Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 77980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
When they pulled back, both of them laughed. “Are you…” Clint couldn’t find the word. Well, it wasn’t that he couldn’t find it; he didn’t want to.
“Gay? I figure so. I think you’re cute…lots of boys are, but I don’t think girls are. Well, I mean, they’re pretty, but I don’t want to kiss ’em.”
“I do,” Clint admitted.
“Oh.” August turned away.
“But I liked kissing you too, and I want to do it again.”
So they did. They kissed a lot that day, even held hands. When August had to leave, Clint tried not to cry, but August didn’t hold back. Clint figured crying was braver than being embarrassed not to.
He did cry at home that night, though, when he was alone in his bed. He did it most of the night, his pillow soaked with his pain because he didn’t want to lose August.
And each day they met at the creek before August moved, they kissed more and talked and held hands while August told him how much he’d miss him.
When it was time for August to move, Clint watched, hidden in the woods, and cried when August climbed in the car and drove away with his family. Clint was supposed to go over and say goodbye, but he hadn’t; he’d just hidden and watched. He’d never been as strong as August.
They wrote each other a couple of letters over the summer and into the next school year. August had his first boyfriend halfway through the ninth grade. It was a secret, of course, but still. Clint hadn’t kissed any boys since him.
Clint did get a girlfriend, though, and then another, and at the end of ninth grade, he realized he hadn’t heard from August in a long time, and Clint hadn’t thought to write him either.
That happened with friends, his mom told him when he mentioned one day that they didn’t talk anymore. People grew up and changed and went their separate ways. It was just a fact of life.
Clint figured it was. Still, he liked to think about August sometimes. Like when he was twenty and kissed his second man, then at twenty-two when he’d fucked one, and a few months later when he’d been fucked for the first time.
He thought about August at other times too, of course, when he went to the creek sometimes or saw something he thought August would like. When he got his first dog as an adult and wondered if August became a veterinarian. He wondered where he was and how his life had turned out.
And still, somehow, he missed him, the boy he hadn’t seen since the summer after eighth grade, but never, ever forgot.
CHAPTER ONE
August
August’s gaze darted to the rearview mirror and to Reese in the back seat. The passenger one was open, but Reese had chosen to sit in the back because he hated August. It wasn’t easy to get used to his son disliking him, but August had had two years of practice already. He couldn’t say he was getting any better at knowing it, but he was dealing with it better. The past eight months or so, things had only gotten worse, but that was nothing compared to the blowup and anger thrown August’s way when he’d announced they were moving to Harmony, a small town in Briar County, North Carolina, where August had lived until he was about fourteen years old—and a place he sure as shit hadn’t ever thought he’d see again.
Not that he’d loved Florida all that much, but it had become home. He’d graduated from high school there, then went to college there too. He’d started his career there and met Lewis, who would become his husband. They’d bought a house together and adopted a son. Lewis and Reese were his family, August not being real close to his own. His stepdad hadn’t liked the fact that he was gay, and even though he was dead now, August and his own relatives just weren’t that close, only meeting up once in a while for holidays or occasionally checking in with each other.
But until two years ago, he’d always had Lewis. They’d been happy at first, but then they’d started fighting more and more—August feeling like he was always in the wrong. Lewis spent less and less time at home, less time with Reese, until August realized he wasn’t in love with Lewis anymore. He couldn’t pinpoint when that had changed, but it all felt so far in the past, he couldn’t remember what that had felt like.
So Florida was also where he’d asked for a divorce, in turn making his son hate him. He’d realized that if Reese had a choice, he would have gone to live with Lewis, but his ex-husband had made excuses not to take their child. Not that August had wanted to give him up. It would have killed him, but Lewis had done it easily, full of promises, and yet as time went on, just like he’d done with August, he spent less and less time with Reese, and Reese had gotten angrier and angrier at the world…and at August.