The Small-Town Boyfriend

"He was only supposed to fix the roof. Not mend my broken heart."

Daniel Brooks needs an escape. Blacklisted by the Boston publishing elite and dumped by his image-obsessed boyfriend, inheriting his late aunt’s dusty, debt-ridden Vermont bookstore feels less like a fresh start and more like a final punchline. The roof is collapsing, winter is closing in, a ruthless developer wants the land, and the contractor hired to inspect the damage is a six-foot-two walking thundercloud who takes one look at Daniel’s designer sneakers and writes him off as a liability. Mason Reed doesn't do attachments. Not since a devastating loss six years ago taught him that love is just an unexploded bomb waiting to destroy you. He trusts things that don’t bleed: plumb lines, hand-hewn hemlock, and thirty-foot walls around his heart. But when the witty, sharp-tongued city boy refuses to be intimidated by his scowls, Mason’s carefully fortified defenses begin to splinter faster than dry pine. Forced together to save The Paper Lantern, late-night bickering over blueprints gives way to quiet confessions by flashlight, tender touches in the workshop, and an intoxicating, slow-burning fire neither man can outrun. When ghosts from Daniel's past arrive with promises of city prestige and a brutal mountain storm threatens everything they’ve built, Mason must choose whether to retreat behind his armor, or risk it all to build a real future with the only man who ever made him want one.