Hunter Thomson

Oh, gosh! I'm so sorry I didn't reply until now! Yes... I think all of us who write can understand a little bit of Amelia's feelings towards her writing. We all have that paternal or maternal instinct to protect what we've created and birthed into the world. Other issues have changed the dynamics of the characters, but it does seem like this is where things started turning for the better.

Going to classes the next day was something of a challenge. While there weren’t any problems with going to my English class, I wasn’t sure how much use I would be in my conditioning and agility training courses. A few moments in the presence of my instructors made it clear that while they were sympathetic, they also weren’t going to be granting me any special favours. My agility training teacher in the afternoon was particularly honest about her assessment of my ability to get through the physic

I picked up on the "Tommy's father" comment as well. Same as "Tommy's mother". Is there no room for redemption in David's life? It seems that once someone does something wrong to him, he never forgives them. Granted, no one attempts to make amends, but surely at some point he can forgive? It seems like the community has a lot of latchkey kids, in that there's not much parental supervision. More than that though, it seems like no one's trying to teach these kids how to be good people. Maybe it's a matter of not having enough time to do so, and the adults themselves do seem to be having things a bit rough. Actually... I just noticed that there are very few complete nuclear families in Twoey. I wonder if that has anything to do with how the kids are acting, and what we can glean from that knowledge. Twoey obviously still loves David. David still loves Twoey. They're acting like teenagers. I'm obviously on team Twoey, but they're acting like little fools because no one's taught them how to handle their emotions. I wish they'd talked longer. There's obviously a lot that's been left unsaid, that they really need to get out into the open if they want to have any kind of normal relationship with each other. Another good chapter. I'm looking forward to seeing how everything concludes.

Epic fail. I got soft-banned for getting it early. Have to restart entirely with a brand new Canadian account. Niantec means business, folks.

Sean's demise will be discussed, but I won't say where or in what context Devin finally finds out what happened to Sean. It'll be interesting to see if anyone remembers what Sean did in that last encounter, as that could be important. For clarity's sake, Devin is 17 and Alex is 14 at the time of this story. Alex is definitely maturing, and now that he's displayed a sexual interest in Devin, Devin's understanding of his friend is also changing.

As you said, Devin only has his experiences with Sean to explain how to engage in same-sex sexual activity. He knows that's one way to do it, but doing so is completely at odds with his personality. He's also, as you mentioned, having a crisis of his own mind. He doesn't know what he is, but he knows he doesn't want to be gay. Except he's had sex with two different guys now, and enjoyed both of those boys.

What's that old saying? Boys will be boys. I think it applies here. Devin may be terrified of the world and what's happening around him, but he's still a 17 year old boy, home alone.

I have nothing intellectual to say about this chapter, as everything I wished to have said has already been addressed. Therefore, I'll revert to a form of language that is a bit unusual for me. Wooo! Down with Erik! Yay for Twoey! Yay for David! Hurrah for the chance at those two finding their true loves. I hope Erik finds himself on the wrong end of Gary's associates and we never hear from him again.

*looks up briefly from my phone, staggers into downtown from suburbia* What? Seriously though, it's getting people out of their houses and doing something that almost passes for sociable. We should celebrate that, since the alternative would be for all those people to likely be in their rooms, not being fully part of their outdoor world.

Dear jkwsquirrel; I'm always pleased and encouraged when my readers take the time to drop me a line. Sometimes we agree on everything, sometimes we have disagreements. But I'm always happy to hear what my readers have to say, and hopefully to explain some of my more unusual decisions. I have to admit, you're the first to feel some genuine pain on Sean's behalf. Killing him off was unpleasant, but potentially less bad than having more chapters of that rough, unpalatable sex.

I had a hard time deciding if this is the direction I wanted to go with the story. Sean is/was such an integral character to the first third plot that killing him off was problematic from a storytelling perspective. Having said that, writing the scenes was causing me pain, and I had to spare myself from that. I still don't know if it was the right decision.

Thank you very much! I'm glad you're enjoying the story so far. I can't say anything about what's going to happen without ruining the plot for you, or at least spoiling parts of it. Sean is a horse's ass. That much is true. But we all remember people who were arrogant in high school. Something always happened to them in the end. Devin, as you might have noticed, is definitely the beta personality between the two of them. It was good for him to stand up for himself, but he needs to do more if he wants to really be his own person.

The locker room reference was to flash back to chapter 2, where the initial incident took place. Parker left because Devin had gone to Sean's house. I apologize if that wasn't made clear, I'll have a look at that and see what I can do to clean that up a bit.

Oh, to be young again. I'm not so far removed from this age of drama, but the paranoia seems to be well-founded, considering what's already happened to poor Devin thus far in the story. He's reacting the exact same way a lot of us would if we were assaulted. We'd think everyone already knew and that there was gossip going around, when in reality no one knows.

Hello! Looks like you're going through the whole book in one shot. I'll try to keep up with you. I apologize for the grammatical errors, if you want, please send me a private message and I'll be sure to have those cleared up and fixed. All of the characters will play some role at some point. They'll become more and less important depending on the needs of the story.

Hello jkwsquirrel, thanks for the review! Not going to spoil too much, except to say that the story is a bit darker in some places, but I think I addressed that in my front page warning. So, enjoy the read!

Greetings ColumbusGuy! It's interesting to consider how the perspectives of the characters changes based on where they lived before. Bryce was in a very progressive, liberal city and found there were no problems, but Devin came from rural America, where there still was some discrimination that occurred. I think Devin likes having boyfriends with more experience, who know what they're doing because he very much does not. It's easy to lead, and then when he knows better he can lead in turn. You're probably right about campus security, but at least some kind of alert will go out. That could always help raise awareness and bring more victims forward. Devin is rebuilding his network of supports. Again. Eventually he's going to have to find a situation that's stable, but he's on his way at least.

Lux! Glad I could give you some warm fuzzies! Safety in the arms of another is an illusion, but considering how real life treats Devin, maybe a little fantasy is needed. I'm glad you liked the chapter

Allo Skinny! Thanks for another review The biggest problem any relationship seems to face is a lack of communication. Bryce and Devin tried really hard to bridge that gap and make sure that there wasn't any kind of miscommunication between each other. While it got tense in some places, they seem to have it at least somewhat figured out now. Vincente continues to be the surprise character here. While he hasn't made any obvious hints at attraction towards Devin, he has changed his views significantly since chapter 1. The perps don't seem all that worried about their victims saying anything, considering how brazen they were in the attack. Maybe that will be their undoing?

I woke up later the next day, glad that it was a Sunday and I didn’t have to march myself off the classes. When I got up, Vincente wasn’t in the room, so I guessed that he was going to get some studying done and leave me to recover. He already did a lot for me, I was grateful that he was there to find me at all. I dressed myself, taking care of my arm with each of my movements. I hadn’t checked my phone to see what time it was yet, but I was feeling hungry and wanted to go get something to ea

It's grown-ups who play here. Everyone in my little corner of Canada who plays Pokemon GO were the people who were Pokemon kids when Red/Blue/Yellow came out. The data usage isn't as bad as you think. Someone calculated it is about about 1 megabyte of data per hour of uninterrupted usage. Of course, that doesn't count the times you're able to use public wi-fi (god, I love public access), and thus aren't drawing from your data plan. A good concern, but it's not like we're all losing our... A good concern, even if we've all lost our minds.

Happy birthday Renee! I hope you had a wonderful day.

Welcome back Robert! Thanks for coming back and leaving a review How the relationship turns after this will almost entirely depend on how Bryce reacts to the attack. While there's obviously been news of an attack of some kind on campus, it's not yet known if Bryce knows about it, and even if he did, there's probably no one except Vincente who knows that it was Devin who got attacked. Speaking of Vincente... I don't want to say too much, but Vincente is definitely learning that what he was taught may not be correct, and that there's more to life beyond what he'd learned before coming to college. Of course, that's part of the college journey. It will be interesting to see where the story goes with respect to those attackers. Devin already has other traumas to deal with, and this on top of his past attacks is bound to change him in some way. Glad you enjoyed it, always more on the way.

Hello ColumbusGuy. Thank you as always for the review I hear what you're saying about how Devin is portraying himself right now. He is being on the selfish side and focusing on himself. That's what people should do, though the usually brutal way Devin is doing so is also inappropriate to a mature relationship. I feel like there's a disconnect here, and that there's a potential viewpoint that Devin is acting with malicious intent. That was not my intent to have the reader think this was a long, thought out process and deliberate attempt to be cruel to a younger boy. Having said that, I can see how the pattern of events makes it look that way, and Devin isn't exactly going out of his way to be empathetic to anyone right now. You are right about Devin being practical about the relationship. While the physical distance isn't too far, it's still different than being in the same city as each other, and the fact remains that Devin is far busier in college than he was in high school. He has things to do and things to work on before he could be a good partner to someone like Alex. As for how he works with Bryce... I think you mentioned before that Bryce is a bit of a dominant personality, so this is the return to something more familiar to Devin, though perhaps without the casual anger involved. Bear in mind that the characters are young. That's not to excuse their actions, but to provide context for them. They're growing and learning, and sadly for you readers (and me as a writer) it means they do stupid, hurtful things that make their lives worse than they were before. What will be important to see is whether the characters grow and become better people from their experiences, something I know takes a long time to truly accomplish. Cheers, looking forward to your reviews of the next chapters.

The Reckoning is coming, that's for sure. Erik is somehow even more insane than I thought. Attacking Twoey in public was beyond shocking. I can't believe you wrote that, I was not expecting it at all. Something about Erik being this hostile to pe... of course. Erik knew that Twoey's bond with Michael and Alan was much stronger than with most of his Daleville friends. That's why he had to attack right away. To put the seed of doubt in right away, before Twoey could remember how much he trusts his friends. I'm glad you didn't have it so David saw any of them in Syracuse. That could have ended badly for everyone and made an already tense situation that much more explosive, and that already had lots of fireworks. I'm incredibly happy that someone's finally looking out for Twoey and making sure he's okay. I feel pretty certain that a whole bunch of someones are going to be informing David of what happened, and that's going to be the catalyst for the final showdown and realization of David's sexual orientation.