Oliver Stoll’s life has gone up in smoke. Literally. Escaping an apartment fire, he’s made it out with little more than the clothes on his back and his best friend and downstairs neighbor, Mia. With few other options, he agrees to stay with David Elliston, Mia’s older brother. David was Oliver’s first crush, first kiss, first everything. That is, until the day they broke up five years before. It hadn’t been pretty.<br><br>David Elliston is back in town. Offered the chance to oversee the Kellmen Group’s newest magazine acquisition, he isn’t going to let a years old heartbreak stop him. But being thrown together with Oliver is harder than expected. And the flicker of hope he’s long tried to bury becomes even more difficult to contain.<br><br>Ex-lovers, best friends, and angry parents don’t make the best backdrop for rekindling a romance. But it’s the lies from the past that might just extinguish any chance they have of starting over.

Big Flames and Small

“You’re seeing someone.” It wasn’t a question.


“No.” Which was true, but Oliver didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. “Not exactly.”


Scott was quiet for a long moment, looking down at him, as if he was trying to decide what to say, or whether he should say anything at all.


“Is he someone brand-new?” Scott finally asked, and Oliver wondered why it would matter.


“Someone I’ve known for a very long time.”


He nodded his head, as if that was an important distinction, and ran his thumb over Oliver’s chin. “I guess it’s not always about the size of the fire, but how long it’s lingered, right?”


For Scott, who’d never understood Oliver’s love of books or words, it had been almost poetic, and Oliver reached up to touch his cheek.


Scott had offered to drop him off at the apartment, but Oliver had declined. Instead, he watched Scott climb into his car and disappear up the street before, once again, scheduling a ride with his borrowed credit card.


Chapter 20