The Lost Ship of the Tucker Rebellion - Marie Sexton Page 0,108
them space and privacy. Things in that department seemed to be going well. If Denver wasn’t enough to bring Laramie back, Dusty would be.
Spence moved closer, his hand finding its way into Denver’s. For a few minutes, they simply sat there, enjoying the warmth of the fire.
“I didn’t think it would be like this,” Spence said after a moment.
“Like what?”
“So… peaceful. So prepared. Nothing in my life has ever come easy before.”
“If you think getting here was easy, I need to jog your memory,” Denver said, gently bumping their shoulders.
Spence rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that part was pretty fucked-up, but I guess I never thought very much about what it would mean once we got here. I knew I wanted to give Treesa a chance at living on a real world, somewhere she wouldn’t have to scrounge for credits and barter up her soul just to make ends meet.” After a moment he added, more softly, “But having it, and being here, feels almost too much like being in a dream. I mean, look at it. It’s amazing. And here we are now, having to decide what to do with our lives next. No more being a dock rat. Now I have to choose whether to be a farmer or a cheese maker or a carpenter. I barely even know what those words mean! It should scare the crap out of me, but it doesn’t. I don’t think I ever did anything to deserve seeing something so amazing.”
Denver could only stare at him, transfixed as he often was in Spence’s presence. “You deserve it as much as any of the rest of us. You convinced me to bring you and Treesa along. You helped me see that this place could be about more than just my needs, or Laramie’s needs. What if we’d gotten all the way here, just me and Laramie and Marit and Opal, and then been stranded on this planet all by ourselves?” It was a thought that had given him chills more than once since they’d first arrived. It would have been the four of them—only three of them human—for the rest of their lives, and then OPAL alone for as long as her power lasted. Until the universe burned out, maybe.
Denver loved all of them, and he knew they felt the same, but being here by themselves would have become a guilt-ridden hell before a year was out. This place had been built for a community, not a single family. “It’s so much better that you’re here,” he finished.
Spence grinned. “Well, when you put it like that… you’re welcome.”
“Smart-ass.” Denver nudged him again, and this time Spence retaliated by putting his head down on Denver’s shoulder.
“One of the escapists was talking to me about building furniture,” Spence said. “I think I’d like to try that. Building chairs and tables. What about you?”
“I don’t know. Farming, maybe? Or goats? They seem kind of cute.”
“What in the world would you do with goats?”
Denver laughed. “I have no idea, but I’m sure somebody will tell me.”
They sat there, together, and Denver focused on the way the breeze made the grass rustle, and on the sound of insects they didn’t have names for yet, and the heat of Spence’s body. He couldn’t look up at the sky anymore, or the trees, or the vast horizon. It would overwhelm him, to be conscious of that and all these other things at once. But these pieces, he could enjoy.
For now, this was more than enough.
Marie Sexton
Dear reader,
Thank you so much for reading my book. I know your time is valuable, and I’m thrilled you’ve chosen to spend some of it with my imaginary friends. (I spend a lot of time with them too.)
I’m just a regular, sports-loving mom living in Colorado. I used to work as an administrative assistant at an OB/Gyn office until one day in 2009 when I woke up with a couple of those imaginary men in my head. I’ve been writing gay romance ever since. I have nearly forty published titles to date. I’ve written a bit of everything over the years — cozy, small-town romances, BDSM, kinky space pirates, twisted fairytales, and a few odd genre mash-ups in between. My books span the spectrum from sweet and fluffy to raw and dirty. If you like reading books about men who fall in love with other men, please consider checking out a few of my other titles. You can find a list of them on the next page.
You can also find me online at all the usual places — Twitter (where I mostly talk about football and hockey), Facebook, Instagram, and my website, www.MarieSexton.net. If you’d like to receive information on new and upcoming releases, please consider signing up for my (rather sporadic) newsletter. You can do that here.
Lastly, if you enjoyed the book you just read, please consider leaving a review. Or better yet, tell one of your friends about it! Nothing in the world helps independent authors like me more than a kind word from one reader to the next. And for those of you who stayed up past your bedtime because you just had to get to that happy ending before falling asleep, I sure hope it was worth it.
Thanks again,
Marie
Cari Z
Cari Z. is a Colorado girl who loves snow and sunshine. She writes award-winning LGBTQ fiction featuring aliens, supervillains, soothsayers, and even normal people sometimes.
Cari has published short stories, novellas and novels with numerous print and e-presses, and she also offers up a tremendous amount of free content on her blog and Patreon. Follow her there to read her serial stories, with new chapters posting every week.