Can't Stand the Heat - Louisa Edwards [103]
“You’re right,” she conceded. “We’re getting off track. The main issue here is Frankie.”
Jess immediately got his back up. “This isn’t about Frankie, either, and I hate it that you’re trying to make it be about him. This is about me,” he continued, more quietly. “And the fact that you can’t accept me for who I am. But I’m not ashamed of being gay. And the infuriating thing is, I know you’re not a bigot. You didn’t have any problem with Grant being gay. But when it’s me, your own brother . . .”
“Jess, no.” Miranda was very firm. “Listen to yourself. I love you. You know that. I have always accepted you, encouraged you, supported you. But you have to see that I can’t support this crazy crush Frankie has somehow suckered you into.”
“It’s not a crush,” Jess cried. “And Frankie isn’t the bad guy here.”
Miranda’s eyes burned. “And I suppose I am? I’m not the one who nearly got you beaten up.”
She reached a trembling hand to the cut on his forehead and Jess shook her off as if he were swatting at an annoying insect.
“It was nothing, I told you that last night.”
“See, that terrifies me, Jess. This lifestyle you’re so eager to join, it could get you hurt, make you sick. You could die. The dangers—”
Jess cut her off with a sharp chop of his hand through the air between them.
“Stop right there. Being gay isn’t a ‘lifestyle’ choice. It’s not a choice at all. It’s just me.”
That statement stole Miranda’s breath. “Okay. Okay.”
They stood looking at each other while the noises of the park drifted around them.
Miranda gazed at Jess, and for the first time, she saw a young man rather than the small boy who’d slipped his hand into hers at their parents’ funeral. Her heart cracked a little at the self-knowledge and determination in his blue eyes—a determination that couldn’t quite mask the vulnerability underneath. Miranda breathed, and thought hard about what she was going to say next. She knew instinctively that it would set the tenor for her entire adult relationship with her brother.
“When you first told me you were gay, I did everything wrong. I cried. I yelled. I blamed everyone in sight, including myself. I acted like being gay was this horrible thing, when I don’t even think that—but Jess, it is different, because you’re my brother.” She swallowed hard, but the light starting to fill Jess’s eyes dissolved the lump in her throat.
“We grew up in such a hurry after Mom and Dad died,” Miranda faltered. “The two of us against the world. That car accident robbed you of so much—your childhood, your innocence, countless memories of our parents and the beautiful life they made together. I swore to myself you’d have those things one day. I imagined every detail. Countless dreams of a perfect, normal life—a wife, a nice house in a safe neighborhood, kids. I wanted that for you even more than for myself, and hearing that you were gay . . .”
Miranda lost her voice without warning. She realized she was crying, tears rolling wet and messy down her cheeks.
“God,” Jess choked. “Miranda.”
“Let me finish,” she begged. “I don’t think less of you, and nothing you could ever do or say could make me stop loving you. But I’m afraid. I’m afraid of the way the world treats people who are different. And there’s a part of me that’s afraid it’s my fault. That it’s something I did, or didn’t do, and that if Mom and Dad were alive they’d have done better, protected you or . . .”
Jess took her by the shoulders, his hands sure and steady, his face serious. “But you know that’s wrong.”
“I do,” she swore, pushing every ounce of sincerity she could muster into her voice. “I know that’s not how it works. Your sexuality has nothing to do with me, and I had nothing to do with it. I let my own fears and insecurities govern my reactions when you came out to me, and I will regret that till my dying day.”
“Stop it.” Jess’s voice made her ache with love. He shook his head. “I don’t care how the world treats