Ben Haggerty is devastated when he returns home from work to discover his lover of eight years has gone off to complete his master's degree at another college -- and left no forwarding address. Not only has Ben chosen Rick over his beloved family, but he's supported his boyfriend both financially and emotionally the entire time. Unable to remain in their shared apartment, Ben moves and spends a miserable holiday season alone. With the New Year, however, he's determined to make a fresh start, so he manages to obtain Rick's address and sends him a card asking if Rick ever plans to return. Somehow, the card winds up in the wrong mailbox.<br><br>Jason Prescott is a genius, having obtained his first master's degree at twenty-one and now working on his second. When he receives a card in error, he returns both the card and a card of his own to be courteous, expressing his hopes Ben can get in touch with his boyfriend. This begins a correspondence that leads to friendship, and ... the start of something more? Jason introduces Ben to his family and reunites him with his own.<br><br>But will Jason, who's even smarter than Rick, be satisfied with someone as ordinary as blue-collar Ben feels himself to be? Or will Rick, realizing what he's let slip through his fingers, manage to persuade Ben to take him back?

Always, Ben

“I knew it. He dropped dead in the bedroom.”


“In the bathroom, then, while he was on the john.”


He and Rick had planned to buy a house, but each time he found something he thought was perfect, Rick would point out one wrong thing after another. “You don’t want to spend all that money and then not be happy, do you?” he’d ask, and of course Ben would have to agree with him. Rick was so smart…


He had to stop thinking about what he and Rick were going to do—it seemed there was no longer a he and Rick. “I’ll think about it,” he told Annie.


He really hadn’t intended to, but the apartment got him down to the point where he did more than think about the condo—he went to see it.


Chapter 8