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

“It never bothered you before,” Ben murmured. He’d always liked to say he was in the top eighty percent of their class—if he made fun of himself first, no one else could.


“How can I take you to any faculty functions?”


Rick had flushed. “No.” But his eyes hadn’t met Ben’s.


“As soon as the overtime stops, I’ll go back to school.”


Only he hadn’t had the opportunity to do that, because by that time, Rick had left.


And, all right, maybe he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but he had friends who were


Fred Lancaster, the guy who ran the computer lab at Howe U., owed him big time for getting the lab rewired way before the deadline, and on top of that, he liked Ben.


Chapter 9