by Rhys Everly
“Come on, y’all. We have to go. We’re going to miss it,” she whined as she climbed out of the bed.
“Miss what?” Leo asked rubbing his eyes.
“Did you just call me Uncle?” I asked at the same time.
Summer chuckled and rolled her hair around her fingers.
“Well, you two love each other, don’t you?” she asked.
We looked at each other, and Leo, sleepy, cute Leo, grimaced.
“Meh. I wouldn’t say love,” he said, and I gasped.
I lifted my hands under his pits and tickled him until he was under me and begging me to stop. Summer joined in torturing her uncle.
“Okay. Okay,” Leo said. “I do. I love this douche face.”
Summer straightened up and turned serious. “You need to put five bucks in the swear jar. And come on, guys. We’re going to be late.”
“Late for what sweetie?” I asked.
“The butterfly release,” she said and danced out of the room, leaving the door open behind her.
Nathan passed the room in the hallway, and when he looked inside, he tilted his head and furrowed his brows.
“Y’all made up,” he said.
“We did,” Leo replied.
Nathan put his hands in his pockets and smiled at me.
“In that case, welcome to the family, Dawson,” he said. “Now I’d suggest you get up before Summer shouts your ears off any more than she has already.”
Nathan closed the door, and I looked at Leo who was still under me. “Hey,” I said.
Leo smiled and said hey back. I leaned down for a kiss, and he moaned.
“No. Don’t do this to me now. Any member of the family can walk in at any time, and I don’t think Summer will forgive us if we make her miss the butterflies,” he said, and he pushed me off him.
“Fine,” I said in a fake upset tone, and I got out of bed too.
We showered—but not together—got dressed, and only fifteen minutes later we went down to find all of Leo’s family waiting for us. Leo took the opportunity to formally introduce me to everyone.
His grandma hugged me and asked me to call her Yaya, like the rest of her grand and great-grandchildren did. Andy shook my hand with a firm grip that said if I ever hurt his brother, he’d do bad things to me. Luke shook my hand and drooled a little when I said it was nice to meet him again. Nathan fist-pumped me. Then Summer took my hand, and, with us leading the rest of the family, we all walked out and descended to the beach.
“Don’t you have a sister? Where is she? Why isn’t she joining us?” I asked Summer halfway, and Leo came up to walk next to me.
“Oh, yeah, Maya is on vacation. She won’t be back until next week, and then she’s doing summer camp, so she won’t be around much,” Summer replied. “But I’m sure she wishes she were here. Wait ’til I tell her we don’t only have one new uncle, but two.”
Leo burned me with his brown gaze, and without even thinking about it, I laced my fingers with his.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Holding my boyfriend’s hand,” I said.
“What if anyone sees us,” he said.
“I don’t care.”
He smiled and squeezed my hand back, and Summer was still holding my hand on the other side. We almost felt like a family. Like our own little family. And this was more important than anything the papers or the blog ever wrote about me. How could I have ever let them control my life and my happiness the way they had?
When we got to the beach, we stopped by the bed and breakfast where we picked up Melody, who had help at reception so she could join us, as well as Karen, Tracy, and Alice.
“You two are adorable together,” Alice said as we stepped onto the sand where it seemed the entire town had gathered.
“Mom! Dad!” I waved when I saw them, and Summer ran up to them to hug them before we got there ourselves.
Leo and I were still holding hands. At this point, I didn’t know if I could let him go even if I tried.
Mom and Dad didn’t say anything about us. They just smiled and turned their attention to the middle of the beach where I noticed the guy that had given the tour at the butterfly center standing in front of cages, along with a team of people.
“It’s about to start,” Mom whispered at us, and her gaze dropped to our linked hands. Her own hand rubbed my back, and she put her head on my shoulder.
There wasn’t a big speech or any announcements. The crowd went silent as if by instinct, and when you could have heard a pin drop and the only background noise was that of the crashing waves, the center employees opened the cages and a myriad of colorful butterflies filled the sky on their way to freedom.
Their fluttering wings and cathartic release gave me the strength for what I did next. As the crowd cheered around us and everyone was distracted by the beautiful view, I pulled Leo into my arms, opened the camera of my phone, and took a picture of us, the manic butterflies behind us making the picture look digitally manipulated.
“Are you sure?” Leo asked me when he saw me upload the picture on Instagram and wrote the words “This is love #NoFilter."
I pressed post before I turned to him with the biggest breath of relief I’d ever exhaled.
“Never been more sure.”
Before I even got to lock my phone, the hearts and comments filled my screen.
Epilogue
Leo
A Year Later
I didn’t even know why I was carrying the stupid thing when we were paying the team of five men to do it for us. But since I was stubborn and not willing to quit now, I lugged the box as far as I could from the truck toward the porch.
If I saw another James Sky book after this move, I would find and kill the man that wouldn’t stop writing book after book, which meant my boyfriend had a room full of his paperbacks. I seriously needed to introduce him to the magic of e-books.
The house never failed to astound me no matter how many times I saw it, and I hoped the feeling lasted. It had taken us so long to find the right location for us to move. We’d needed a house that was close enough to the main hubbub of the town center, but still distant enough to allow for some privacy from those paparazzi that couldn’t take the hint.
Not that we needed that much protection. The townspeople had embraced both of us when we decided to move and had led many photographers astray when they stumbled into town. For the most part, we were undisturbed.
The stonework around the house was beautiful. It almost reminded of the red-bricked Victorian houses in London. If London had houses as big as Cedarwood Beach estates.
The driveway was both wide and long enough for all the family cars to park, even with our own cars parked in the garage on the right. The lawn on either side was trimmed, and only a few small trees were scattered around the house perimeter. I couldn’t wait to plant more flowers and trees to make the front as welcoming as the back was. I’m sure a day with Summer would get rid of the task before it clogged up my to-do list.
The porch was wide enough that I could already picture the two chairs I’d put on the side, in front of the window, where Dawson and I could sit when we were older, waiting for our children and our grandchildren to visit us. If we were lucky enough to have either.
“Baby, why are you carrying that on your own?” Dawson asked coming out of the house and rushing to my help.
“I can do it, thank you very much. I didn’t train for four months for nothing,” I told him, but let him take the box from me. It was his books anyway.
“Yeah, and you haven’t done any since the movie wrapped. So, how long is that? Five months or something?” Dawson said and walked into the house.
I followed him inside, and when he put the box down in the living room, he turned around and wrapped his arms around my waist.
“Can you believe this? This is our home,” he said.
“It’s finally looking like one,” I said, taking a look around.
The moving guys had already set
up most of the living room, and I could hear them in the kitchen, putting our dishes and other tableware away. It had been a stressful few months. Finding a house was one thing, but making our relationship work between filming and traveling back and forth to Virginia was another.
Shortly after Dawson shared our picture online, the media took us by storm. It hadn’t always been easy, but it was definitely easier than hiding our relationship. Articles were written about us, and our pictures were plastered on every newspaper and magazine in the world, touting us as the gay power couple Hollywood didn’t know it needed.
And with that sort of power, a certain responsibility came over us. One night, after a party when we were both in LA, he woke me up to tell me he had to come out with his secret. I hadn’t known then, but his old agent had been at the party with a new victim, and it made Dawson sick.
So, two months after we were officially together, he filmed himself and posted the video online, detailing his life under the rule of his old agent and the amount of abuse he and others had gone through because of him. The agent came under fire, especially as more actors came forward after Dawson’s video and admitted to being harassed and manipulated by him. Needless to say, his career was deader than the Dead Sea. As for his legal punishment, that was still under investigation.
Three months later, and only shortly after I started filming Death Knight, Dawson quit acting, deciding to put his skills to use differently. With the help of charities, social media influencing, and the small productions he produced, he helped raise money for underprivileged groups. He’d finally found his calling. His last film became a cameo on the last Detective Strong film where he passed the reins to a new generation of actors and their "super" characters.
It had been a long year, and we’d been through everything already. Court rulings, harassment, threats, interviews. But now, finally, life was settling down somewhat. We had found a balance between being Hollywood phenomena and our normal selves. It took extra work, but it was worth it. Both our films were done, and our schedules were clear for the foreseeable future.
“Do you think it will be ready in time for the barbecue?” I asked.
I wish we hadn’t invited all our friends and family to come over on our first night in the house. Now that we were almost finished, I just wanted to be alone with Dawson in our home. Our own little haven in this wild, wild world.
“It better be. I didn’t invite everyone for nothing,” he said.
“We. You mean we,” I said.
Dawson shrugged.
“Well, yeah, technically. But I had ulterior motives when I convinced you we need to have a barbecue,” he said.
I didn’t know what he was talking about. We’d both decided it’d be good to celebrate our official move into town and hold a housewarming party. He hadn’t convinced me to do anything.
“I don’t understand.”
Dawson took me by the hand and led me through the house to the other side, into the back that was more a forest than a garden.
“You know I love you, right?” he asked me.
“I love you, too, baby,” I said and leaned into him as we watched the peaceful flora around us. This place was so calm and relaxing. If the rest of the house hadn’t sold itself to us, our own little forest did. As soon as we cast our eyes on it, we knew this house was it.
“I know we’ve talked about this a lot and how we wasted so much time away from each other,” Dawson continued. “And it’s true. Which is why I don’t want to wait any longer.”
He held me away from him, and taking both my hands, got on one knee.
“Fuck. No. You’re not doing this,” I said.
Dawson winced.
“Why not?” he asked as he took a little dark blue box out of his back pocket.
I put my hand in my back pocket and took out my own box.
“Because I was supposed to do this tonight. Idiot,” I said and also came down on my knee.
I looked into his eyes, the abyss that I was so lost in there was no salvation. And I didn’t need one because I was his, and he was mine. The ring, the paper, the ceremony was just for show. For someone else. We already belonged to one another anyway.
We both laughed, and I kissed him.
When I removed my lips from his, I opened the box as quickly as possible and showed him the ring I’d selected for him. A silver band with a cut running across the middle that was royal blue.
“Will you marry me?” I said before he could say it.
“Dammit,” he cursed. “Will you marry me?”
I shook my head.
“I asked you first,” I said.
Dawson opened the ring box he was holding to show me a black band with a rose gold trim.
“But how can you say no to this ring?” he asked. “Imagine it with the Death Knight costume on.”
Dawson bit his lip, and it took all my willpower not to succumb to his will and be the first to say yes. The costume had seen things that would get us into so much trouble if it could speak.
“Fine. Yes, I’ll marry you. I guess,” Dawson said with a roll of his eyes when I didn’t respond.
“Good boy,” I said and removed my ring from the box and slipped on his finger. “And one more thing.”
“What?” he said. He was so cute when he pretended to be upset.
“Of course I’ll marry you too,” I said, and Dawson attacked me with his lips and tongue.
Life was good. Life was perfect. And now that we had our own house as an engaged couple, things were going to be even more perfect. We had each other, and that’s all that mattered. Even if it took seventeen years, a betrayal and a half, and a lot of forgiveness, we had managed to start over and be each other’s light in the grim darkness of the world.
Fresh starts were good. Weren’t they?
Do you want to find out what kind of naughty things Dawson did to Leo on his first day on the set of Death Knight?
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A Letter from Rhys
Thank you so much for reading Fresh Start. The journey to writing this book has been long, and the characters have taken so many different shapes and forms you wouldn’t even believe.
The concept was inspired by the feature film Kill Your Darlings, starring Daniel Radcliffe and Dane DeHaan. Their chemistry in that movie and in real life was so hot and sweet, it just made me want to write their plot bunny before it took its own wild form.
The setting for Cedarwood Beach was inspired partly by the village I spent most of my childhood summers in Greece and how I’d imagine a small coastal town in the States to be. I’m sure some of the details might feel out of place, but I hope the characters inhabiting it compensate for that.
Next up, if you haven’t guessed it already, is Andy’s story, and boy, oh boy, he’s about to go through the wringer.
I’ll only give you the cover and three words. Son’s best friend.
Wayward Love will be hitting the digital shelves in late March/early April, so if you don’t wanna miss out, make sure to join my VIP Readers News so you can receive an email when the pre-order goes live.
In the meantime, if you don’t want to wait, you might want to indulge in my urban fantasy series Blade & Dust, written under my other pen name, Rhys Lawless.
Killer Heart, the first book in the series, has everything you’d want from an MM urban fantasy.
Enemies to lovers.
Bisexual awakening.
Fated mates
And a helluva lot of magic.
The first three books are out now, so that shou
ld keep you busy until Wayward Love is ready.
If you’re on Facebook, why not join my group Rhys Everly After where I share snippets and cover reveals? I also ask my Everlies for advice often. They may have or have not named a few of the places and people in the town.
Once again, thank you for joining me on this ride, and I can’t wait for our next adventure together.
Rhys Everly
February 2020
Also by Rhys
Rhys Lawless
Killer romance. One spell at a time.
Blade & Dust Series:
Foxy Heart, Book 0.5
Killer Heart, Book 1
Demon Heart, Book 2
Vampire Heart, Book 3
Rhys Everly
Sexy romance with all the feels
Cedarwood Beach Series:
Fresh Start
About the Author
Rhys writes gay romance. He has been writing since the tender age of 11 and hasn’t really stopped since.
He publishes urban fantasy and paranormal romance under the pen name Rhys Lawless and contemporary sweet and steamy romances under Rhys Everly.
Rhys currently lives in London, UK with his husband and their 12-year-old puppy.
You can find out more about him and his works-in-progress by joining his Facebook group or visiting his website rhyswritesromance.com