Blog Tour, Exclusive Excerpt & Giveaway:
We Burn Beautiful by Lance Lansdale
We went into this knowing we’d get burned. And God, we burned so beautifully.
Kent Fox is not okay. Thanks to a botched selfie swap, thousands of his colleagues have borne witness to a photo of his sock-covered crotch. Branded a professional pariah, he’s had to move home with his mother, and the only job the 38-year-old former executive can land is stocking shelves at a grocery store. To make matters worse, his new boss is none other than his ex-gay ex-boyfriend.
To everyone else, Gray Collins is the perfect Christian. He manages the local Pick-n-Save, attends West Clark Apostolic Church four times a week, and he’s just bought a ring for the woman who has agreed to help him hide his homosexuality. To Kent, however, Gray is the same coward he was twenty years ago. The boy with a list of seventeen reasons why he deserved Kent’s heart. The man who did nothing as his brother ripped Kent from his arms and out of his life for two decades.
Forced together, Kent and Gray will have to confront the trauma that tore them apart, and all the old feelings that never truly died. Kent may not have a list of seventeen reasons for Gray, but he has three words that are just as true as they’ve ever been.
We Burn Beautiful is a single-POV, second chance slow burn romance about two childhood boyfriends who never had the chance to shine. There’s pining, there’s passion, and there’s a group of 80-year-old Apostolic debutantes ready to help Kent Fox find his forever.
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“Two-liter, all grown up.”
“That’s the stupidest nickname I’ve ever heard.”
He shrugged. “You gave it to me.”
Something about that shelf—be it the darkness that surrounded me, or the endless glue mouse traps filling my nostrils with their inebriating fumes—gave me more courage than I had any right to. “I would have given you so much more than that, Grayson.”
His face was unreadable. A beautiful, empty picture frame showing no sign of his current headspace. I reached forward, brushing my thumb across his eyebrow. He tilted his head to the side and stared at me for what felt like ages before bringing his hand to my face. His thumb mirrored mine, running across my brow.
For a second—for one tiny, minuscule little moment—it looked like he might smile. Then Rhonda’s voice came over the intercom, calling Gray to the front. He took a step down and I could feel him slipping away.
He took another step down.
Good. I wanted him to.
I grabbed his wrist.
He jerked his head back, his eyes growing wider. My heart was racing a mile a minute, thumping out a chorus of Gray-Gray-God-Please-Gray. I lifted his hand and brought it to my lips. He took a step up the ladder, making his way back to me. The corners of his lips curled as he ran his fingers through my hair.
“Half-pint, what are you doing to me?” His grip tightened, tugging at my curls.
I pressed my forehead against his, our breaths cascading and crashing. I would beat myself up for it later when reality hit me. That against my better judgment, I admitted the truth to myself. A truth I’d buried so deeply for so long that I didn’t think it could ever be resurrected. But there it was. Truth. Truer than Texas. Truer than family. Truer than God.
I still loved him.
The boy he was. The man he became.
Sure, he’d hurt me. He’d let me down when I needed him most. But that didn’t negate the love that I felt for him. It didn’t tear away at the fabric of who we were, it simply amplified its intensity. His inaction the night Trevor caught us had shifted the entire trajectory of my life. It pushed me away from him and away from West Clark for a time, but it also pulled me back. The mistake that cost me my career—the man who looked like my Two-liter—had brought me home. Back to him. The real him. It brought me to the Pick-n-Save, up that ladder, into a dark shelf, eye to eye with a man who stared at me like I was his entire world. A world he could have if he’d just take it. A world that was his by right.
“Kent,” he rasped, closing his eyes. The way he said my name like a prayer made my heart slam in my chest.
I leaned in and kissed him on his cheek.
To celebrate the release of We Burn Beautiful, Lance is giving away a Signed Paperback copy and an e-copy of this beautiful debut!
Enter the Rafflecopter giveaway for your chance to win!
About the Author:
Like Kent Fox, I’m a thirty-something gay man with a flair for the dramatic and a passion for gay romance and LGBTQ+ fiction. I write stories focusing on queer joy and families found along the way.
Connect with Lance:
lancelansdale.com
instagram.com/lancetastik
