Brad stopped by his mom’s house in the afternoon. He hadn’t seen her in a week and a half, which was longer than usual. He knew he was being paranoid, but his dad’s stroke had come out of nowhere. They hadn’t even really gotten a chance to say goodbye. He didn’t to wait a day or two too long and come to find his mother dead in the kitchen.

And yes, he was aware that was a morbid thought.

“Hi, honey, the door’s open!” his mom called as he walked up to the porch.

She must’ve heard his car in the driveway. He opened the door to find his mom at the sink, washing some dishes. She smiled at him over her shoulder. “How’s it going?”

“Good, good.”

Brad walked over and gave her a hug from behind, then sat down at the kitchen table. “What’d you make this time?”

His mom was a bit of an amateur baker, something she’d started doing to fill the time after her retirement. She was always watching baking shows and trying new things.

“A homemade Swiss roll,” Mom replied. “It’s in the fridge. How’s your new class?”

“Good, for the most part. We had a bit of an issue at the last one. One of the guys felt like another one was getting special treatment and lashed out.”

“I do worry sometimes that you’re going to get hurt. Not in a really dangerous sort of way. Just a broken nose or something.”

“Honestly, flare-ups don’t happen as often as you’d think. Most people in the classes choose to be there, and they genuinely want to do better.”

“Most of them?”

“Well, sometimes it’s court-mandated or something. I have one guy who got kicked out of his friend’s bar, and he’s not allowed back in unless he passes. He was starting too many bar fights.” Brad couldn’t help but grin as he thought about Preston.

“Is he the one who started the fight?”

“Oh, God, no.” Preston would never hurt him. “He defended me, actually. He’s the one the guy felt was getting special treatment. He’s a friend of Hank’s, so Katie let me bend the rules a little; I’m doing private sessions with him on top of the group sessions.”

“And is it special treatment?”

“No. I give him less attention in the groups to balance out the attention he gets in the private sessions. And, I mean, it’s good practice for me too, or so Katie says.

“He’s never opened up to anyone about his issues, and I don’t think he’s even realized how much help he’s needed. I felt it would be faster to let him talk in private, instead of constantly trying to force him to do things with the group. So he has to be supportive and listen to everyone and do the exercises, but he doesn’t have to share any of his personal shit if he doesn’t want to.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” Mom said, finishing up the dishes and going into the fridge to pull out the Swiss roll and cut them a slice. “Has he been making progress?”

“Oh, yeah. He’s definitely been improving. It’s really great to see.”

Mom gave him a piercing look as she set the plate in front of him. “You’re not getting personally attached, are you? You shouldn’t let yourself become friends with someone who’s basically your student. Or client. I’m not sure how you’d put it.”

Brad felt doubt and shame sweep through him like a rush of frigid wind.

Of course he shouldn’t be getting involved with Preston, even as a friend—but Preston wasn’t just a friend. Mom didn’t know that; she had no idea, and how could she?

Unless she’d somehow guessed, and there was another level to the look she was giving him that Brad was unaware of. But she couldn’t have guessed, could she? He’d been so careful…

This was why it was so hard. Mom was gentle about it, but she was stern. She had her rules, and sure, other people could possibly not follow those rules, but her son wasn’t going to be one of those people.

“Don’t worry,” Brad promised her. “I’m not doing anything that’ll blur the lines.”

Well, he wouldn’t be doing anything anymore.

Last night had been a mistake. Not that—Preston wasn’t a mistake. Or was he? But he shouldn’t have done anything with someone while he was their coach. It could compromise his professional integrity, and he should have remembered that.

“Every time there’s a pretty girl in your class I get worried,” Mom went on. “You know how there’s this false sense of intimacy that can develop between the coach and the client.”

Brad did know. Dad’s therapist, Brad’s mentor, had talked about it.

“But it’s mostly men who end up being in your classes, right?”

“Yeah.” Brad’s throat felt tight and dry, and his stomach was heavy and twisted. “It’s mostly men. Men tend to have more aggression issues. Societal programming.”

Mom nodded in an of course kind of way. Her marriage with Dad had been close to falling apart after Dad came back from his tour of duty. Dad had been aggressive, uncommunicative, jealous, and possessive. Mom had told him he could go to therapy, or he could get out.

So he’d gone to therapy.

“But we do get women,” Brad said, desperate to find some way to move the conversation along before he had some kind of heart attack.

Mom sighed. “I just don’t like the idea of you being lonely. You have hardly any friends, Bradley, and that worries me. I can’t help but feel if you had a girl, she’d help you to be more social. Women tend to be better at making friends, you know, at least in my experience. She might have a brother or some friends she could introduce you to.”

“And we’re going to pretend that you don’t also want grandkids?” Brad asked. Only his mom would ever be able to get away with calling him Bradley.

“Well, those too.” Mom smiled as she took a sip of coffee.

Brad cleared this throat. “What if I wanted to adopt? Instead of having biological kids?”

“Why wouldn’t you have biological kids?”

“Ah…” He should’ve known that question would come next. “Because there are already so many kids out there who need love and support. Why shouldn’t I give them a good home and help them? Maybe foster some kids to start out with. Help them have a better life.”

Mom gave him a warm, slow smile. “Oh, my sweet boy. Always thinking of other people. I think that’s wonderful of you.”

Brad smiled back at her, hating how his skin felt too thin and fragile as it stretched across his face.

He hated that she didn’t know, and that he had to hide parts of himself. It was true, he wanted to adopt, and he did want to try fostering first, but not just because of the reasons he’d given his mother.

Also because, well. Last he’d checked, men couldn’t get pregnant.

But he also couldn’t bear to tell her. He’d seen, with his dad’s behavior, how firm Mom could get on things that she believed in. How she would hold true to her principles and her ideas of how things were supposed to be. She’d been right about a lot of Dad’s behavior, but her strictness hadn’t helped, and Brad just couldn’t see her dumping her rules for him—or for anyone.

Was Preston, or anybody, really worth destroying his relationship with his only family? Was there ever going to be a person in his life as important and indispensable to him as his mother was?

There was always time to find someone later in life. After … after she’d joined Dad, so to speak. There was no reason for him to risk his professional reputation and his relationship with his mother over Preston.

No matter how great of a guy he was.

And he was a really great guy. A great kisser too, holy hell. Brad was going to be replaying last night over again for years to come.

But he just couldn’t see himself sacrificing like that. Maybe other people could. Maybe people like Hank and his friends, with the crazy love stories Hank had told him they’d all experienced—maybe they were the kind of people who’d sacrifice for love and do whatever it took.

Brad wasn’t, though.

It just wasn’t worth it.

He finished chatting with his mom, moving them on to other subjects. He couldn’t escape the feeling that she was watching him out of the corner of her eye. That she was trying to figure him out.

Had he slipped up?

“You know,” she finally said as he was getting ready to leave, “if there’s something weighing on your mind, you can talk to me about it.”

“I know, Mom.”

She nodded. “You just seem a little preoccupied today.”

“It’s nothing, really,” he assured her.

“Okay.” She looked doubtful. “But if there were something, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you? You know how I hate to see you stressed. You shouldn’t bottle things up.”

“I won’t,” he lied, smiling and hugging her goodbye. “I’ll pick you up at eight for the movie on Tuesday, okay?”

“Okay.”

Brad drove home, trying to ignore the lump in his throat.

Usually it was a lot easier to ignore, to set aside; but usually, he didn’t have a flesh and blood person in the equation. Usually dating a guy, having a man in his life, was an abstract. It was so much easier to pretend that it didn’t matter when he didn’t have anyone in particular to pine over.

Now that he had Preston in his life, it was so much harder. So much more difficult to act like he didn’t care. Because Preston wasn’t just a figment of his imagination. He was a real person, who was surprisingly fragile and tough and prickly and gorgeous and soft…

And someone Brad had to give up.

But Brad was not the kind of guy who let emotions rule him. He had to think through things rationally. That was what he told his students—think about what getting angry would do to help a situation. Usually, it didn’t. Think it through logically, he told them.

Well, logically, being involved with Preston was a bad decision. He had to protect his professional reputation and his source of income. He had to protect Preston, too, from the rumors and gossip that would surface if it was discovered that he’d hooked up with his anger management coach. People might say things like, he only passed because of that.

And Brad had long ago made the decision that his mother was more important than romance. Even if he hadn’t said it straight out, he’d been acting that out in all of his decisions, and in what he said to Hank and anyone else who tried to get him to come out.

His mother was more important to him.

Brad heaved a sigh, tightening his grip on the steering wheel.

He was just going to have to find a way to tell Preston.