From the farms of Tennessee, Beau Watkins had it all in high school: the cute girl, the popular jock lifestyle, a loving family. As a rising freshman at an out-of-state college, he's determined to find out who he really is behind the fake it 'til you make it attitude. He joins Rainbow Connection, the gay student alliance, hoping to find himself. Instead, he meets Vin Reyes. Raised by his grandparents and the heir to a prosperous company, Vin has been out of the closet since he figured out what that meant. He has it all: fashionable clothing, fancy cars, huge houses, and a real party lifestyle, even a bodyguard. Most of all, he has a secret. Uncomfortable with Vin's generosity, Beau fights his growing attraction for the president of Rainbow Connection, instead chasing a series of shallow affairs. Vin's never been denied anything he wants, though, and now he wants Beau. But it isn’t until an old rival puts Beau in the hospital that Vin realizes Beau means more to him than a simple affair. Can the two of them bridge the gap between their worlds and roll with the all the punches life throws at them?

On a Roll

As usual, the tables were split across three rooms—it used to only be two, but then the “kids” started having kids of their own, and things got crowded. Beau’d never quite found the right place, however. He was too old to be sitting with the toddlers, with his four-year-old second cousin tossing slices of cucumbers into his milk, and yet he still had very little in common with the young adults, all marriages and babies and jobs and mortgages and furnace filters.


Like life. He just didn’t quite fit in anywhere.


He took his seat next to his brother’s girlfriend on one side and the empty chair that his mother had placed—tellingly—for Dee, and stared at his food. The empty chair bothered him, an invisible, nagging reminder of the things he’d done wrong, the things he should have said differently, the person he should have been and wasn’t.


Chapter 30