Riptide Publishing
PO Box 1537
Burnsville, NC 28714
www.riptidepublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.
Hard Truths
Copyright © 2018 by Alex Whitehall
Cover art: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm
Editor: Carole-ann Galloway
Layout: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at [email protected].
ISBN: 978-1-62649-846-4
First edition
October, 2018
Also available in paperback:
ISBN: 978-1-62649-847-1
ABOUT THE EBOOK YOU HAVE PURCHASED:
We thank you kindly for purchasing this title. Your nonrefundable purchase legally allows you to replicate this file for your own personal reading only, on your own personal computer or device. Unlike paperback books, sharing ebooks is the same as stealing them. Please do not violate the author’s copyright and harm their livelihood by sharing or distributing this book, in part or whole, for a fee or free, without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner. We love that you love to share the things you love, but sharing ebooks—whether with joyous or malicious intent—steals royalties from authors’ pockets and makes it difficult, if not impossible, for them to be able to afford to keep writing the stories you love. Piracy has sent more than one beloved series the way of the dodo. We appreciate your honesty and support.
Isaac didn’t expect to find love at his family’s Christmas dinner, but that was before he met his sister’s new fake boyfriend. Tall, muscular, and tattooed, Logan is what Isaac would love in a partner—and also everything his parents would hate in one. Not that they know Isaac’s gay.
That doesn’t stop him from dating Logan—unbeknownst to his parents, and with his sister’s approval after she fake dumps him. The pair dive into a whirlwind romance of motorcycle rides, cheesy puns, and hot sex. They meet each other’s friends and fill their time with happiness and laughter. It’s all perfect.
Until Isaac suggests they move in together, and Logan asks Isaac to come out to his parents. Isaac wants to, but he’s scared; he doesn’t want to lose his family. Unfortunately, he can’t see that his real family has been right beside him all along.
To my families.
About Hard Truths
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Dear Reader
Acknowledgments
Also by Alex Whitehall
About the Author
More like this
At the time, I didn’t know that the hulking six-foot-four-inch tattooed biker wasn’t actually dating my sister. They were certainly being handsy enough with each other.
Handsy at our parents’ house, on Christmas Day. I stood to the side, studying my prim sister in her jeans and festive red sweater, wearing little jingle bell earrings and her hair all done up, and wondered if this was a dream.
He loomed above my five-eleven height and filled the entryway with broad shoulders and arms that could individually have picked me up. They were tattooed from his knuckles up to where they disappeared under his short-sleeved shirt, and more tattoos peeked out from the neckline of his shirt when he handed me his coat. The shirt, I should mention, was a plain black tee, snug against his bulging muscles. His hair was dark and short. Like, I’m-growing-it-out-from-shaved short.
When Sue—that’s my sister—introduced him to the family, he smiled warmly and held out his hand to shake mine with a firm, confident grip, then pulled my dad into a bro-hug and called him “Pops.”
My dad turned a funny color and mumbled what sounded less like a greeting than an insult.
Mom looked torn between being ecstatic that Sue had brought someone and horrified at the resulting date. She welcomed him into her house nonetheless, and he kicked off his boots before she had to ask. Maybe he’d seen the pile of shoes by the door—Dad and I never did get the hang of using the shoe rack—or maybe he wanted to show off his holey socks. They were very festive. Green, with reindeer who were obviously offering up some tail.
Unfortunately—fortunately?—my parents didn’t seem to notice. I, on the other hand, had to fight a smirk to keep them ignorant. I did not want to be the one to explain to my mom why I found those cute lil reindeer funny.
The toes of one sock wiggled, and my eyes went up—and up—over the tight squeeze of the jeans across his muscular thighs and then along his rippling torso to meet his brown eyes. They crinkled in the corners when he smiled, and I smiled back, still in shock but also enchanted.
He winked.
Before my brain could process that—and the responding flutter that it sent through my body—Mom whisked everyone into the living room. I followed them in, definitely contemplating where this specimen of loveliness had come from and not staring at his ass.
See, he hadn’t been at Thanksgiving, when Mom had heckled Sue and me that we were nearing our thirties, so we needed to settle down and get married and have lots of kids for her to dote upon and spoil. Sue and I had shared looks, wondering why her grandkids would get either of those when her own kids definitely hadn’t. But we didn’t say anything. That was one thing we’d both learned quickly as kids: shut the fuck up.
Dad didn’t harp about the grandkids—he probably didn’t want the goddamn nuisances running around when he’d just gotten rid of his own—but he had complained that we never visited, I never helped him fix up the house, and Sue had, god forbid, gotten a second set of piercings in her ears. Thankfully once he got food and booze in him, he mostly watched football, by which I mean slept on the couch. Whatever, one less parent to deal with.
Three days after Thanksgiving, Mom and I received a text from Sue: I wanted to let you know I’ll be bringing my boyfriend to Christmas dinner. Didn’t want to rush him there for Thanksgiving, but we talked and xmas is good to go!
This had been a surprise, since I hadn’t known she was dating someone. And we weren’t hellishly close or anything, but if she was dating someone seriously enough to bring to Christmas dinner, then she should have told her big brother.
Having seen him, it all made sense: she was embarrassed of him. Or of us. It was a fifty-fifty on which it was, but he obviously came from a very different world than the one we lived in. For comparison’s sake, I should mention that while I was wearing jeans, like him, mine didn’t have holes, and I had on a button-down. My own hair was trimmed conservatively—longer on the top, buzzed along the sides—and combed to the side for today. I had no visible tattoos or piercings, while he had a
bridge, lip, and ear piercing.
Oh, and I was white. He . . . wasn’t. At least he didn’t appear white. Not white enough for my white-bread parents. Not that they’d say anything to his olive-toned face.
“So, what work do you do, Logan?” my dad asked with an edge to his voice, like he was hoping to embarrass him.
“Oh, freelance.” Logan paused, then smirked. “You know, when I’ve got the time. This one keeps me busy.”
He smacked my sister’s ass and she giggled. The image was burned into my memory, despite my best attempts to scrub it away.
My father grunted. “What kind of freelancing do you do?”
“Whatever needs done. I’ve worked in warehouses, helped fill out security teams. Jobs where they’re hiring for brawn.” His eyebrows rose. “You ain’t hirin’, are you?”
“No! No. Nothing of the sort.” Could Logan hear the disgust in his voice?
“Oh. Too bad.” Obviously not. Logan shrugged, and his gaze slid to me. “What work do you do?”
My dick didn’t know if it was going to be set on fire or shrivel from the gleam in his eyes, which seemed fifty percent Go ahead, try to impress me and fifty percent I bet I could pin you against the wall with only one arm.
Okay, that last one might have been my imagination. My very active imagination. Oh shit, there’d been a question. “I design websites.”
His eyes went from challenging striptease to sparkling interest in a second flat, but quickly dimmed to indifference. Had I imagined it? “Oh. That must earn you bank.”
“I do well enough.” I shrugged, fighting down the heat that his gaze flared to life on my skin. “It’s a fairly competitive field with a lot of fresh blood coming in, so I have to work hard to stay current and keep my job, and sometimes the hours can be grueling. But I love the work.” Was I babbling? No one wanted to hear that much about my job. “So how’d you two meet?”
Logan swung an arm around my sister’s shoulders, and she giggled again. I’d never seen her giggle so much. That was a good thing if it meant she was happy.
“Well,” Logan said, pausing only briefly to nuzzle against Sue’s neck and set off a fresh set of giggles, “I saw her profile on one of those dating sites and I messaged her and it was love at first contact.” He chuckled lewdly, and it took me a moment to get what he was saying. I’d need to drink a lot tonight to scrub that thought from my mind as well. “It grew from there.”
“So you met online,” my dad said, his nose scrunching with distaste.
“Yeah, that’s how everyone meets these days, Dad,” Sue said, tilting her head onto Logan’s shoulder and smiling widely. “How else was I going to meet someone like Logan?”
Dad would probably have said she shouldn’t be meeting someone like Logan, but Mom announced that dinner was ready. Thank fuck.
Or I thought I should be thankful. Wrong holiday though.
“Would you like some green beans, Logan?” my mom asked him, offering the casserole up.
“Thanks, Mom, but I prefer meat.”
Was I the only one who saw him flash that grin at me? Was I imagining it? Was he flirting with me in front of my sister and family?
“Oh,” my mom said. “Well, there’s plenty of turkey.”
“I’m sure enough to fill me up.”
Okay, I didn’t expect my parents to get that reference, but certainly Sue—I glanced at her, but she was grinning like a fool as she piled mashed potatoes on her plate—or not. Maybe it was all in my head. Especially since Logan was putting helpings of peas, stuffing, and both sorts of potatoes on his plate. He obviously ate more than meat.
Then why had he said he preferred meat?
You know what? Whatever. He was my sister’s boyfriend. If he wanted to make tasteless, stupid jokes in front of my parents, that was fine. She didn’t seem bothered by it.
I tried to ignore him, but it was hard with him sitting directly across from me at the table. He had hellishly long legs, and his feet kept bumping mine. My legs were long enough that I couldn’t tuck them under my own seat, so it was just something we had to deal with.
Least his presence meant I also didn’t have to deal with my mom pressuring Sue and me to bring significant others to family events. She wasn’t going to tell Sue to bring someone else, and after Logan, she likely wouldn’t rush me into anything either. Not that I thought Logan didn’t have a shot. They’d warm to him. Probably. They lived in a closed-off little world, but they weren’t bad people. Or rather, I liked to think they weren’t.
But maybe if I believed that, I would have told them I was gay. As it was, I didn’t have any plans to tell them until I had a good reason to rock the boat and earn their potential ire. That reason would be a boyfriend who lasted long enough to be dragged to one of these gatherings. Hopefully someone as attractive as Logan, or else my sister would forever rub it in my face that she had better luck with guys.
I was drawn back into reality by Logan’s foot bumping mine. Again.
“Yeah, so then I told the mofo—sorry, um, asshole—where he could stick it,” Logan said, wrapping up a story I’d obviously missed.
“Oh. That’s. That’s . . .” My mom couldn’t seem to finish.
“A stupid way to handle it. Why not call the police?” my dad asked, as if he knew the answer.
“Naw, the po-po would have thrown me back in jail, man.”
Dad huffed derisively, shook his head, and returned his gaze to his plate.
Silence loomed across the table.
I took another bite of food. I wasn’t even sure what it was. “Mom, the turkey turned out great this year. Not dry at all. Did you do something different?”
And yes, insulting my mother’s cooking probably wasn’t the best line of conversation, but I’d panicked.
Mom huffed. “I did the exact same thing I do every year, but this time I didn’t buy a turkey full of antibiotics and chemicals and whatever else they load them with, so that must be why it turned out so well. I always knew all those drugs in the meat couldn’t be good for us.”
And yet she hadn’t seemed to mind feeding it to us for the last twenty-some-odd years.
“Mom, I don’t think those chemicals affect the moistness of the turkey,” Sue chimed in.
“Well, I’ve done it the same every year and this year it’s better, so I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Cheers.” I raised my glass and took a drink before anyone joined me. Logan downed a good half of his wineglass, and Sue seemed to be smirking behind her glass of water.
I really needed to have a talk with her alone today.
It didn’t seem likely that I would get a chance, though. Logan was glued to her hip—not that I could blame him. I wouldn’t want to be left alone with my family either. When she and I volunteered to clean up, Logan followed us into the kitchen. My sister insisted a guest shouldn’t be put to work, so he leaned against the counter watching us. I could feel his gaze prickling the back of my neck as Sue and I washed, rinsed, and dried.
“So,” I said, “how long have you two been dating?”
“Oh god, Isaac, not the third degree from you too?”
I sighed. “Sorry for making conversation.”
“In that case, when are you going to bring a little wifey home?”
Behind us, Logan snorted what sounded like a chuckle.
“Shove it,” I grumbled.
“Exactly. How about you tell me more stories about that client from hell with the president who changed his mind every time you gave him updates?”
Yeah, bitching about work was the easiest thing to do, and I was glad to, especially if it meant not talking about my nonexistent love life and my super-nonexistent straight love life. Not to mention I had enough stories about this particular client that I could have filled the entire cleaning-up time with them. Actually, I probably could have filled the entire day with stories of this asshole—may he never hire my company again, please—but I wasn’t that self-centered. I gave a few
of the best ones, then asked about her business. She’d opened one of those yoga/women’s fitness/massage studios and was always complaining about not having enough customers and how WASPish the ones she had were. I got the impression she enjoyed the complaining, because she glowed whenever she talked about her baby.
So we chatted about nothing in particular and definitely nothing important with Logan lurking over our shoulders—and my sister’s obvious desire not to talk about him. Then the dishes were put away.
We all tromped back into the living room—and woke Dad up—to exchange presents.
Can I say that it’s kinda awkward to buy a present for someone you’ve never met? But you can’t not get a gift for your sister’s boyfriend at Christmas when he’s going to be sitting there. We all piled onto the sofas—Logan and Sue on the love seat; Mom, Dad, and I on the couch—then Mom leaped to her feet and began handing out the presents under the tree while Sue and I moved as little as possible from our spots to hand out the gifts we’d brought.
To his credit, Logan looked surprised to be getting gifts. And damn, his smile of instantaneous joy was gorgeous. Wide, pearly whites flashing, skin glowing. “Thank you,” he said when my mom handed him two little boxes, one of which I would bet was a gift card tied around something heavy.
Then I handed him what I’d gotten, and his eyebrow quirked a bit more playfully. “Thank you. This is unexpected.”
I tried to just smile, sit back on the couch, and not get lost in those eyes. I hadn’t noticed before, but his eyes were stormy gray rather than brown. Quite fetching. Plus the crinkles at the corners were still as alluring as they’d been on first meeting him— And I needed to stop staring at my sister’s boyfriend. I pulled my small pile of presents onto my lap, sorting through the ones wrapped with perfection and the two from Sue in gift bags because she and I shared the inability to wrap anything that wasn’t a book or a DVD. It made it super obvious when we were or weren’t giving the other one of those things.
She had two wrapped gifts and a bag from me this year. She grinned as she picked up one of the totally-a-DVD’s and shook it like a little kid. “I wonder what this could be?”
Hard Truths Page 1