by Shawn Lane
Tim’s friends had tried to set him up with a few dates, but he didn’t want them. None of them were Brandon. None of them had the direct way of talking to Tim that Brandon did. Nor the beautiful smile or dimples. Or the kind, sweet heart.
His cell phone buzzed and vibrated on his desk. Micah’s picture appeared.
He answered. “Hello, Micah.”
“Are you still coming over for dinner tonight?”
“No. I can’t make it.” He twirled around in his chair to look out the window.
“Again? You canceled last time.”
“I’m sick to my stomach. I must have eaten something bad.”
Micah sighed. “What’s really going on, Tim? It’s Brandon, isn’t it? You’re still hung up on him.”
Tim just stared at the twilight outside his window. A soft breeze moved the trees. His stomach did a flip just hearing the name out loud. Not that he hadn’t called it out himself dozens of times. “Yeah.”
“What happened there?” Micah asked gently.
“I fell in love.” He closed his eyes. “It didn’t work out.”
“You guys seemed to be doing so well.”
Tim shook his head. “I’m not really sure of anything right now. Just that I miss him.”
There was a long pause, and then Micah said, “You could go there.”
“To Lincoln Hill?”
“Yeah. I’m not trying to get rid of you, Tim. You know I adore you. But I want you to be happy even if that’s somewhere else. It’s not like Lincoln Hill is thousands of miles away. It’s a long car ride or a short plane ride. I hope we’re close enough we’ll still be friends no matter where we live.”
His throat clogged. “Of course.”
“Well, think about it then, okay?”
Could he do it? He’d once thought he’d spend the rest of his life in LA. But now? He still liked it. But it was just a place. A place without Brandon. Lincoln Hill was looking better and better to him. “Yeah. I will.”
“Are you sure you shouldn’t come to dinner? Maybe it would be good to be with friends.”
“I’m not really good company right now, Micah. I love you and you know it. But not right now.”
“Okay. Call me tomorrow? I want to be sure you’re all right.”
Tim promised that he would and hung up. He really wanted to get out of the office. It suffocated him. First, though, he checked his work e-mail and saw a message from Lance. Since the reunion, he, Lance, and Ashtyn had continued e-mailing each other with their latest updates. He’d poured his heart out to them last night in an e-mail. The subject simply read Brandon.
He opened it and noticed Lance had copied Ashtyn. The note was brief and to the point.
Go back to Lincoln Hill and get your man.
For the first time in six weeks, Tim decided he was done moping. Lance and Micah were right. Tim was an attorney and knew how to argue with the best of them. He’d given up too easily twice, hadn’t he? This time he was going to fight for Brandon.
* * * *
“We’d be glad to have your event here at Lincoln Hill River Resort,” Brandon spoke into the phone. “Let me have you speak with one of my associates, Mary, and she can send you the brochures. Yes, just one moment, please.” Brandon put the caller on hold and then buzzed Mary over the intercom system. “Hey Mary, can you take line one? Sorry to bother you, but I’m trying to finish something up before I head out. It’s William Allen wanting to book the resort for a business conference.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you.” He sighed and rose from behind his desk. He’d been sitting there most of the day, and he was stiff and ready to go and sink himself into a long, hot bath. And ignore the phone. If he had to listen to Veronica chirping in his ear one more time about how he really ought to contact Tim, he would scream.
Yes, maybe he should. Maybe his life had been pure hell ever since he’d told Tim the relationship wasn’t working for him. He just didn’t need to hear it for the tenth time. Or was it the hundredth? He’d lost track.
He finished the paperwork he had to have done and then grabbed his briefcase. He decided he’d work from home the rest of the day. Brandon stepped out of his office, closed the door, and gave a little wave to Mary to get her attention.
“Going to work from home,” he mouthed to her. She nodded her understanding, and he turned and walked out.
Brandon couldn’t face one more person, so he went out a back way to the employee lot so he wouldn’t get stopped. Yet even as he stepped out the side door, his cell phone rang.
“Grr.” He grimaced and answered. “Veronica, I know you mean well, sweetie, honest, but I can’t take any more. Not today.”
“Is it starting to sink into that thick skull of yours then?”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t what?” she prodded.
“I can’t contact Tim and say I was wrong.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Shh. Your yelling is giving me a headache. Because life isn’t rainbows and butterflies, and some things just don’t work out. Some relationships.”
“You didn’t even try very hard.”
“Because it’s never going to work, Veronica. Long-distance relationships are disasters. Everyone knows that.”
“It doesn’t have to be long distance.”
He sighed. “We’ve been over this. I even tried it. I don’t want to go there. I like it here. I love my house. I love my friends. I love my job.” He turned the corner to enter the parking lot. “Tim left Lincoln Hill. He’s not going to want to be here. Not for me.”
“Did you ask him?’
“No, but he couldn’t even come here for a weekend when we were doing the long-distance thing. He’s made it pretty clear he loves LA. I can’t ask him to uproot his life to see if we work. We don’t even know that we will. Sure the sex was great, but there has to be more than great sex.”
“There was more to it. You haven’t felt like this about anyone in a long time,” Veronica pointed out.
“I know.”
“In fact, you know who the last guy you felt this strongly over was?”
He didn’t answer, just kept walking, knowing she would get to it in her own time.
“Tim Olfander.”
“That was just a schoolboy crush.”
“It’s not anymore,” she said. “Maybe there was a reason the reunion was at your resort. Maybe it was meant to be between you two all along.”
Brandon shook his head. “I don’t believe in fate.”
“Well, what do you call it then?” she asked.
Before he could answer, he spotted his car, and leaning against his car was a tall, dark, and handsome man who was more than a little familiar. His heart stuttered.
“Oh my God.”
“Brandon? What is it? Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m all right,” he said, dazed. “Everything’s fine. It’s Tim.”
“What?” Veronica squealed. “Tim?”
“I’ll call you back.” He ended the call, dropped his phone into his suit pocket, and walked the rest of the way to his car and the man he surely must have conjured up.
“Tim?” he asked the apparition.
Tim smiled, but it was not a smile of a confident man. He looked very uncertain and perhaps a little queasy. “Hi, Brandon.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to talk to you. About us.”
He blinked. “About us? You came all the way here?”
“Yeah.” Tim looked down at his hands. “I’ve been waiting out here for you to get off work.”
“Why didn’t you come inside?”
Tim shook his head, and he raised his gaze to Brandon’s. “I didn’t want an audience. I wanted to speak with you alone.”
The vulnerability Brandon saw in Tim’s eyes made his breath catch in his throat. He wanted to reach out and touch Tim, see if he was real. But he wasn’t sure if he could. Not when he was the one who had
ended things. “Oh. Do you want to go somewhere or talk here?”
Tim looked around the mostly deserted parking lot. “Here’s good. I don’t want to lose my nerve.”
“Okay. What…You said you wanted to talk about us?” Brandon was close enough to touch Tim’s arm, take his hand. But he waited. Tim being here had to be something good, right? He didn’t want to give in to premature hope, though.
“Well, for starters, you were right to end it when you did.”
“I…was?”
Tim nodded. “I would have been expecting you to move to Los Angeles for me, and you never would have been happy there. You would have eventually been so miserable and you’d resent me and I can’t have that.”
Brandon didn’t know where this was going. Tim was back but telling him he’d been right in saying they shouldn’t be together. His head swam.
“So anyway.” Tim grinned sheepishly. “I have a solution.”
“You do?”
“I’m moving here to Lincoln Hill.”
“Tim—”
“Wait, please. I need to get this out before I talk myself out of it or you try and shoot me down.”
Brandon winced, but nodded. “All right.”
“I gave notice at the firm I work at in LA. The billable hours there were killing me anyway. A guy I worked with had a heart attack the week I got back from the reunion. Too much stress. I don’t want to be that guy, and I realized I’m headed that way. I couldn’t even tear myself away for a couple of days to be with my boyfriend. That’s not what I want. I want a life in a place I can breathe in and where I can go for a walk without worrying about getting mugged. Where you are.” Tim reached for Brandon’s hand and clasped it in his. “Nothing has ever felt as good to me as this right here.”
Brandon knew he should say something. He tried to get words out but all he could manage was to croak out a “Yeah?”
Tim nodded. “So I have interviews later this week here with two firms. I’m fairly certain, given my discussions with them, I’ll have at least one offer, maybe two. I know you don’t think a long-distance relationship is feasible, that it wasn’t working, and I don’t have the greatest track record with you for anything, really, so the only way I know to get the long-distance thing out of the way is to move here.”
Brandon felt weak in the knees, and he decided standing there so far from Tim, where all he could do was hold his hand, was a mistake anyway. He took a few steps until he really could touch Tim, feel his warmth, his skin. He closed his arms around Tim’s waist. He pulled Tim tight against him and laid his head on Tim’s chest.
“I thought you didn’t want to live in Lincoln Hill. You couldn’t wait to leave.”
“That was then, Brandon. People change. I’m not the punk I was ten years ago. Or even the idiot I was six weeks ago. And these last few weeks I couldn’t even think straight.” Tim shook his head. “Where I live, well, it just doesn’t matter anymore. It seems so ridiculous now. LA is nothing if you aren’t with me.”
He bit his lip but hugged Tim tighter. “You make me feel like a fool insisting I have to live here.”
Tim tilted Brandon’s chin so that their gazes met. He ran his thumb over Brandon’s bottom lip. “Don’t. It’s important to you. You need this place to feel like it’s your home. I think maybe all I need is you.”
They kissed then, long and deep, their tongues meeting after what had been too long apart. When they came up for air, Brandon let out a shuddery breath. “It’s all so sudden, so new. I don’t know if what’s between us is enough.”
“I know. I guess I have doubts, too. Somewhat.” He smiled. “But I’ve already found an apartment.”
“An apartment?” Damn, Tim was full of surprises.
“I’m not going to scare you, Brandon. Any more than I already have, I should say. I’ve come on strong at you from the start. I know that. I’m kind of a strong personality.”
“Yeah.” Brandon smiled, his heart allowing hope to enter, just a little. He brought Tim’s mouth down to his for more kisses.
Tim squeezed him tight. “So I’m not going to come here after what we’ve been going through and only knowing you for a few weeks and demand to move in with you. That’s not going to work for you. I have an apartment and soon I’ll have a job and we’ll go on dates and establish things between us like normal couples. The way it should be.”
“Like normal couples?”
Tim nodded. “That’s my understanding. But unlike normal couples just starting out dating, since we have a history, I don’t intend to wait until the third date or whatever.”
He laughed. “Of course not. Since you didn’t wait even three hours the first time.”
“It’s that strong personality again.” Tim smiled, and this time the sexy, confident smile Brandon had come to know was back. His pulse raced, and his mind went south to below his waist, thinking about what this reunion could mean for both of them. Still, time to focus for a little bit longer.
“It all sounds too good to be true,” Brandon admitted.
“It’s true. I want to prove to you that the two of us work. I want to be your boyfriend no matter how old-fashioned that may sound.”
“Once I heard you tell your friends it was just great sex.”
Tim leaned down to kiss him again. It was a sweet promise kiss. “It’s definitely great sex. And I love sex with you.”
Brandon shook his head. “You’re incorrigible.” Of course he’d been thinking about sex with Tim. Lots of it, too.
“But there’s more between us, and I think we both know it. Let’s explore it.”
“I want to.”
“Then what’s holding you back? You’re still hesitating. I can see it.”
Brandon grabbed his hand once more and threaded their fingers together. “Remember just a few minutes ago, when you said you didn’t want me to move to LA because I’d eventually resent you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m afraid of the same thing. What if you move here and resent me? You’ve left your job, your friends, your life, everything behind. Just to take a chance on me.”
“I won’t resent you.”
“What if you hate it here? How can you be sure?”
“Because I am doing this for me as much as for you. Nothing is for sure. Life is about chances. What I have in LA, I can have here. My friends are still my friends. Lincoln Hill isn’t a terrible place, Brandon. I grew up here, too.”
“But you left.”
Tim shrugged. “So I’m back. It’s going to be okay. Stop fighting me on this. Or is it you really don’t feel anything for me?”
“No, Tim. That isn’t it. I’m falling in love with you. I’m just scared.”
Tim tightened his hold on Brandon and pulled him closer. “I’m scared, too. We can be scared together.”
Brandon leaned against him and buried his face in Tim’s chest. “You make it all sound so easy.”
“Easy? No. We’re two guys falling in love, starting something new. Yeah, ten years ago we went to the same high school. You had a crush on me, and I was completely clueless. But even though you had a crush on me, you didn’t really know me. You just had this fantasy of me.”
“Yeah. And the week we had together at the resort? It was like my fantasy come true. And it was like it had to end because it was just a dream.”
“I’m not a fantasy, and you aren’t dreaming,” Tim said, meeting Brandon’s gaze. “Please. Give me a chance. Give us a chance. We can be great together, Brandon. I know it.”
He didn’t want to make the same mistake he’d made before, letting Tim go. He’d paid for that in a lot of sleepless, lonely nights. This wasn’t high school anymore, and Brandon needed to grow up and move on with real life. And the real guy was way better than the fantasy anyway.
He leaned up to kiss Tim full on the lips. “We will be great together.”
THE END
ABOUT SHAWN LANE
Shawn Lane is a multi-published author
of gay romances and believes love and passion know no boundaries. Happily Ever After is for everyone.
She has been published by Loose Id, Ellora's Cave, Amber Quill Press, Dreamspinner Press, and Evernight Publishing.
Shawn lives in California and holds down a boring day job in a legal department of a giant corporation dreaming of the nights and weekends when she can create new stories.
For more information, visit smlgr8.blogspot.com.
ABOUT JMS BOOKS LLC
JMS Books LLC is a small queer press with competitive royalty rates publishing LGBT romance, erotic romance, and young adult fiction. Visit jms-books.com for our latest releases and submission guidelines!
