Deputy Mark Forrest and Nurse Francis Archer can’t deny the chemistry that arises between them. A chance meeting awakens the idea of something greater than either had ever imagined.<br><br>Mark craves being able to let go, and Francis loves to take him out of his head. But Mark’s past bears a truckload of personal demons that have kept him in the closet and made him lash out at the LGBTQ community in the town he’s come to regard as home.<br><br>Despite finding love and a new purpose in Acker, Francis’s new job might end up being temporary, and he doesn't want to lose the life he's settled into. Can the two of them build a future together despite a bitter past, and diverging paths?

Thirteen

He sighed into the steam rising from the pasta he was boiling, and tried to shrug it off. It was his upbringing talking again, in a way. He’d never been enough for anyone, so why would he be now?


He’d had more “not therapy” with Evy, mostly by phone or whenever they happened to cross paths during lunch time, and it had helped some. She’d warned him that sometimes there were steps back. Not necessarily in a one-step-forward-three-steps-back way, but more like one forward and ten back, when what she liked to call “his trauma” was this severe.


It had taken Mark a lot to even begin to realize that he had PTSD from his childhood. PTSD that got triggered with every call, oftentimes enough for him to have a full-blown panic attack.


Chapter 38