This Time I Know It's For Real (ePub)

David Anders was Lance Myers first love, his first kiss and his first shattered heart. He was the one who got away, but here he was now right in front of him-and he was a hot mess.
One devastatingly beautiful and soul-stirringly seductive hot mess.
Joni Mitchell's "Falling" started to play in his head.
What have I gotten myself into now?

Lance

Bullied as a skinny kid in small town Carlyle, Louisiana, shunned for being Gay, a bookworm, the only child of a single mom and the town eccentric, Lance Myers is now the co-owner of a successful catering company in New Orleans. He has changed his appearance, grown confidence and become a man. Only tragedy brings him back to Carlyle to the one person he could never forget.

David

David Anders, Carlyle, Louisiana's Golden Boy: Captain of the football team, prom king, two Bronze Stars from three Marine tours in Iraq. He protected Lance through junior high and high school, made his life as a closeted teenager in a town with twenty churches, thirty bars and one bookstore-the religious one in the mall-bearable-until that one night when they were nineteen.

One earth shattering, headboard breaking, blissful-God-who-knew-sex-could-be-like-this night.

The next day, David dropped him like a hot rock.
That was fourteen years ago.
Now Lance is back, but just for a week and he needs David's help.
David has fought for years to forget his face, but here he is, even more beautiful than he remembered, more so than in his dreams. That is, the ones that don't wake him up howling and covered in icy sweat.

Self-isolated, traumatized from the war, he can't talk to anyone and can't sleep with passing out drunk. But when he looks at Lance, his body and soul burn with a crazy sweetness finer than any whiskey.

He has never wanted another man before. He has never wanted one since. Every damn person in Carlyle would bet their house on David Anders being as straight as the flagpole in their front yards.

They're both insane to think they can find love with each other again.
The odds against them are enormous: the possibility for happiness, freedom and love, razor slim.
But it's there.