Massachusetts State Trooper Ross Huber is giving one last sweep of the roads before heading in for the night. The nor’easter hitting the Boston area is worse than expected by an order of magnitude, and the governor has just issued a travel ban. Ross finds a wrecked car half-buried in a snowbank and rescues its human and canine occupants from carbon monoxide poisoning, but is forced to take shelter with them in a vacant or abandoned house when the roads are blocked. When he gets the victims indoors, he thinks the human looks uncomfortably familiar ... Ash Machado has been through a lot in his career as a war correspondent. Sidelined by an injury, he’s returned to Boston to take up a job as a news anchor. After he loses control of his car on an icy road, he wakes up in an unfamiliar home, looking into the face of the guy who broke his heart in college. Neither Ross nor Ash are the same men they used to be, but now they’re trapped in the abandoned house with no place to go. Can they get past old hurts long enough to get through the storm, or will the same misunderstandings that drove them apart years ago make this confinement unbearable?

Snowed In: Ross and Ashton

Ash rolled his eyes, but he laughed a little bit too. “Okay, maybe not all. But most of it. I want to have as conflict-free an experience in Boston as I can, okay? I get no one can just go about their life without rubbing someone the wrong way, but it’s just not…it’s not fun to be around someone I love and fighting with him all the time. It’s pretty miserable, actually. And I’m sure it’s kind of awful for you.”


“Fair enough.” Ross turned on his heel and went back to his room, stunned. He didn’t know if he was more stunned that Ash didn’t want to stay in touch or that Ash said he loved him, but he was stunned.


Chapter 25