Wyatt’s brain froze. The truth. He felt as if he’d just awakened from a bad dream to discover that reality was even worse. Erin hadn’t reached the conclusion that he was gay on her own. She’d been led to believe that by his brother. Which meant Wyatt had been completely off base in everything he’d said to her. Oh, God. He’d accused her of being conceited. Of being so stuck on herself that she couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that a heterosexual male could resist her.

A fresh flood of outrage swamped Wyatt. He stared at Kennedy, and for the first time in his life, he counted to ten in order to control his temper with his brother. “Exactly when did you determine that I’m gay, Kennedy?”

Kennedy’s shoulders slumped. “I’m not sure. For a long time, I thought your lack of interest in dating women was somehow connected to your deafness. Only as I matured and started to—well, you know—I realized that a guy’s ears are a long way from his equipment. His sense of hearing or the lack of it plays no part in his sexuality. Deaf, blind, mute. It doesn’t matter. So I started thinking of other reasons you might not like girls. I wanted to talk to you about it, but every time I tried, I couldn’t think how to broach the subject.”

“Well, the moral of that story is that maybe you shouldn’t think. I am not gay.”

“You’re not?” Kennedy shook his head. “But that’s all that makes sense. My whole life, you’ve never liked girls. You didn’t even go to your senior prom.”

Wyatt resumed his former position, elbows planted on his knees, forehead resting on the heels of his hands. He didn’t know if Kennedy continued to talk. It didn’t matter. “I liked girls in high school, but they didn’t like me. I was deaf and I talked weird. Any time I made a move on a girl, I got shot down.” Wyatt straightened to look at his brother again. “That’s one of the reasons I worked so hard back then to improve my speech. I hoped to be more like the other guys and get a girlfriend.”

Kennedy’s brow furrowed in a frown. “So you like women? I don’t get it. You speak fine now. If you’re interested, why don’t you ever hook up with anybody?”

Wyatt ran a hand over his face and blinked. “There are things about me that you don’t know. You were only fifteen when it happened, and Mom and Dad kept it from you. It was bad, really bad, but it didn’t happen in our hometown and wasn’t front-page news, so they were able to keep it a secret. Mostly, anyhow. Grandpa knew. Our minister and a couple of really close friends from church knew. And practically everyone in Medford must have known, because the paper followed my trial closely. But if the news ever reached Klamath Falls, it must have been buried on a back page.”