Jonathan Banks and Peter Giles have worked together for five years, business partners in a planning firm that bears both their names. From the moment Jonathan was hired, the attraction between the two men was instantaneous and mutual, but he was dating someone else at the time and turned down Peter’s advances.<br><br>Now Jonathan’s boyfriend is out of the picture, and he’d love nothing more than for Peter to ask him out again, but he knows his partner all too well. Peter doesn’t take rejection easily. He likes flirting with Jonathan, sure, but doesn’t want to take the chance of getting turned down a second time. He's satisfied with the way their friendship is, and fears anything more intimate might ruin what they already have.<br><br>But everything both men have planned and worked for together is threatened on a cold, wintry evening when Peter’s car won’t start and Jonathan has to give him a lift home. Can the two friends move past their own fears and trepidations, and begin to build a future together as partners outside the office?

Not According to Plan

Athan. A john is a prostitute’s trick, or a toilet. Not my name. Call me Jonathan or don’t bother calling me at all.


Inside, the room was dimly lit by a diffused lamp above the bed and a bank of monitoring equipment quietly beeping and humming to itself nearby. It was a single room, with only one bed on which Jonathan lay beneath a thin white sheet.


Tubes snaked into his arms, connecting him to the monitors and to a bag of saline solution hanging from an IV stand hovering above him. His head and shoulders were propped up slightly, showing the flowery print of a hospital gown he wore. He looked smaller than Peter remembered, his skin pale, his eyes bruised, his face ashy and gray. A network of tiny, superficial cuts crisscrossed his cheeks and forehead, most likely from the shattered windshield during the accident.


Chapter 13