Drawn to You

by Jerry Cole

  “Drawn to You”

  Gay for You Romance

  Jerry Cole

  © 2019

  Jerry Cole

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is intended for Adults (ages 18+) only. The contents may be offensive to some readers. It may contain graphic language, explicit sexual content, and adult situations. May contain scenes of unprotected sex. Please do not read this book if you are offended by content as mentioned above or if you are under the age of 18.

  Please educate yourself on safe sex practices before making potentially life-changing decisions about sex in real life. If you’re not sure where to start, see here: http://www.jerrycoleauthor.com/safe-sex-resources/.

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner & are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Products or brand names mentioned are trademarks of their respective holders or companies. The cover uses licensed images & are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any person(s) that may be depicted on the cover are simply models.

  Edition v1.00 (2019.04.10)

  http://www.jerrycoleauthor.com

  Special thanks to the following volunteer readers who helped with proofreading: A. Pittmoore, Jim Adcock, Julian White, D. Fair and those who assisted but wished to be anonymous. Thank you so much for your support.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter One

  Max

  The mansion along Lake Michigan’s eastern coastline snuck along the sand dunes, curving in form and function along the dotting of birch trees in the nooks and crannies of the Michigan wood. Long ago, the spring before his daughter’s birth, Max Everett had vacationed there as an eighteen-year-old boy—setting up a tent along the water’s edge and watching as the water rushed over the sand. Back then, there hadn’t been boundaries in his life; it had been wide-open, a fresh blast of air.

  Now, at thirty-nine-years-old, he pressed himself into the massive wooden pillar on the grand mansion porch, watching as his very soon to be ex-wife, Amanda, lurched over a cardboard box, placing china and cutlery into little tissue packages and sidling them together in a neat pile. At thirty-eight, her skin had begun to grow tired, the fat wiggling along her arm pits. Beneath, her shirt held little half-moon sweat stains. She hadn’t bothered to shave the pits, and black curls tickled at the jean fabric. It had been a long time since they’d made love, Max’s lips finding that sacred space along her neck, dotting along her arm, inhaling the deep body smell of her—lurking there in the armpit, beneath her breasts.

  It had been a long, long time since she’d turned him on.

  Now, Amanda spun back, still crouched, smacking her hands along her thighs. Her eyes, earnest and green, held onto his for a moment.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked, her words almost accusatory.

  “Nothing,” Max said, almost stuttering.

  “You’re always thinking about something,” Amanda sighed. She pushed to her feet, taking long steps toward the front door, where she’d set out a large jar of water and tea bags to make sun tea. The sun cascaded from just above the trees, flowing back west, toward the lake. She put her large hands around the jar and took a gulp, a masculine one. Max watched her throat jump.

  “I just don’t know when we’ll be back in this place together again, is all,” Max said. His heart bolted in his chest, a reminder that no decision was ever without consequence.

  Amanda smacked her lips, still holding his eyes. Her green ones had the same look and energy as their daughter, Christine’s: sassy, electric, and accusatory; always holding the upper hand. When Max had first met her, only a few months before she’d become pregnant, he’d been captivated by those eyes. He still was, although his memories were tired and heavy.

  “The renters are coming in the morning?” Amanda asked. She set the jar of iced tea on the side of the porch, then slipped her hands around the stair railing. She took rabbit steps to the bottom of the stairs, where she eased onto the stone walkway snaking through the birch trees and sand dunes, toward the water. Max had watched her do this same walk for the last ten years, since he had designed the mansion, had it built, and began bringing her and Christine there for long, simmering summers between the trees. He’d grown up in Michigan, before charging toward Chicago with wild-eyed arrogance and his parents’ bank account. “I’m going to become the next generation’s greatest architect,” he’d declared. “Nothing is going to stand in my way.”

  It had been that arrogance that had brought the attention of little Amanda, green and young, from a small-town in Illinois. She was a painting major at the art school, a little, quick-eyed marvel who, once, at a party, struck up an argument with Max about some of his opinions on what he called “old world” painting. “It doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t use space or force your physical being to feel anything…” he’d declared.

  “So, what is the point of anything. You’re right. Why don’t we just go back to living in huts?” Amanda had said, her green eyes seeming to brighten with her anger.

  Because they were both the most talented people in their class, the ones with the most energy—both apt to attempt to drink the other under the table during a night out, before spewing drunken, angry words at one another about their various favorite art forms, they were soon fucking. Max remembered stripping the sheer red dress from her slim frame. Back then, he’d been able to count the ribs above her belly—so thin and see-through. Her waist had been cinched so tight, like she’d worn a corset. How was it that time pulled everything out, widened it, like your body became an oversized sweatshirt, washed one too many times?

  Max followed Amanda down the stone path, toward the beach. Clouds had begun to form and thicken along the top of the water, stone-gray and powerful. Amanda cupped her elbows in this delicate way: one that didn’t speak of the painting career she’d been able to cultivate, of the daughter she’d helped him raise, of the previo
us nineteen years they’d spent together. It was youthful, charged with fear. Max marveled at the fact that his eyes, the ones inside his skull, had seen every single make and model of Amanda, since she’d been eighteen years old. Now, he wasn’t sure when he would see her again. They’d agreed: one final weekend at the lake house, before both trekking back to their separate lives in Chicago. One final weekend.

  Telling Christine? It would come.

  “What do you think she’ll say?” Amanda said, whipping her head too quickly to meet Max’s eyes.

  Max shook his head, his movement almost imperceptible. “Maybe she’s too caught up in Venice to give a shit.”

  “Give a shit that her parents are getting divorced?” Amanda said, snickering. Dimples formed in her cheeks. “I think she might have a thing or two to say about it. She’s our daughter, after all. She’ll probably argue tooth and nail.”

  Max allowed his chin to drop to his chest. For years, he’d felt like a lion: overzealous with energy, clambering to the height of the architectural scene in Chicago. He’d designed some of the more immaculate new buildings, aligning the old world and structures, with the new. He’d stepped on several toes, blasting through people’s opinions, tearing open a position for himself in the highest artistic sphere. Max Everett, Chicago Architect. It was a world-wide name.

  Now, faced with the horror of splitting his family apart, he felt shell-like, easily cracked.

  Amanda reached for his upper arm, allowing her fingers to trace around the thick bicep. Unlike Amanda, a woman who seemed lined with time and wrinkles, Max had aged like a fine wine. A thick-cut jaw, a burly chin, coated in a dark beard, speckled with gray. Thick biceps, a six-pack abdomen, a six-foot tall frame. Amanda had told him in recent years he was the very portrait of GQ; that she was sour next to him, an eyesore as they crossed the room at various architectural galas.

  Max felt shame that he’d had these same thoughts, as well.

  He hurtled himself along the crooked, wooden fence along the water, stretching his long legs before him. Amanda perched beside him. They listened to the waves as they roared onto the beach—a mini ocean, in the center of America. In many ways, this married couple had been the luckiest in the world: forging ahead, despite an accidental pregnancy at art school. (Of course, as Max had come from a great deal of Detroit car money, they’d been allowed an easier passage. He didn’t allow himself to forget this fact: the sheer upper hand he’d always had, despite that…well…)

  Yes. He was attracted to men. It had begun before Amanda, had been as steadfast as his own beating heart. Amanda had shot her fingernail into his shoulder once, at a college party, her belly doubled, perhaps tripled, in size with Christine’s form beneath. “You’re looking at him,” she’d said, accusing. “You like him.”

  It had been the early 90s, a time when Max could have shot out from the closet, his arms flailing. At least, he could have if he’d belonged to any other family. His family, an old engineering, car-company based in Detroit, had been pure and masculine, often dealing in things that Max “wasn’t to discuss” with outside parties. He’d suspected his father had murdered someone in cold blood, once. That he’d allowed his anger to tear through him, becoming bigger than any rational thought. Long before Max had journeyed to Chicago, his father had sat him down, sweeping his fingers through his graying beard. “The Everett Clan, we’re a unique breed,” he’d stated. “All eyes are on us, watching us, waiting for us to make an ill-fated move. Do you understand what I mean?” His eyes had burned into Max, demanding some kind of answer. Max had simply nodded, his eyes twinkling with false confidence. Acting, in front of his father, in front of the world: it would be his common stance, as he grew older. The world wouldn’t know the true Max Everett. Perhaps, Max Everett wouldn’t know himself, either.

  “You’re going to be okay, aren’t you?” Max asked, his voice nearly lost in the whipping wind from the lake.

  Amanda’s green eyes flashed. Her teeth, still so white, slipped over her lower lip, biting. She was making fun of him, rolling her shoulders back, tossing her hair. “As if I’ll be the one that fumbles after this,” she teased. Her elbow found his upper arm, stabbing into it. “As if I’m the one to worry about.”

  Max studied her, unable to draw up the words to respond. She had an exhibition in the coming months, and had announced to him that she’d probably begin dating once more—just because she “wasn’t dead yet,” and hadn’t “gotten laid” in months. Max flicked through all the ways he could touch her, now: to seal off this last portion of their marriage. The dark cavern between her legs, the slit that had parted for him… It belonged to another universe. His cock hung, heavy and lifeless, when he thought of it. He felt sad for this fact; that a body, a body that had once been mapped out by his tongue, his cock, could do so little for him, now. It was a stain to the entire thesis of their relationship. A stain to their memory.

  “We had some good memories here,” Amanda finally said, recognizing that Max couldn’t find the right words. “Raising Christine here every summer, when you could get away. She painted some of her first works here.”

  “You know her talent isn’t quite as raw as yours,” Max said, studying Amanda’s face. He feared that his daughter would ride the backs of her more talented mother and father—that she would only live as their ghost. He knew Amanda shared those fears, as well.

  She had greater hope for their daughter than he did, maybe even greater love. She shrugged again, in that laissez-faire way that had irritated Max, for many years. In the way that told him—lighten up, it’s all going to be all right.

  “She’ll find her way. She’s certainly gone further than you and I ever did, now,” she whispered. “She’s all the way in Venice, studying under some of the world’s greatest artists. We’ve taught her everything we can, back in Chicago. It’s time for her to spread her wings.” A flick of rain drew across her cheek. “In ways that you never did.”

  Max wanted to stagger forward, to spew the hard facts: that his architectural designs had been honored across the world, that he’d been featured in nearly every top-line architectural and art magazine since he’d been twenty-five years old—when Christine had been nothing but a prattling kid with some crayons. He knew, in his heart, that what Amanda said was truth; he’d never given himself the opportunity to find full strength. Now, in divorce, freedom was his.

  He just had to figure out a way to use it well.

  Chapter Two

  Mario

  The painting school on the main island of Venice was crumbling into the sea. Rust-colored bricks eased into the water, dribbling their stones. Mario Venezzia stood atop the edge of it, the fine tips of his shoes over the water, smoking a very thin cigarette. The smoke snaked from between his lips, cascading over the water and toward the yonder church. Through the fog, the church was only an outline, a vague hint of the old architectural feat. Sure, build a city on the water. Sure, it will never tumble down.

  Mario allowed his cigarette to drop to the water, where it immediately clogged and dribbled away from him. His fingers flicked against his dark pants, feeling the texture of the Italian fabric. Inside, his students—ages nineteen to thirty-six, rattled around the art school studios, cranking the radio and calling to one another over their espressos. It was early morning, a time when, ordinarily, Mario’s brain zipped along with creative juice. As of late, since the previous spring, his brain had felt stunted, oozy. Like an egg left cold atop a salad, its gunk hardening.

  Mario had taken the reins on the art school after his father had passed away the previous summer. He’d been hard-up for cash at the time, after a few years of raucous partying across the Mediterranean, parts of Asia, and Northern Europe. Throughout his twenties, he’d become known as a vagabond artist, selling paintings to rock stars, snorting drugs atop their bathroom counters and listening to them rattle out their list of accomplishments. Proud of themselves, they were. Arrogant and, above all, insecure—in much the way Mario was abo
ut his own work. A painter, a world-famous one. It had been a long time since he’d felt like anything he’d created was worth anything at all.

  An ex-lover had told him that it was because he hadn’t allowed himself to love in years; that he’d driven himself toward accomplishments, rather than feeling. Perhaps there had been some truth in that statement. He had a name, but he’d lost his voice. So, he’d returned to the world of his father, of his grandfather. Venice, Italy, the place he’d felt sure he’d never return to, when he’d left as a whip-smart eighteen year old without inhibitions.

  The art school had been the answer. He could hunker down, commit himself back to the work. He could remember himself as that overzealous younger man, even twelve years after he’d left. At now thirty, he had this darker anger behind his eyes, a cynical nature he couldn’t shake. It was in the way he held his shoulders—a bit too high, a bit too sharp. It was in the way he spoke to his students, all of them imbeciles without talent. People he felt sure didn’t have the fire within them, the way he had as a younger man. It was his duty to arm them with—what? With practical tools to enter into that most amorphous world, the art scene?

  Christine Everett was the youngest student, a pretty brunette with flashing green eyes. She stepped out from the art studio, her thin fingers hunting through her dress pockets for her own pack of cigarettes. Her fingers quivered. It had been clear, since meeting her about a month before, that her body—a flower, just awakening—was ignited from the sight of him. A famed artist, an attractive, dark-eyed Italian man. It was a near-perfect recipe for her. Maybe, had Mario had a single inclination toward women, he would have nipped at the chance. Sleeping with a younger student, a bright-eyed believer in his cause… It was probably the antidote to everything. He just had to believe in a higher power than all that.