Title: Watch Me Fall
Author: Riley Parks
Series: Start Something #1
Publisher: Boroughs Publishing
Release Date: March 27th 2018
Genre: Contemporary MM Romance

BLURB

Having it all is hard work, and Elijah Tucker has no problem 24/7-ing to keep himself on top. But life has a sense of humor and a big-ass mirror that reminds Eli where he came from, and shows him what he’s really made of when he meets Gideon Valsecchi.

Gideon Valsecchi has one life goal – get out of the shithole where he lives on the South Side of Chicago. To say life has been unkind is a joke he can’t even laugh at; to say he’s going to have to claw his way out is a reality that nearly crushes him every day. But…he has a secret weapon, and he’s learning how to hone his skills. Yet, hope is a feeling he won’t indulge in until he gets to know Elijah Tucker, who shows Gideon there is an out, and it can include love.

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Elijah had made a lot of bad decisions in his life. From fucking around with drugs to fucking around for money, and eventually fucking everything up beyond recognition— he’d done it all. Yet, after nearly a decade of responsibility and clear thought, he somehow found himself crouching behind a mailbox on Lafayette Avenue, staking out a teenage thug who was known for his violent tendencies. Sure, he wanted his watch back, but there was no denying there was some neighborhood pride involved. There was no way he was going to let some punk-ass bitch rip him off. Eli hoped the fuckin’ thief hadn’t sold it in the two days since the mugging.

Though Elijah had done some surface research, he was mostly unprepared for the confrontation. He probably should have had some sort of concrete plan regarding what he was about to do, but truthfully he didn’t. He’d intended to threaten him, not with bodily harm, but with life ruination. Lucky for Eli, Makayla had dated half of the South Side and she happened to have spent a few fleeting months with Gideon’s coach, Ryan Byrd, who in turn had fallen head over heels in love with her. A direct connection to something the thug seemed to value, which Eli intended to leverage.

As he looked across the street at the Valsecchi house, he was disgusted by how filthy and dilapidated it was. Most of the siding was hanging off the elevation and every window was either boarded up or cracked. Clearly, they didn’t care about the state of their dwelling, and Eli found himself imagining how bad the inside looked in comparison. He couldn’t believe that people actually lived there; that they came home and rested their heads among that shit.

It wasn’t as though his childhood home was a palace or a vision of cleanliness, but Makayla had done her best to keep trash and miscellaneous items out of the yard.

Unlike the relatively tidy entry to the Tucker residence, the Valsecchi property had countless fast food bags strewn over the dead lawn, and an array of tire irons, barely recognizable pieces of broken furniture, and rotting boards of wood lying haphazardly wherever they’d been tossed. There were plenty of empty beer bottles and needles, evidence of vices he hoped his watch wasn’t paying to fulfill.

His heart sunk with sadness at the scene in front of him, wondering if it was possible Gideon was having a shittier adolescence than Eli. In all honesty, he wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the shithole Gideon lived in surely fueled the desperation that led Gideon to mug people. Perhaps Gideon’s life was worse that Eli’s had been.

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Riley has always loved to write, believing that life has the possibility to be its most beautiful when it’s portrayed on the pages of a book. Feeling the need to create and liberate in the midst of the political landscape, Riley writes novels that focus on LGBTQ protagonists, wanting to honor a community that deserves better representation depicting lives, loves and triumphs in all facets of fiction.

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