Rafael Patino has a great life in Rain Valley. He’s a teacher at the high school, has a great group of friends, and enjoys the occasional baseball game. Other than the sporadic call from his drunken mother, he’s pretty content. He’s also been in love with his best friend Dustin for nearly a decade. Years of keeping those feelings under control are put to the test when they begin a summer project together. Dustin Vance builds furniture for a living, has just earned his pilot’s license, and has an amazing best friend. When he buys a 1976 Cessna Skyhawk, he asks Rafael to help restore it, then travel with him to Wisconsin for the largest aviation convention in the world. As they spend their days working on the plane, they begin to spend their nights together. Will they find love in the clouds, or will they stall out before they even take off?

Love in the Clouds

Once Mac took over the plane’s final repairs, Rafael hoped he could persuade Dustin into going to a game. Dustin wasn’t a huge baseball fan, but his younger brother, Jamie, was the team’s mascot, so he usually attended a few games each summer. Rafael pulled up the schedule, happy to see they were playing at home starting Tuesday. Maybe they could get the whole gang together.


Huh. The gang. Were he and Dustin ready to tell people they were dating? Rafael personally wanted to shout it to the world, but Dustin might not be ready. And now that he thought about it, they hadn’t even had an actual date. Rafael needed to talk to Dustin about that and see what he was interested in doing.


Chapter 43