Two Chances (Signed Paperback)

I couldn’t sleep.
Big surprise.
An hour before the sun crested the eastern horizon, I quit trying and hopped onto Route 95, heading to my old stomping grounds for a few days. With it being a Sunday morning, traffic was a nonissue, and I made it out of Boston pretty damn quickly.
Mom’s birthday breakfast wouldn’t be for a few hours, but I’d been ready to disappear into the sticks of Maine to decompress like I did every couple of months.
My time as an escort for the gay branch of Elite was easy money and enjoyable so far, but I definitely missed my family and the solitude found outside the city. I’d signed on with the escort service as a blatant fuck you to my ex who’d cheated on me right before our wedding almost three years ago. He’d left me for a side dish I hadn’t known about, and the debt we’d accrued in planning the exchanging of our vows had landed in my lap.
Fucking asshole.
Every night I got on my knees to suck dick for an EEMM client, lubed up my cock to breach a needy hole, or offered up my ass for another man filled me with a sense of bitter righteousness and satisfaction.
Because fuck Xavier, fuck relationships, and fuck my broken heart.
That time heals all wounds saying? Bullshit. Two and a half years had passed since I’d walked into our bedroom to find my fiancé, who’d never bottomed for me, with a dick lodged up his ass, his legs wrapped around a back that wasn’t mine.
“Fuck.” I scrubbed a hand over my face, wishing yet again that I could erase the image of his infidelity burned into my memory. The damned sight was still vivid in color and sound, like a movie playing before my eyes. The side dish’s waxed, twink ass flexing as he thrust. My fiancé begging him to give him more.
Harder, sweetheart. Deeper. Love having your dick in me.
“Jesus fucking Christ! Enough already!” I growled at myself and stretched my neck side to side since I didn’t have anything nearby I could punch to drown out Xavier’s echoing words. They continued to live in my head no matter how hard I fought to forget them.
Teeth clenched, I stared through the windshield, not getting the blessed peacefulness heading out of the city should have brought me.
Usually, escaping the constant reminders of my ex and the life we’d had there proved a great distraction. Xavier had never been about countryside living, and I’d gladly moved back to Boston to be with him after our long-distance relationship had begun to strain.
Never should have left Maine for a guy who’d seemed too good to be true. It turned out he wasn’t fucking good at all.
I’d lived in Boston years earlier for college. That was where I’d first met Micah, Elite’s owner. We’d kept in touch somewhat once I’d returned home after graduation. He’d reached out to me just weeks after Xavier had broken my heart, and I’d hopped aboard the gay branch of Elite he’d wanted to test out.
I’d ended up staying in the city. Gladly. Happy in my vindictiveness to fuck as many men as often as possible.
The Welcome to Maine sign twitched my lips upward for the first time since I opened my eyes in the predawn darkness, and I released a slow exhale, imagining all the negativity of Xavier washing away as I drove over the bridge.
Family came to mind every time I saw that sign. Same as a warm, genuine hug given out of true affection I hadn’t had in a while, my home state’s greeting soothed the clenching in my guts.
Unlike my ex, my family loved me. Hard stop. No conditions. No secrets and no fucking lies.
I would be seeing all of the Roberts clan shortly, which was one hell of a reason to smile. As the third of four grown-ass children though, I should have been settled down like the rest of them with two-point-five kids trailing along after me and making me rip my hair out. I thought I’d found the love of my life—
Enough.
I inhaled until it hurt and slowly emptied my lungs again, determined to put aside the shitty memories in exchange for a little peace and quiet. Well, not exactly quiet with my nieces and nephews who would be running around Mom and Dad’s. Four days of rest among people who loved me as-is would settle my insides so I could return to the work they didn’t judge me for.
Elite paid well, and I felt hella satisfied fucking random clients to get back at Xavier even if he didn’t know I did it. I had plenty of cash to do whatever the hell I wanted thanks to hiring my body out to bring others pleasure, but I also enjoyed my job.
And since I had zero plans of ever allowing my emotions to get tangled up in relationship-type bullshit again, Elite was the best way for me to hook up and keep my heart safe.
Once I exited the major highway, I turned off my AC and rolled down all the windows. Fresh, too-warm air whipped through my SUV, and I breathed in the scent of summer, contentment finally sneaking into my soul as it always did whenever I went back to my roots.
The old Maine farmhouse my family had been living in for three generations sat off a side road a couple of miles outside of Nodhead Falls, and a grin spread over my face the second it came into view. My older brother Jacob had helped Dad repaint the entire thing the summer before, the white clapboards blinding in the sun hitting it head-on.
We’d joked as kids about the sprawling additions that had been added over the generations to keep our ancestors from having to brave the cold in winter. The main house connected to a mud/laundry room, then another section had been taken over by the grandchildren and named PlayTime. That area attached directly to a garage. Another building spanned the distance from there to the barn and housed most of mom’s gardening shit.
As young children when bored in wintertime, my siblings and I would race from the upstairs front corner of the house and through every part of the sprawling home until tagging the back wall of the barn, our breath fogging in front of our faces, the scent of cow and pig shit filling our noses.
Memories of those easier days when no responsibilities lay over any of us made an achy warmth spread through my chest. With five bedrooms and a finished basement, the house had plenty of space for the entire Roberts clan to crash and reminisce together.
As usual, I was the last man to arrive.
I hadn’t called ahead to let my parents know what time I would show up because with how all of us rose earlier than the sun—nieces and nephews included—they would be fine with my getting there before the normal nine o’clock breakfast tradition we’d had for years.
The second I parked alongside my brother’s minivan on our parents’ driveway, the house’s door pulled inward, and people began to spill out onto the porch. Kids jostled each other down the stairs, shrieking and laughing.
“Uncle!” voices hollered, filling me up with the kind of happiness I’d been needing.
Grinning like a fool, I hopped from my SUV and eyed the nine children headed my way. My oldest nephew, Brian, reached me first, a spitting image of me at fifteen with dark hair and hazel eyes.
He threw his arms around me and hugged me tight, and not for the first time, I thanked whatever God there might be that Brian had never gone through the hormonal don’t touch me phase most teenage guys did.
Brian stood near my six-two height, and although he’d filled out a bit since shooting up the summer before, he still had a long way to reach my muscle mass.
“Still lifting?” I asked, slapping his back.
“You know it.” He stepped away, grinning while the younger kids swarmed around me, some hanging on my legs, others trying to hug whatever body part they could grasp hold of.
Chuckling, I ruffled Brian’s hair. “Can’t wait to see you on the field this fall.”
His face flushed. “Unless some freshman shows up with a better arm, I’ll be starting as quarterback this year.”
“Damn right you will!”
I relented to the needy hands of those smaller than Brian and knelt to offer love all around to the rest of the Roberts grandkids.
A million questions shot out, the kids especially asking about goodies I usually gifted to everyone when I visited, mainly candy, and I promised I’d brought along the normal smorgasbord they could share—after breakfast.
Mom stood at the top of the stairs, Dad to her right. She’d gone fully gray but didn’t look a year over sixty. Dad’s shoulders had yet to stoop, his hazel-green eyes I’d inherited as sharp as ever.
Glancing at my siblings with their spouses, a strange pang shot through my chest. Xavier’s cheating had emptied me to the point I merely existed with no one to call my own like they all had.
My oldest sister Sarah had Fred behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist. My brother Jacob and his wife Amy held hands, connected physically as always. My baby sister Suzi looked like a beached whale ready to pop for the third time in three years thanks to her husband Donnie and his determined swimmers. None of their kids had been planned, but they couldn’t be happier as evidenced by the glow on both their faces.
Then there was me.
Single as fuck because the one person I’d finally found and considered worthy of settling down with went out and sat on a dick that satisfied him more than the idea of mine.
I forced my faltering grin back into place and climbed the porch stairs.
“Happy birthday, Mom.” I wrapped her up in my arms, my nose filling with the scent of vanilla and spices. “Tell me someone else made the cinnamon roll cake this year,” I said before kissing her cheek.
She squeezed my hand, her eyes bright with happiness. “The day I let your father into my domain is the day I’m six feet under.”
“Don’t talk like that,” I muttered and gave my dad a side hug.
“Welcome home, son.” He patted my back, and I moved on to greet my siblings.
With how everyone loved on me, it was like I only got to the farm once a year.
It had only been two months since I’d last seen them all for Dad’s birthday breakfast, but I wouldn’t complain about the abundance of affection shown among us. There had never been a lack of physical touch, and while we were normal like every other family with bickering, misunderstandings, and grudges here and there, love was our foundation built by Mom and Dad.
I counted my blessings while we trampled inside and out of the July humidity, telling myself that I wasn’t alone. That I was loved—and deserved every bit of it too. But sitting down at my parents’ massive dining room table and listening to the younger kids crowded around the kitchen table through the archway made my chest ache for more.
Don’t even go there. Just enjoy the free cock and balls, and live happily ever after without all the angst and bullshit relationships bring.
Man, woman, I hadn’t ever been choosy when seeking out my forever person. Dick and pussy riled me up in equal measures, although I tended toward men back in my dating days. Since signing on as Elite Escort’s first queer guy in their MM branch, I’d been perfectly content with dick alone.
I’d labeled myself bisexual back in high school, and thankfully, neither of my parents nor my siblings gave a shit how I identified when they were all straight. It had been a boy in a tux who’d accompanied me to the prom at the high school we’d had to bus to for four years. We’d gotten a lot of bull from the conservative rednecks that lived in our area, but I hadn’t ever been one to care what others thought.
Until my wedding day approached and I was left on my own to notify every single person on the guest list that there would be no exchanging of vows.
I’d given a shit that day. Never had I felt such utter humiliation and a sense of insecure embarrassment. The topping on that cake of emotional turmoil was the barely beating heart inside my chest that still felt knifed even though it had long ago bled out.
Pushing aside thoughts of the past came easier when surrounded by my family, thank fuck. We got caught up on the latest gossip—all three of my siblings had settled in or near Nodhead Falls. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about half the people they socialized with, more interested in my brother, Fred, and Donnie talking about their fishing trip the weekend before I hadn’t been able to join in.
We had a camp farther east on the Androscoggin River—a fisherman’s paradise. Loaded with trout and smallmouth bass, the rushing water supplied dinner damn near every night whenever we needed a respite from reality.
It had been a hot minute for me though.
Mom blew out the candles on her cinnamon bun “cake”, a 13x9 pan of gooey deliciousness she’d baked herself same as every year. Another pan sat in the kitchen to feed the ravenous piranha grandchildren.
“So how’s my little love?” Mom asked, and I shook my head, unable to help my smirk. She’d been calling me that for as long as I could remember, never mind that I’d grown to tower over her.
“Good, Mom.”
“Don’t you lie to me, Kellen Christopher Roberts.”
I snorted and shoved a bite of her birthday cake between my lips.
“Have you seen that asshole lately?” my brother Jacob asked.
Mom elbowed him. “Language,” she reminded him, tipping her head toward the kitchen and the little ears that picked up everything.
“Sorry,” he muttered out of habit, his concerned focus still on me.
“No, I haven’t,” I answered. “His friends remained his when we split. Can’t say I miss any of them—or him for that matter.”
“Good riddance,” my baby sister Suzi said, her eyes blazing with hormonal bitchiness.
She’d always been my champion even though she was a year younger than me. She had more spit and vinegar than any woman I knew, and I could admit to feeling downright thrilled when she’d gotten all riled up about Xavier being a lying, cheating whore and made everyone who’d been invited to our wedding aware of his actions.
“Take it easy, Suz,” Donnie said, running his hand over her large belly.
She huffed and swatted at his fingers, shooing him away. “I’m fine,” she snipped. “I’ll be even better when this third boy you planted inside me gets the hell out so I can breathe again.”
I chuckled and filled my mouth with Mom’s kickass cinnamon roll cake. Three kids in three years—I didn’t know what the fuck Suzi and Donnie were thinking not using protection. Obviously the two of them were well on their way to having a football team of their own. Had they met earlier in life, they’d have had one already.
“How’s business?” Sarah asked, and I snorted, kicking her foot beneath the table where she sat across from me.
“You mean my volunteering at the vet clinic?” I asked about how I spent most of my daytime hours when I wasn’t in the gym or sitting by myself in my apartment when my few friends were busy.
She rolled her eyes. “No,” she half-sang her reply. “I’m glad you’re putting all those farm chores we were forced to do as kids to good use, but you know what I’m talking about.”
My whole family was aware of what I did to make the money that had fixed up the cabin last year and had started nice little savings accounts for all my nieces and nephews, bun in the oven included.
“Can’t complain,” I finally answered her question.
“Aren’t you tired of…well, the lack of intimacy?” Amy, my sister-in-law asked quietly. She was the romantic of the group, and when she wasn’t connected at the hip with Jacob, she had her nose in a smut-filled book.
“I have zero interest in getting involved with anyone,” I answered honestly. “Man or woman.” Everyone at the table was aware of how deeply Xavier had wounded me. Ours wasn’t a family who kept secrets or emotions to ourselves. Empathy ran deep, often to the point of weariness.
“So Brian’s going to be the starting quarterback this year,” I tossed out, needing a change of topic before my mind slid back into the dumps.
My nephew grinned down the table at me, and the guys started talking stats and college scholarships in a matter of seconds exactly as I’d expected they would.
Mom caught my eye, her sad smile hitting me hard. She was aware I still hurt—always had that sixth sense when her children suffered.
I forced my lips upward, attempting to put her mind at ease like I did whenever my thoughts overran with the asshole who’d torn apart my heart. “I’m good,” I mouthed her way.
Her steady gaze told me she didn’t believe me.
I struggled to convince myself too.

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