Healing in the Hills: MM Romance Novella: Second Chance * Hurt/Comfort * Age Gap - MM Low-Steam Contemporary Age Gap Romance Novellas, #2

Over a decade after a frigid farewell and over thirteen years since their first encounter, two men, a professor and a former student, meet again. In a serene valley, with the warm spring making the wildflowers bloom. It's the perfect place to heal. But is it the right time?

AURELIAN JAMIE

The longer Aurelian Jamie lives, the more his regrets seem to pile up. From not spending more time with his late, loving parents to almost having cheated on his wife, merely a year after she had cut her own affair short and given him a chance to make things right, he has a plethora of things to regret.

Alas, time stops for no one. There is no way for Aurelian to go back and ask his now ex-wife to skip that one shift with that handsome, young doctor. No way to reclaim the life he had been building since his mid-twenties. And no way to go back and try to seize the life he had gotten a chance at in his early forties.

The reality is, both his wife and his shameful, male would-have-been fling are gone from his life now. Or so Aurelian thinks, until he gets an email at work. An email telling him he'd been selected for a government project. A classified project, in a quiet valley, under the supervision of… the man he wanted so desperately to forget.

Aurelian doesn't ask how, why, or what for. He packs up, he wakes up before the sun rises, and he hits the road. He heads straight for the facility… But not before he buys a small bouquet of pansies. He hopes it will be enough. Enough to let him see if he himself could have been enough, too.

LUCAS EDMUND DARCY

Early thirties. Blonde hair. Blue eyes, shining like the edge of a diamond blade. Pale skin, and no desire to spend time in the sun. A yearly salary well into the six digits. His own apartment, his own car… And a ridiculously expensive vacation home in the middle of nowhere. Maybe not the smartest investment he'd ever made.

Lucas Edmund Darcy had no use for this house in the middle of nowhere, no matter how beautiful said nowhere was. But, just like with most tools, you won't find a use for them until you have them. When the Lucas gets assigned to manage yet another government project, in a facility located conveniently close to his useless piece of real estate, he has a chance.

A chance to pay back all he still feels he owes that man. That man who used to be his whole world… And who tore that world apart right in front of him.

*** ONE EXPLICIT SCENE. THROUGH CLOTHES, NO PENETRATION. ***