One dilapidated cabin in need of renovation.
Two stubborn men pretending to be a couple.
Three summer months to get the job done.
Four tangled legs in only one bed.
Five cameras catching it all for YouTube.
Six hundred thousand Instagram followers.
Seven nosy family members with Opinions.
Eight thousand reasons they should never fall in love.
Nine million reasons why they will.
One minute I was referring to myself as straight, and the next I was questioning everything I’d ever known about myself.
I lay in bed on my back as stiff as a board, trying like hell not to disturb him. But every single micro-movement he made lit up my entire body. I was hyperaware of him, but not in the way I would have been if I was sharing a bed with one of my brothers. This was different.
Very different.
I wondered what he had on under the covers. I wondered how long it would take before the sheets carried his faint gardenia smell. Most of all, I wondered what it would feel like to spoon someone for the first time. Yes, I’d had sex before, and not just that time with Cherry. I’d been set up on a blind date by one of my sisters two years ago and had dated Lauren Orville for a grand total of one month before she’d realized I was the most boring human being on earth and dumped me for Eric Pender, our local veterinarian. I couldn’t blame her. Eric was good-looking and successful. He was the total package, and I was just some guy who worked at a hardware store and was easily lulled to sleep by conversations about makeup contouring and hair highlights.
The sex hadn’t been that great with her either, but at least I’d felt a little more sure of myself since I’d had some time to watch porn and whatnot in the intervening years since Cherry.
But now… now my brain went in a thousand different directions. When I’d had sex with Lauren, I hadn’t lain there wondering what her lady parts looked like. I hadn’t imagined what her naked butt looked like. If pressed, I would have said all butts looked the same. But for some reason, I thought Cooper’s butt probably didn’t look the same as mine. It probably looked nicer. And from what I could tell by looking at him in his blue jeans, it probably looked nicer than both Cherry’s and Lauren’s put together.
And I wondered what his dick looked like. Did it look like mine? Kind of thick and ruddy? Or was it whiter, creamier? Was he circumcised? Did he, like… shave down there? Did gay men do that? Manscaping, I thought it was called. Did he manscape? Should I manscape?
“If you don’t stop thinking, none of us are ever going to get to sleep.”
I turned my head to face him. “Do guys manscape?”
The whites of his eyes shone in the dark room. “Um, I’m sorry. What?”
“Never mind. Forget I said anything. That was stupid.” I turned around onto my side and faced away from him. “Good night.”
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After enjoying creative writing as a child, Lucy didn’t write her first novel until she was over 40 years old. Her debut novel, Borrowing Blue, was published in the autumn of 2016. Lucy has an English Literature degree from Vanderbilt University, but that doesn’t hold a candle to the years and years of staying up all night reading tantalizing novels on her own. She has three children, plays tennis, and hates folding laundry. While her husband is no shmoopy romance hero, he is very good at math, cooks a mean lasagne, has gorgeous eyes, looks hot in his business clothes, and makes her laugh every single day.
Lucy hopes you enjoy sexy heroes as much as she does. Happy reading!