He’d come out to me at seventeen, and it had changed nothing between us except that he finally seemed like himself. When he told me he’d met someone, I cried happy tears. My boy, in love, finally ready to bring someone home.
I wanted to love this young man.
The doorbell rang around four, and Tyler practically ran to answer it, grinning in a way I hadn’t seen from him in a long time.
He walked into the kitchen with a young man beside him, introducing him with obvious pride.
“Mom, this is Aidan.”
The second I saw his face, I froze completely, the serving spoon still in my hand, my whole body suddenly cold.
Because it wasn’t the first time I’d seen that face.
Two months earlier, a warning had gone around every parent group in our county — shared hundreds of times, pinned to the top of every community page.
