Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 78152 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78152 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
And there, standing in my apartment, were Scott Boone and Adan Navarro. I gasped and leaped back from the physical embodiments of the ghosts who had never stopped haunting me.
“Charlie!” Scott shouted happily, and at the same moment Adan excitedly cried out, “Chase!”
It was like a fucking nightmare.
“Fuck,” I muttered and turned my head quickly from my first love to the only other man I’d trusted with my heart. They’d each eviscerated me once upon a time, and though I’d healed, mostly, being faced with both of them at the same moment was still too much… way too much. I suddenly felt as nauseous as Stacia.
Adan slowly turned his head to Scott, whose mouth was gaping open. “Charlie?” Adan asked weakly.
Scott closed his mouth and gulped. “Chase?” he said.
“Fuck,” I groaned, as my brain started catching up to the comedy of horrors unfolding in front of me. It wasn’t just that they were both there at the same time. They had been standing close together when I’d opened the door. Really close. And was Scott’s arm around Adan’s back?
They both looked over at me and stared.
“Charlie?” Scott asked, his voice hesitant, the question clear from his tone.
“Chase?” Adan asked, sounding equal parts incredulous and horrified.
Their tones and body language had already clued me in to what I was seeing, but when I shifted my gaze from Scott’s eyes to Adan’s and then back again, my suspicion was confirmed. I knew them well enough to recognize what I was seeing.
I’d loved two men during my thirty-five years on this planet. Only two. And I’d lost them both. Wouldn’t it just figure that they’d found in each other what they had both deemed missing in me?
I dropped my face into my hands and whispered, “Fuck.”
And that’s when Bobby ran over and said, “I found your camera, Uncle Charlie! Can I take a picture?”
Adan looks green. Scott looks pale. I look like I’m going to pass out. And not a single one of us is looking at the camera. That’s the next picture in the album.
Scott Boone
FIFTEEN years. That’s how long it had been since I’d talked to him. The first boy I’d ever loved. The one who had made me realize without a doubt that I was gay because there could be no other explanation for the way my heart raced every time I saw him. The person who had looked at me like I held all the answers to all the questions in the universe and who had never stopped glowing when I walked in the room. The guy who had never judged me, never found me lacking, and always put me first.
Charlie Rhodes: the person I had been too young to appreciate, too distracted to hold on to, but too in love with to ever forget.
Being with him had been both the best and the worst first relationship imaginable. Best because it was, in most ways, idyllic and happy and generous. Worst because measuring any adult relationships against it had left them lacking.
Which wasn’t to say I hadn’t had any other good relationships. I am a relationship kind of guy; hookups and flings have never been my cup of tea, so there had been other boyfriends in my life since Charlie and I broke up. But really, none of them had ever captured me like he had, made me feel what he did; none of them had found a place in my head and in my heart and never let go.
Well, none except for the man who shared my bed, my mortgage, my law practice, and, at that moment, my shock—Adan Navarro.
“What the fuck just happened here?” Adan asked, his gaze fixed on the door that had just closed.
“I don’t—” I gulped, listened to the rapid footsteps fade away, and shook my head. “I don’t know.”
Seven-year-old Bobby jumped in with the oh so helpful summary: “Uncle Charlie said he’d be back by midnight, and your friend said a bad word.” He planted his hands on his hips and glared at Adan. “Mr. Scott, tell your friend he isn’t allowed to say bad words. It’s my mother’s rule.”
Great. We’d violated his dead mother’s rule. Never mind that I had heard Rachel cuss more than a drunken sailor. If people could see those they left behind from the afterlife, I had no doubt Rachel was, at that moment, laughing her butt off at me being scolded by her son.
“I’m sorry, Bobby,” I said as I hunkered down so we were at eye level. “We’ll be more careful from now on.” I smacked Adan’s shin. “Won’t we?”
“Oh, uh, yes. More careful,” Adan said.
“Who is he?” Bobby asked as he looked at Adan warily.
“This is Mr. Adan. He’s my boyfriend and he’s going to hang out with us tonight, okay?”
“Does he play Legos too?”
I smiled. Bobby had become obsessed with Legos a couple of years earlier, so whenever I went to Rachel’s for dinner, our agenda included a good bit of time with me sprawled on Bobby’s bedroom floor building animals out of Legos. Of course, Adan didn’t know that because he had never met Rachel or her kids.