Stories

Website designer Scottie Ness is taking a well-deserved vacation from the grindstone, and he plans to spend it in the solitude of Washington’s Gifford Pinchot National Forest around Mt. Adams. He’s prepared for everything—except the lightning storm that traps him in a wildfire. Or meeting Jax Quintero, an abrasive firefighter whose bulky uniform couldn't hide a jawline chiseled from stone and intense eyes that burned him with scorn. Or was that the flames surrounding them?

Maybe Scottie should have gone to Hawaii on vacation instead.

Jake is a popular high school student that couldn't be more lonely. Nic is a prickly loner with a dark past. The two couldn't be more different on the surface, and initially clash. An encounter between them changes everything, whether they want it to or not.

Stanley lives a life of quiet desperation with nothing in his life having gone as he'd have wished. After a tragedy, a device shows up that could make everything better than ever, or worse than he thought imaginable. What would you do?

The plan was simple: survive high school and get the hell out of his hometown.

Alec Kennedy failed miserably.

He fell in love. Unfortunately, he still carried out his plan and left town. Leaving his first love behind.

Years later, Alec's forced to return home to deal with an unexpected family emergency.

There was a new plan: desperately try to avoid his former partner.

He failed miserably again.

There seems to be a pattern here.

Jonathan Hamilton transfers to Sunny Hill starting junior year to run away from his past and keep promises on which to build an uneventful, safe future. The biggest promise he makes to himself is to stay clear forever, by all means necessary, of straight bad boys and their unhealthy appeal.

But promises are only made to be broken, Jonathan discovers the truth of the old adage, as junior year barely starts, and he has a run-in with the ridiculously attractive Maddox Kingsley, the resident BMOC, and carrier of the frightful nickname of ‘Mad Dawg’. (Full description inside.)

Nick Frost is sent into the world of normals to survive. He didn't think it would be all that hard, but then there's the ghoul and the secret society and a conspiracy. Some days it might be easier of his blessing was one of fire, like his jerk of a cousin, but Nick is a life mage who is learning for the first time what it is to make friends and to have fun - and maybe even fall in love, if he can survive it all.

As life moves on we remember times both good and bad. For Kyle, Jacob and the others, memories from the past are a bounty of the defining moments in their lives.

The following is a series of moments, past and present that help guide their steps towards the future.

Jay Petermeyer is everyone’s favorite All-American football player. He’s spent his entire career living above reproach as he patiently waits for the husband and the life he knows he’s meant for.

There wouldn’t be influencers if there wasn’t Loren Patrick. He transformed YouTube into a social platform and revolutionized what it means to live for the public. His life is free and easy. No attachments, no expectations. Just the way he likes.

Sometimes the life we’re destined for looks different from the life we dream of.

Kevin’s been the poor kid, the military brat, the boy without a dad, the neighborhood pot dealer, the study abroad student. Because he’s always known that, when things get tough, you just turn the page and move on.

If only he could get his mind off the three very different men he left behind.