Book Title: Starting Over
Author: Rob Browatzke
Publisher: Rob Browatzke
Cover Artist: AJ Corza
Release Date: November 15, 2020
Genre: Contemporary M/M Romance Trope: Second chances
Length: 51 000 words/ 210 pages
It is a standalone story.
Buy Links – Available on Kindle Unlimited
Life doesn’t often give a second chance. Take it when it comes.
Blurb
Fourteen years ago, Dylan and Kent became something more than friends, but it didn’t end well. Now, they’ve run into each other again. This time, they’re both adults, they’re both out, and they both know what they want.
Will that long-ago teenage heartbreak stand in the way of what’s happening between them? Life doesn’t often give second chances, but maybe this is theirs, to start over.
It was an absolute mind fuck to be walking around eating cookies with Dylan Hedderson like it was 2006 and the intervening years had never happened. This was Dylan, and he was the first person that not only broke Kent’s heart, he jumped up and down on the pieces until they were basically cookie crumbs. Kent knew he should be too angry to be here, engaging in small talk. He shouldn’t even have replied.
But it was Dylan.
Fourteen years ago, Kent would have given absolutely anything for one conversation that gave him the answers and the closure he needed. The closure he deserved. That wasn’t something he could turn away now.
Except, he knew once that conversation started, all that emotional detritus that had settled to the bottom long since was going to get churned back up and start floating around like little bits of cookie in milk. It would be awkward and painful, and right now, things were almost nice.
“So what are you doing these days?” he asked before Dylan could answer the big question. “For work.”
Dylan was obviously just as worried, based on the relief that passed over his face. “Lifeguard,” he said.
“I should have guessed.”
“You?”
“Nurse.”
“I should have guessed that too.”
“Guess we both ended up doing what we’d planned,” Kent said. What he left unsaid was, ‘planned that long ago summer’. They’d been different people, sure, but obviously, not that different. They had both ended up where they’d wanted to.
Well, except Dylan had ended up at a gay bar. Which he most definitely had not wanted to, back then. Kent heard a long forgotten “fag” echo in his mind.
“And you’re gay,” Kent said.
Dylan stumbled a little, and that was nice to see. Before, it had been Kent who’d been so awkward on his feet.
“And I’m gay,” Dylan said, and Kent couldn’t deny he was impressed with both the speed of his recovery and the ease with which he admitted that.
“I gotta ask, how long’s that been a thing?”
“Kent…”
“Well, I mean, obviously a long time, but you being so quick to say those words? How long’s that been?”
“I came out about ten years ago.”
That was easy math. “High school?”
“Just after.”
“Wow.” If it had been more recent, that would have been easier to swallow, but ten years ago? Why not eleven? Why not twelve? How much different would Kent’s life have been if Dylan fucking Hedderson had been able to say those words just two years before he apparently did? “Does everyone from high school know?” Not that he talked to anyone from then, mind you, but surely, some word of it would have gotten back to him, somehow.
“I don’t talk to any of those guys anymore.” They both knew which guys Dylan meant — Dennis, Randy, Garry, the dictionary definition jock jerks. “The only one who knows is Lea.”
Her name fell between them with a bang. Kent hadn’t thought of her in years. They’d been friends once, her and him. Not that anything had happened for that friendship to end. Things just changed the way they changed. It still hadn’t been easy to hear about Dylan dating her.
“How did it go from high school romance to coming out?”
Dylan turned to him, even as they continued walking. “Do you really want to know?”
Rob Browatzke, 43, is a storyteller and club owner in Edmonton, Canada.
This is his ninth published work, his second mm romance.
Author Links
Website | Facebook | Twitter @robbrowatzke | Instagram @robbrowatzke
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