Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 100608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
“You’re such a snitch.” I zip up my coat as I take in his ensemble. “Where’s your coat, dumbass?”
“Does a coat look like it will go with this outfit?” Cato does a dramatic show of gesturing to his clothes.
Typical Cato.
Loud. Dramatic. Insanely bright colors.
“You’re wearing a T-shirt and the tightest pair of red leather pants known to man. Just because you pair it with boots and a cashmere scarf doesn’t make it warm. You’ll catch pneumonia before we make it to the end of the street.”
He pouts, his fat bottom lip poking out as he looks down at his outfit. “Then no one will see my Madame Secretary T-shirt.”
Someone’s taking his new Chamber role a little too seriously…
“The important ones will,” I throw back. “At the meeting. Take your coat off when we get there.”
“But—”
“It’s twenty-seven degrees out there, Cato, and I’m not giving you mine like last time. Get your damn coat or you’re walking by yourself.”
“Someone needs to get laid,” he grumbles, stomping back up the stairs like a petulant child and not the twenty-five-year-old business owner he is.
“I’m available,” Brie jokes. “You know. I could use to dust out the cobwebs.” She elbows me playfully. “What do you say, Sheriff? Wanna cuff me in the breakroom and get dirty?”
Ox, always annoyed by our banter, sighs heavily from the floor.
“What he said,” I say with a smirk.
She sticks her tongue out at me. “Fine. Maybe I’ll just ask the hot new B&B owner out.”
I rankle at her words. “Mr. Kincaid?”
“Dante,” she purrs and fans her face. “Smokin’ hot, Jax. Like I would do filthy things to that man if he let me.”
“Did you forget who he was?” I huff out. “What he’s trying to do?”
I certainly didn’t forget. The man swooped in last summer, bought old Jeffrey Howe’s cliffside home, all but tore it down, and began construction on a bed and breakfast that’s going to cause havoc for this town when all the rich, hoity-toity assholes flood it for vacation season.
Brigs Ferry Bay resists change tooth and nail.
And Red Hake Bed & Breakfast is going to change everything.
“It’s a friggin’ B&B,” Brie says with a frown. “It’ll be good for our town.”
“He’s a New Yorker,” I remind her, the words bitter on my tongue. “Which means he’ll tell all his fancy business friends about our little slice of heaven out here and we’ll soon be bombarded by tourists, transplants, and fuck knows what else.”
“Ew,” Cato shrieks when he bounds down the stairs again, this time bundled up in a light gray pea coat. “You sounded like Mayor Bell just then.”
I don’t have the energy to argue with either one of them. Sure, I might be like Dad on this aspect, but it’s because I’m right. The moment big New York businesses start moving into Brigs Ferry Bay, we’ll lose our small-town charm and get lost in the shuffle. Traffic will become a nightmare and crime will skyrocket. The upscale B&B is just the beginning. And, the moment it officially opens its doors this spring, we’re fucked. I’ll try my damnedest to keep more businesses like his out of my town.
“Let’s go,” I bark out, not bothering to respond to his comment. “We’ll be late.”
I push through the police station door and groan when the icy wind hits my face. Januarys on Beacon Island are harsh, to say the least. The chilly northern Atlantic air sweeps over Wolffish Bay, funneling right up Main Street. But the other three seasons are comfortably fantastic, so we put up with this shit for a few months as a tradeoff.
Cato screeches like a cat in heat when he steps outside. “Hell to the no! Why is it so cold today?”
“Man, it’s cold every day,” I remind him. “And to think you were going to prance up the road in a fucking T-shirt.”
He scrambles to put on his red gloves and whines when the wind blows his perfectly styled hair. I chuckle at the sight of him so frazzled. Sure, Cato likes to tease me like Brie does, but he’s earned that right. He’s one of my closest friends. One of the few people who know my secret.
I’m gay.
Not bi. Not confused. Not pan or whatever the fuck the kids are calling it these days.
Just gay.
And, to make matters worse, I’m not just closeted. I’m stuffed in the very back of the dark, lonely closet behind boxes of emotional baggage and sacks of fear of disappointing my father. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to wade my way through it all just to even chance opening that door and peeking outside.
Once, in the past eleven years, I let myself slip.
Once.
Cato blew me on New Year’s Eve after too much liquor three years ago and I’ve regretted it ever since. Not that it wasn’t good head, because it so was. It’s just once the alcohol haze faded and I realized I’d gotten a blowjob from my friend, I knew I wasn’t any closer to revealing my secret. If anything, I was even more worried my father and the whole damn town would figure it out. Luckily, Cato may be a bigmouth, but not when it counts.