Can two broken men build one life? Ten years. That’s what Makai lost for a crime he didn’t commit. He’s been exonerated, but the abuse he suffered in prison isn’t so easy to leave behind. He heads to the one place he remembers being happy: Acker, Wisconsin, where he spent summers with his grandpa. Unfortunately, not everyone wants Makai there. Ten days. That’s how long Emil, now twenty-one, was held prisoner as a teenager. The mental and physical injuries he suffered at the hands of a drug trafficking ring still haunt him. Nightmares, anxiety, and PTSD challenge the connection forming between Makai and Emil, though together, they might find a way to move beyond their pain and into a future -- and a relationship -- that both had thought impossible. Now they just have to convince Emil’s father, the town sheriff. It won’t be easy with danger closer than they know ...

Sighing, he put the photography book on the floor because it couldn’t fit on the bedside table, and curled up on the bed. There were things he knew for sure, like that Makai was a stranger and he should be careful in any case. He also knew his whole being reacted to Makai in ways it hadn’t to anyone in years, and the hopeless romantic he’d tried to bury with all the other things that had been taken away from him couldn’t help but to yearn.


The one thing he knew with absolute certainty was that he wasn’t one of those people who were drawn to so-called bad boys. That was actually a deterrent for him, not an aphrodisiac. So that definitely wasn’t a factor in what he had started to feel around Makai. Nobody who knew Emil could blame him for that, at least.


Chapter 23