Prologue

HE WALKED into my bedroom without knocking. He’d been doing it for twelve years. As of tomorrow he would be doing it no longer.

I was stretched out on my bed, resting against the pillows and doing my best to lose myself in reading. When the going gets tough, the tough get going, and Shane reads a book. I wondered whether that saying was too long for a tattoo.

I looked up from the words on the page. Hosseini’s gripping book had no interest to me if Ambrose was in the room. I wasn’t dumb enough to put the book down, though. No need to admit to unrequited love when that person was leaving the following day.

“Hey,” I said, trying to sound casual. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going out partying with the boys for one more night?”

Ambrose walked across the room, his long-legged stride familiar to me. He threw himself down on my desk chair and picked up the snow globe he’d bought me for Christmas. It was cheesy. It was cheap. I was going to treasure it.

“I blew them off.”

The one thing you don’t say to a nineteen-year-old gay boy who’s desperately in love with you and doesn’t get near enough action to satisfy his libido is “I blew them off.”

I deliberately placed my book in my lap. “Lucky them. How long did it take you to do them all? Did you do them one at a time, or could you manage a few together?”

He stuck a middle finger up at me, and I grinned. I was going to miss him—badly. He was still fiddling with the snow globe, turning it upside down to cause a blizzard to the winter scene inside and then watching the flakes settle with an intensity that told me he was freaking out.

“All packed?” I asked softly.

“Yep,” he replied, not taking his eyes off the globe.

“Your mum still driving you to the airport?”

“Yep.”

“You still sure you don’t want me to go with her? To see you off?”

“Nah. I don’t want a big fuss.”

My heart thumped rapidly as something akin to grief welled inside me again. “So this is my goodbye?”

“Yep.” His voice broke. I ignored it like the good friend I was. I knew he thought eighteen-year-old boys aren’t meant to cry. It was a pity about the tears in my eyes, then, because I was a whole eighteen months older than him, and I was ready to bawl.

I picked up my book and tried to focus on the words so we could both regather our composure. I heard the quiet snick as he placed the globe back on the desk. In my periphery I could see him stand and go over to stare at one of the posters on my wall. I loved that poster and paid way too much to have it framed. Someone had taken a bunch of my favorite cult and fantasy characters and placed them in a picture together. Stone steps were leading up to some sort of colosseum-type structure I assumed was supposed to represent some heaven, and on the steps were all the characters—Legolas with his sword drawn, standing back-to-back with a stormtrooper; Captain Picard standing with Dumbledore; Van Helsing crouching next to Tank Girl; Sarah Connor holding guns with Dean Winchester; C-3PO leaning against the TARDIS.

Ambrose wasn’t into it as much as I was, but he’d watched enough movies with me over the years that he could identify most of the characters, just like I’d watched football with him. I thought about having to watch a game without him by my side and felt a sharp pain in my stomach.

“You’re gonna text me, right?” he asked suddenly, and I looked up in surprise. Our relationship wasn’t about texting and calling. Since we lived in each other’s pockets, there was no need. If I wanted to tell him something, I’d simply wait until that night.

“If you want,” I replied and immediately saw it was the wrong answer. He looked hurt. I rushed on to try and make amends. “I mean, you’re going to be so busy in Melbourne that you won’t have time for texts from me. Your mum’s already told you she’s going to be ringing every night, and you’ll be flat-out training and making new friends, and—”

I flinched as Ambrose launched himself at me. I’d been on the receiving end of a lot of wrestling matches with Ambrose over the years, and I usually lost. It was a little disheartening when the guy who was two years younger than me managed to outgrow me before he turned fourteen. Now, at nearly twenty years of age, I’d given up hoping for a late growth spurt.

I’d upgraded my bed—with more than a few blushes—eighteen months earlier, so I could hopefully have some friends “stay over.” Sadly it hadn’t been used as frequently as I hoped, but I’d been flattened on it many a time by Ambrose when he decided he needed to “teach me a lesson.”

I anticipated the physical contact and brought my hands up to protect my chest. Instead I found myself astounded when Ambrose threw himself on the bed beside me and buried his face between my neck and the pillow. He still made contact with my body when he slammed down on my shoulder, because he wasn’t a small guy, and I was stretched out in the middle of the bed, but I managed to save my book from being crushed. I quickly closed it and put it on the shelf built into the bedhead. Sometimes Ambrose was thoughtful like that—allowing me to safely put aside my precious items before I had to submit to his physical strength.

But he didn’t move once the book was away. I predicted I had all of three seconds before I would need to fight for my masculine pride. I knew I would lose, but I had to at least try, however Ambrose was a rock at my side, not moving, not even breathing, from what I could tell.

He half lay on me, his chest squashing my arm and shoulder, his arm curled tightly against him but resting on my chest. I suddenly realized I’d been too caught up in my own feelings about Ambrose leaving to delve too deeply into his. I knew he was excited and unsure, but I didn’t realize that perhaps he was sad as well.

I lifted my hand, placed it on his shoulder, and rubbed my palm over the cotton of his T-shirt. I swallowed loudly.

“Of course I’ll text you. I’m going to miss you. A lot.”

There was no response from him—either movement or sound—so I tried to lighten the atmosphere. “I’m not sure what I’ll do with myself. I’m going to have to find someone else to force-watch all the movies and TV shows I like. Then someone else is going to have to listen to me prattle on and on about how the movie missed out some of the main plot points of the book. That’s going to be at least two people, because it’s too much of a burden for one person to put up with all of that. I’m pretty needy when it comes to that sort of stuff.”

It was one of Ambrose’s regular complaints to me. I’d often hear some version of “Oh, come on, man! I just sat through two hours of the movie. We don’t need to discuss it point by point again.”

He didn’t discuss the shows with me, but he was nice enough to listen to me go on and on, or at least pretend to listen.

“And what am I going to do with my weekends once the football season starts?” I asked in a joking voice. “I mean, I’ll have hours extra now that I don’t have to watch the game with you.”

“You still have to watch.” The words were muffled against my shoulder. “It’s mandatory. I’m going to ring you after every game to check up and make sure you did.”

I chuckled and patted his arm, trying not to turn it into a caress, but noting the muscles he’d worked on so hard—which made me remember something.

“Oh, I was going to ask you. All your weights are still under my bed.” Last year I had tutored him to help him finish high school. It was a compromise that he did some weight training while we sat and discussed his subjects or while I quizzed him or read to him. Through trial and error, I’d learned that Ambrose seemed to retain more information if it was verbally given to him. “Did you want me to sell them for you? Or did you want me to hold on to them? Then I could maybe do some lifting while you’re not here. Get in shape? Find me some muscles to attract the boys who ignore me?”

He wriggled a bit as though to get more comfortable, and I felt him turn his head, which I was glad of because I was worried about him suffocating in there. “You’re fine as you are, Shane.”

I didn’t know how to react. What did he mean, I was fine as I was? Didn’t he know? Couldn’t he see? He ranked something like a thirteen on my score-out-of-ten sexy scale. I was maybe a three… if I squinted hard. My teenage acne hadn’t quite cleared up, and my body was more sponge than muscle. I would think about working out and becoming buff and gorgeous… but then a book would call my name, and I’d be lost.

“A fine mess,” I scoffed, finally able to find my tongue. “Do you know that guy I told you about? Justin? I said he finally talked to me at the party two weeks ago, and I was hopeful?”

Just because I was in love with Ambrose didn’t mean I wanted to be celibate for the rest of my life. I was currently celibate, but that wasn’t by choice—at least not by my choice.

Ambrose grunted and muttered, “The one I told you that you had to flirt with and make it obvious you wanted his attention?”

“Yeah. Him.” I snorted at my failure. “I did that last night. I flirted like mad for a good ten minutes. Then I screwed up my courage and asked him if he wanted to leave the party and go somewhere more private.”

I ignored it when Ambrose stiffened beside me. He always did that when I talked about trying to get laid. He considered me too reckless for encouraging men to follow me to my car or somewhere out of the way. We fought about it enough that we’d agreed to just disagree. I knew his view, and he knew I wasn’t going to start asking for police references before trying to get naked with another guy.

“And did he? Want to?”

I snorted again, disgusted by myself and willing to tell Ambrose about it to cheer him up. “He looked at me in surprise and then said he didn’t realize I was gay. I mean, I’d chatted him up on at least three different occasions, and he didn’t realize I was coming on to him?”

But Ambrose didn’t laugh like I wanted. He flattened his palm on my chest and said quietly, “His loss, Shane. If he can’t see the good guy you are, then his loss.”

“I know,” I half wailed, turning on the hysterics by channeling my drama-queen friends. Hysterics weren’t me, but it was fun to act it up a little when it was just Ambrose and me alone. “But it doesn’t help me in my quest to get laid, now does it?”

He finally unbent enough to chuckle. “So the guy doesn’t matter, it’s the laying bit?” he asked in amusement.

How could I tell him that of course the guy mattered, but I knew that no one would stack up to him.

“Does that make me a slut?” I asked with real worry. “I just thought it made me horny.”

“It’s the teenage hormones,” he soothed with fake solicitousness. “Soon you’ll be twenty, and it’ll be all downhill from there.”

I poked him in the ribs in retaliation, and he jumped, grabbed my wrist, and pinned it to my side. I tried to fight him, but he was too big, too strong, and too heavy. We tussled for a bit until I gave up like I always did. My pride smarted, but my blood sang happily to be touching Ambrose.

“You win,” I said as I went limp and gave in to his strength.

He laughed, sounding happier than he had since he entered my room, and released his hold. “Did you ever doubt it?”

No. Not really. And I was fine with it. I readily acknowledged I didn’t have a tenth of Ambrose’s drive to be the best, to win-win-win, to strive for greatness. That’s why I was sitting in my bedroom reading a book about a guy who goes on adventures while Ambrose was getting ready to jet off to the other side of the country.

We slumped together on the bed, a tangle of limbs, not ready to move. I knew it would be the last time. When he came home next, he’d be changed. He’d be a man. Striking out on his own would change him.

I wondered whether we’d still be friends when he got back. Nothing could erase the twelve years of growing up together, but time and distance could loosen the bond.

“Will you miss me?” I asked timidly. I was looking for reassurance from him, a role reversal of our usual relationship.

“Course. There’s so much I wanted to—”

When he didn’t finish, I drew back on the cloak of the protector I usually wore around him and rushed to reassure him. “You’re going to be brilliant, do you know that? You’re going to wow them all. But don’t be afraid to ask for help. Don’t expect to be the best out there anymore. You’re in the big leagues now. You’re going to have to fight your way back to the top. I know you’ll do it. I believe in you. You just need to keep focused on the end goal and have faith in yourself.”

“You’re the only person who’s ever had faith in me. I mean, from the beginning.”

Maybe because, to me, he was everything. There was nothing I couldn’t see him doing.

“Don’t think about that,” I counseled. “Don’t think about those who want you to fail or don’t think you can do it. Think about who you want to be. Who would make you happy. What you want to do.”

He moved so abruptly that later I couldn’t remember him doing it. One moment I was trying to instill in him all the advice my nearly twenty-year-old brain had, and the next moment, he was on me, kissing me.

And it was nothing like I dreamed.

It was harder. Hotter. Wetter. And infinitely more beautiful. I was shocked to stillness for a long time, which gave Ambrose the opportunity to push my legs apart and settle between them, flattening me on the bed in a new way, before I’d even had a chance to protest—not that I wanted to protest. For God’s sake. It was Ambrose.

He was kissing me in almost a feverish manner, as though stopping to draw breath would allow sanity in and it would all disappear. Perhaps he was right. I wasn’t going to allow sanity to even get a peek in. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and kissed him back even harder. He made a sort of moan in the back of his throat, as though my arms around him made the kissing even better.

I tilted my head to the side so the lock between our mouths was tighter. He moved too, and I found myself on my side. I was still pressing against Ambrose, but this time we were chest-to-chest. I moved my head to the side and sucked in a deep breath as he stole his hand under my T-shirt and began to smooth over the skin. I tried to find my reason.

This was Ambrose.

We could discuss the whys and the what-fors later. I wasn’t willing to speak, because I didn’t want to break the spell. I turned my mouth back to his, and he willingly pressed in again. We kissed deeply for long minutes, and I didn’t want to let him go, so I held on tightly to his shoulders and head, but he roamed at will with his free hand.

He traced the muscles of my back and then followed the line of my spine down to my shorts. It was summer and hot. The elastic waistband of my shorts was no barrier to his hand, and he slipped it under and cupped the flesh of my arse.

I was shocked. I could understand my friend hugging me—he was about to travel nearly three thousand kilometers away for the first time in his life. He was scared and unsure. I could even understand my friend kissing me. I’d made no secret of my homosexuality. Perhaps he knew it would be okay to kiss me because I didn’t mind kissing men. Perhaps it was a way to be close to me—the friend he’d had on a daily basis for twelve years and would be leaving behind.

But when a friend sticks his hand down the back of your pants, there’s only one conclusion you can come to. That friend is doing that because he wants to.

I was hard. I couldn’t help but rub my aching dick against something, which happened to be his conveniently located thigh. And then I discovered he was hard too.

He was turned on by gay kissing? Was he gay? Was he bi? Was he trying it on with me because he was horny? Was he saying goodbye in a way he thought I would appreciate? I’d been out to him for years. If he was gay and wanted to try something, why did he wait until the last frickin’ night we had before he told me? And did he realize it was me? Shane? His dorky, not-so-attractive friend?

Then he pushed my shorts down and exposed my arse, and I stopped thinking and simply acted.

This was my chance. This was Ambrose. I pulled at his T-shirt, and he willingly broke our kiss to jerk it over his head. The material hadn’t even cleared his body and my hands were on him, touching the skin I’d always wanted to touch. I brushed my fingers over his pebbled nipples and up to his shoulders and brought his body to mine. I rolled to my back and silently invited him to do whatever he wanted. What he wanted was less clothing between us. He tugged at my shirt, and I pulled it off.

Just like I’d done to him, he sought my nipples and rubbed at them. I looked down and felt a wave of desire. His dusky brown skin was highlighted against my flabby paleness. His fingers were spread out, smoothing down my stomach, then up my ribs until they found my nipples again.

We kissed, and I screwed up my courage, moved my hands down, and slowly slid them under the waistband of the front of his shorts. There could be no confusion about what I was aiming for, and he helpfully lifted up to give me room to work. I burrowed under the layers of material and wrapped my hand around his hard cock. He was super hard. I squeezed and attempted to caress, but the angle was awkward, and I had no leverage. I pushed at his shoulders, and he acquiesced back on the bed.

But I couldn’t look at his face. I didn’t want reality to hit, because if this was a dream, it was a fucking good one. So I pushed down his shorts and exposed his cock. It was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. I’d seen Ambrose naked loads of times. We weren’t overly modest with each other. But I’d never seen his dick aroused and pulsing in my hand.

I didn’t hesitate. It could be my only chance, so I bent down and took him in my mouth. I wasn’t a connoisseur at the art of blow jobs. I really didn’t have a lot of chance to practice. But I was an enthusiastic participator. That had to count for something, didn’t it?

Ambrose lay back with a groan and allowed me to enjoy his body. I wanted to tell my brain to memorize every single part of it, but I kept getting lost in the sensation. The taste was incredible, and the knowledge of what I was doing was earth-shattering.

Finally I kissed my way back up his chest and took his mouth with mine. He cooperated beautifully.

“Shane,” he whispered.

Then he pushed me to my stomach, and I did what he wanted. I’d do whatever he wanted. I was his. He exposed my buttocks by yanking down the material of my shorts and throwing them to the floor, crawled around on the bed, and came over me. I heard him spit, and then he inserted his hard cock along the crack of my buttocks and rubbed against my aching hole. I moaned and turned my head into the pillow to avoid screaming. I was so sensitive, so needy.

I melted in ecstasy as his weight pushed me into the bed. He lowered his body onto mine, burrowed his face into the curve of my shoulder, and began to rub himself against me. His hands weren’t idle. He touched me constantly, and I felt their warmth along my ribs, over my shoulders, at my hips.

When Ambrose’s weight left me, I cried out in disappointment, but he only moved back so he could push his dick harder along my crack. Then I felt him push at my rim, and I tensed up.

“Shane?” he asked breathlessly. I could hear him breathing hard behind me. Or perhaps that was just me. “Can I?”

I wanted to scream yes, but instead I hesitated. I wasn’t a virgin, but I also wasn’t an expert at that sort of stuff. And there was something he hadn’t considered.

“Umm.” I swallowed. “I don’t know if you want to. You didn’t give me any warning, and I haven’t… well, cleaned.”

I knew I was going bright red and was glad my face was still in the pillow. But I couldn’t read Ambrose’s silence, so I rolled over and glanced up at him. He was frowning slightly, clearly confused.

Fuck. I hated to burst his bubble. “Ambrose, I think it should be okay, but… well, you could get shit on your dick. Fact of life.”

His face cleared. “Is that all?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’ve talked to a lot of guys. Online, you know? Some say it happens and doesn’t faze them. Others are horrified by the thought.”

He leaned over me and kissed me on the lips. “I’m not putting my mouth there, so I don’t care. I don’t give a fuck, Shane. So, can I?”

I nodded, turned back to the pillow, and prayed for everything to go right. I heard him spit, which wasn’t going to be the best lube, but I couldn’t rightly recall where my bottle was. Spit was just going to have to be enough. He pushed in. It took some effort and more spit, but I squeezed my eyes shut and waited.

“Holy fucking God,” Ambrose ground out. Then he was thrusting, and I held on to the sheets, pushed back against him, and wished it would never end. But it did—a bit sooner than I anticipated. Ambrose groaned that he was coming and emptied himself into me.

Then he threw himself on the bed beside me and stared at the ceiling. I didn’t want the moment to end, so kept silent and watched him with sad eyes while my body still felt the strength of his invasion. I wanted to know what he was feeling, why he’d done what he did, and what it meant for us.

Ambrose’s eyes slid closed, and I watched him nap. He was beautiful to me. His indigenous genes had mingled with the European ones and created beauty. His bronze skin and his curly hair were so different from my own that I wanted to touch and explore. His wide nose proclaimed his Aboriginal heritage, just like his brilliant white teeth and his wide smile.

I loved him—as a friend and as something more.

I must’ve fallen asleep, because when I woke, the room was in darkness and the blankets on the bed had been pulled up over my naked body.

And Ambrose had gone.