Book Title: Toy Soldiers (Book 2, When We Were Young series)
Author: Maggie Blackbird
Publisher: Devine Destinies
Cover Artist: Martine Jardin
Genre/s: Contemporary M/M Romance, young adult, multicultural, LGBT
Trope/s: Friends to lovers
Themes: Coming of age, coming out
Length: 70 349 words/ 244 pages
It is NOT a standalone book. Book 1 needs to be read first.
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gay
Once a thief, always a thief, and if he can’t win the heart of the boy he loves, he’ll steal it.
Blurb
Billy Redsky’s made one of his biggest dreams come true, but there’s a problem. Even though the boy he loves is mere footsteps across the hall from his bedroom, they might as well live a country apart because claiming René Oshawee’s heart is more difficult than Billy anticipates.
Much to Billy’s disgust, René can’t accept his true self, so he’s incapable of loving someone else. And all he cares about is living a life the chief and his wife foresee for their youngest son.
If Billy is to finally have what he truly desires, he must stop René from running away from who he really is and face the man in the mirror, or what they share will never blossom into true love
Olivia lit a cigarette. “Is this…like…a date?” She giggled.
“Riiiiight.” René also lit a smoke. He used his thumb to shut the lighter and set it on his cigarette package.
“Then what’s up? I thought you were mad at me. And before you got all pissy at the video store, I hadn’t heard from you in ages.” There was a lingering of accusation in her naturally bubbly, girly voice.
“I need to ask a favor.”
Her smile died. The brightness in her baby-blue eyes faded. “I get it. I shoulda known better. As if you woulda called to make the scene tonight. Can’t be caught with the hussy, huh?” Bitterness saturated Olivia’s statement. Hussy was the nickname she’d been given in elementary school, a pun on her last name and reputation.
He stirred his coffee. “It didn’t stop me before, did it?” he said quietly.
“Umm…no.” She played with a shoulder-length curl, twisting it around her finger.
René leaned in. “I know what Hoyt does to you. I also know what he did to Billy.”
“Umm…don’t get what you mean.” She used her free hand to tap the ash on her cigarette into the ashtray.
“You know exactly what I mean. You were there the night he beat Billy’s ass. And he beats on yours, too, doesn’t he?”
She kept toying with her hair, head tilted slightly. “What do you care?”
“Duh. Of course I care.” He leaned in closer, setting the smoke in the ashtray. “Are you really gonna let him get away with this? A guy who beats on you? Beats on his brother?”
Olivia shrugged.
“If you tell the truth, it’ll be your word against Hoyt’s. He won’t stand a chance. He’s got a record longer than the Great Wall of China. You can also tell them what he does to you.”
“Oh, I get it,” she huffed. She also set her smoke in the ashtray and leaned in, her pink-painted lips an inch from René’s. “What am I gonna get outta this, hey? You’re asking me to rat him out. If I do, guess what happens to me? There goes my nights at The Busy Bee. My…stuff. Parties. I won’t be able to show my face anywhere.
“Renny, normally I’d do anything for you, but not this. No way.” She sat back in the booth and folded her arms. “I’m getting the shitty deal here. Billy? He’s living at your pad. He’s being handed whatever he wants. What’re you willing to give me?”
“Maybe a fresh start?” René blinked. All she cared about was partying, drinking, and drugs. “You can go back to school. Maybe make some real friends.”
“I don’t need new so-called friends. You’re the only real friend I have. If you want me to out Hoyt, then you’d better give me what I want.”
“What do you want?” He did his best to keep the frustration out of his voice.
She sat forward and aimed her long pink nail at his chest. “You.”
“Me?” He fell back, head almost spinning. “Uh…seriously?” This had to be a joke.
“Yeah. I’m dead serious.” She puffed on her cigarette. Her baby-blue eyes were harder than her pink nails.
“What do you mean—me?”
“What do you think? I wanna fuck you.” She took another drag.
His heart stopped beating for a moment. “I—I don’t get it. Why do you want me?”
“Oh, get off it, Renny.” She waved her hand holding the cigarette. “Who doesn’t wanna fuck you?”
First Moxy and now Olivia. This was surreal. The worst part was, the one person he wanted riding his dick was untouchable. He was sitting here, getting an offer of sex, all for Billy. “Why can’t you simply help me out?”
“Help you out?” Her mink brows slanted. “How about helping me out? I’m simply asking for a good time. Not marriage.”
If René said no, Billy would have to take the witness stand, and if the cops searched his old house, they’d find what he’d stolen. He could end up on probation for fessing up the truth, or even worse, juvenile hall. He was trying to build a new life. A life that could be flushed down the toilet if René didn’t agree to Olivia’s proposition. Billy would also lose his new reputation he’d worked so hard for.
“Can I think about it?”
“Sure, but don’t think too long, Renny.”
An Ojibway from Northwestern Ontario, Maggie resides in the country with her husband and their fur babies, two beautiful Alaskan Malamutes. When she’s not writing, she can be found pulling weeds in the flower beds, mowing the huge lawn, walking the Mals deep in the bush, teeing up a ball at the golf course, fishing in the boat for walleye, or sitting on the deck at her sister’s house, making more wonderful memories with the people she loves most.
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