times we fuck, it never drowns out the ache she left behind. It’s just a temporary fix—a way to feel something, anything, other than the constant void her absence carved into us.

Some nights, I lie awake, wondering if she ever thinks about us. If she remembers what we were. If she wonders what we could’ve been, if they hadn’t taken her away. Or maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference. Maybe we were doomed to fall apart, even before she walked out of our lives.

I keep telling myself that it’s better this way, that we’ve moved on. But deep down, I know we haven’t. We’re stuck. Stuck in this endless loop, reliving the past, clinging to whatever scraps of connection we can still find—even if they’re broken.

Even if we’re broken.