assumed his brother could see the bumps on his neck that his fingers had been scratching at all afternoon.
“You just want to go to the mall to fuck around at the piano store,” Van told him.
That was a half-truth. The piano store had been the very reason Nik had learned the piano in the first place. He’d wandered off when his mom was shopping for dresses, and an old man with gnarled, rough hands had put him on the bench and walked him through the keys. His mother had panicked, screaming at the top of her lungs when she found him, but he cried and begged enough that she relented and brought him back. She never quite thought anything would come of it, but his father had given in after the old man offered him a deal on an upright, and it had changed Nik’s entire world.
“I want to buy shirts that won’t slowly kill me,” he retorted. He readjusted his posture and set his fingers on the keys.
“Yanik,” Van breathed out.
“Gurvan,” Nik retorted, using the same tone as he full-named his brother. He didn’t give him a chance to respond, instead bearing down hard on the keys as he ran through his scales. When the last note died out, he tilted his head and heard nothing but the old creak of floorboards, rich with the ghosts of those who came long before them, hundreds of years before when the house was first built.
He wondered if any had been like him. Lonely—very likely. Blind—maybe, though they had probably died sightless, young, and in pain. Maybe some of them had been gay too, but remained locked in a closet without the freedom he had, even if it did come with a price no matter what society preached. He let out another breath, then let the notes take him, let them play his own fingers as the song poured out. He was not the best of the best—he was just well-trained. But it was enough, and at least in this avenue of his life, he was happy.
Chapter 2
Aria
Adam hit the cool-down setting, the belt beneath his feet easing to a slow walk. Sweat dripped down the back of his neck, and he reached for his towel. His water sat in the holder, the summer heat and humidity making condensation rain from the clear plastic. His sister Stella had shoved a bunch of cucumber and ginger into it before he took off, yelling at him about blood pressure and runners dying young.
He knew it was just because she cared, and because her overwhelming fear and anxiety that she might never see her husband again needed an outlet. So, he let her fuss and mother him in the absence of their own, and he took it all with a smile so maybe she wouldn’t wake up every single night in a blind panic that Cooper was dead, and she was now a widow.
For all that Adam loved his sister—hell, they’d shared not only a womb, but they were two halves of the same egg, so it was hard to lose that kind of connection from birth—he didn’t totally understand her. He’d been gay since he knew what crushes were, and he’d been staunchly anti-relationship for a good portion of his life, unlike his sister who spent her free time from age eight to nine dressing their cats in makeshift gowns and tuxedos made out of tissue and writing down her future kids’ names.
Stella had been his polar opposite in most ways—gender, for one. He knew he wasn’t a girl when he was three, long before he knew he didn’t like girls. He was one of the few, lucky anomalies whose parents didn’t throw him into therapy to try to warp him into something he wasn’t. Instead, they searched until they found doctors who could offer solutions—like suppressing his puberty, preparing him for testosterone and surgery. He got a new wardrobe and a short haircut, and a new name. He became Adam Julian—the name his mother had written down in her dream journal the week she found out she was pregnant with twins.
There’s two in there, and if I can choose, I’d like a boy named Adam Julian.
And that was that. He struggled in high school, when his voice didn’t change the same way as the other boys, even with his weekly shots. He grew facial hair, but not enough, and hated when his mom told him it was just genetics. Working out helped—and running.