strangers to lovers - Stories

Nearly divorced and miserable, twenty-five-year-old Wyatt Whitaker is a self-destructive force to be reckoned with. Fresh out of vet school, he’s already stretched thin between building his practice, helping his little brother cope with PTSD, and an inability to say no to anything that needs saving.

Taking in a gay nineteen-year-old-runaway he nearly ran over in a rainstorm shouldn’t complicate any of that.

Right?

Begin Again starts with one coffee. That had been the whole plan.

Evan wasn't looking for complicated. He had enough of it—a life he'd never settled into, a house in Wicklow he didn't know what to do with, and a habit of leaving before anyone could ask him to stay.

Then he meets Cian, an Irish arborist who is steady, direct, and clear about what he wants.

One night becomes another morning, a spare shirt, and a man who won't pretend this is less than it is. The sex is easy. Letting Cian see him afterward isn't.

Evan knows how to leave before anyone matters. Cian knows how much of that he'll tolerate.

It's July in the 90's. The ozone is depleted, the trains are down, and Jimmy is trapped on a sweltering replacement bus in a sweat-soaked school uniform, glaring at the window and trying very hard not to stare at the impossibly cool boy across the aisle. Charlie is trying equally hard not to notice. But in the suffocating heat of a rattling death-trap bound for Hastings, two boys locked in a silent, agonizing game of glances are about to discover that purgatory—and orange Calippos—can lead to unexpected places. A story of first glances, frozen lollies, and the terrifying thrill of being seen.

Two strangers collide on a council estate at 2am. Cory is drunk, hostile, and desperate to prove he's straight. Simon is exhausted, terrified, and completely out of his depth. When Cory drags him home and demands to be "stopped," what follows is a messy, brutal collision of denial and desire. Neither of them is prepared for what comes next—or how hard it will be to walk away.

*A raw, darkly comic story about the lies we tell ourselves and the truths our bodies refuse to hide.*

When a blizzard traps Arthur and the mall's chaotic security guard Flip in a dark, freezing apartment, they expect a night of awkward small talk. What they don't expect is the electric tension that's been building across the concourse for months—or the discovery that Flip's not as straight as he thought. Two days of forced proximity, instant coffee, and improvised fires spark something neither can ignore. But when the snow stops, Flip has a choice: walk away, or risk everything for the man who made him feel seen for the first time.

The year is 1891, and the Wild West is dying. Alvarez is a smartly dressed, smooth-talking bandito riding north with a stolen fortune, a lethal six-shooter, and one very spoiled cat. He travels alone, until he finds a half-frozen boy bleeding in the cold mud. Devon is an exile, violently banished from his Mennonite community and hunted by the very boys who broke him. As they ride together, Devon's cold logic clashes with Alvarez's flashy chaos. Slowly, the pinstriped killer and the battered runaway must learn to trust each other before the past catches up to them both.

A forbidden, slow-burn wedding saga about a mouthy younger brother and the man he was never supposed to want.

A washed-up captain steals an alien saucer, crashes it into a pre-spaceflight civilization, and accidentally abducts a terrified teenage local. Now he's stranded with a hostile hostage, a sarcastic AI, and a teleporter that turns livestock inside out. To make things worse, his estranged husband is tracking him across the galaxy—and the real owners of the ship want everyone dead. A chaotic sci-fi romp about bad decisions, found family, and learning that running from your problems just creates bigger ones.