Kia Ora...

I have moved again since my last newsletter and are now crashing on my friend's couch for...well, the length of my stay is yet to be determined. But now instead of staring out at green grass dotted with sheep - or cows - I'm metres away from Queens Park... which is a massive park-like grounds, botanic gardens, and the museum.

This is a statue of local icon Henry the Tuatara who usually resides at the museum when he's not visiting schools. At the moment he has a new home while the museum is earthquake strengthened.

Updates

Naomi Aoki

• Devotion (Nagoya Crimes 3) is currently sitting at 12k words.

Mandy Greenwood

• Currently writing another sports romance, yes baseball, that will be used as NL sign up freebie. It will be a standalone story... at least I intend for it to be a standalone story.
• The rewrite of Finding His Eden (Sliverdale City 1) is almost complete... and the story is flowing much better and all those pesky grammar errors that I missed (and yeah, there were a lot) have been removed. Also note the new series title... I want to bring the Silverdale Coven and Wolves under the one series name, plus it leaves it open to other stories in that universe being added.

MJ Green

• Currently fiddling with Father McDonald's story - Defrocked (House of Bolton Novella)
• Will start on Love Unpicked (House of Bolton 6) once the Nagoya Crimes trilogy is finished.

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Historical Romance Sale Jan 15-Feb 15

MM Age Gap Romance Jan 19-30

Running For Home (Switch Hitters 1)

TW: Depression, Alcoholism

Chapter Eight

Three days had passed since his disastrous dinner with Mike, and Jordan still struggled to come to terms with how it had all ended. How everything had ended…

He couldn’t accept that their marriage was over, the divorce papers he’d threatened to sign still lay in the draw where he’d shoved them two years ago. Regretted to the way he’d dismissed the small olive branch Mike had held out. While the idea of starting off as friends first might have made sense considering the two-year gap in their relationship, it wasn’t what Jordan wanted. He’d have gone along with it too if it weren’t for Mike suggesting that friendship might be all he could offer.

Jordan didn’t want another friend.

He wanted his husband back.

He wanted Mike sleeping in their bed every night.

He wanted…

“Oi, Jordan… you haven’t gone to fucking sleep on me, have you?” Hunter asked, concern rippling through his voice despite shoving Jordan’s shoulder hard. “You asked me to come around…so I did… but what’s the point if you’re not going to talk about whatever is bothering you.”

The problem was Jordan didn’t know how to express the emotions crashing around in his head. Complex ones that ricocheted between anger and heartbreak, hope and despair. It wasn’t fair lump all this on Hunter either, to force his brother to choose a side, but Jordan didn’t have anyone else he could lean on. But then neither did Mike.

Hunter released a frustrated sigh. “Look… I don’t have all day, so I’m going to cut through all the awkward long silences this conversation might otherwise have taken… this is to do with Mike, right?”

He nodded his head, swallowing back the urge to ask how Mike was doing.

“And I’m also guessing that the dinner you two had didn’t go well. If I were a betting man I’d good odds on the pair of you having fucked everything up royally.” Hunter narrowed his eyes. “And don’t try to lie.”

Jordan huffed. “What’s the point in lying… Mike’s probably told you everything already.”

“He hasn’t. In fact, I haven’t been able to get hold of Mike at all since then, and I need to know whether I should be worried by his silence or not.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“About which part? The fact Mike’s gone fucking quiet again… or that I’m bloody worried because of it.” Hunter shoved his hands through his hair and glared at Jordan. “If you’d just tell me what the fuck happened when you went round to Mike’s for dinner, then it’d be hell of a lot easier.”

Jordan sighed, his fingers playing with the fraying threads of an old baseball mitt. He’d dropped it on the kitchen table months ago intending to throw it out…but Jordan hadn’t been able to. Mike had bought the mitt for him when Jordan had been offered a contract with the Switch Hitters… a day that had also been the first time they’d kissed.

“I went to Mike’s for dinner—he made my favourite curry—and it was like stepping back into our old life… they way it had been before he’d fucked off. Far too easy to fall into the same old patterns and yet—”

“It wasn’t like that for Mike?”

Jordan shook his head. “Mike told me he could pretend the past two years hadn’t happened. Told me that he wasn’t the same person anymore and that all he could offer me was friendship… and maybe that friendship was all there’d ever be on offer.”

“And what did you say to him in return, Jordan?” Hunter’s voice was balanced on the edge of calm, and Jordan knew it wouldn’t take long to tip the scales…one way or another.

“I told him”—glancing away from his brother’s very intense stare, the one that always saw through his bullshit— “I told Mike that I wanted more than that.”

Hunter arched an eyebrow. “You must have said more than that… phrased it in a way that’s upset Mike.”

He took a deep breath and released it slow, his fingers curling around the baseball mitt tight. “I might’ve told him that if friendship was all that he had to offer…then I wasn’t interested… and that I’d walk away.”

“God you’re a fucking idiot,” Hunter snarled as he stood up and strode toward the door.

“What?” Jordan chased after his brother, pissed off and confused. “And where the fuck are you going?”

His brother spun around and stared at him with a cold, blank expression. “I’m headed to Mike’s. I need to make sure he’s okay… because you’re little stunt might have set him back.”

“I don’t see how. All I did was to be honest about what I wanted.”

“Mike was trying, Jordan… trying to form a connection with you again despite not believing that he had a right to stand by your side anymore.”

Jordan huffed. “Yeah, I get that he feels guilty about leaving like he did.”

Hunter shook his head and climbed into his car. “It’s more than that. Mike doesn’t think he has a right to be with you because he can’t play baseball anymore… that’s why he left.”

*

Hunter’s anger at his brother had eased somewhat by the time he arrived at Mike’s apartment. He knew Jordan hadn’t been wrong to tell Mike that he wanted more than friendship, but fuck, couldn’t his brother have accepted the olive branch that Mike had been offering. And okay, fine, Jordan didn’t know the state Mike had been in when Hunter had found him, the alcohol-soaked oblivion that his friend had sunk into as he tried to cope with the fact his baseball career was over. It was in no way a healthy coping method, and one Hunter had spent months dragging Mike out of until he’d reached the state that returning to Greertown had been possible.

But now… all that hard work could’ve been undone by an ultimatum that Jordan had thrown carelessly at Mike.

His fingers trembled as he searched for the apartment key amongst the others on the keyring held in his tight grasp. Hunter had never been more glad that he’d asked—demanded—that Mike give a key to the apartment, and yet Hunter also feared what he might find on the other side. He wasn’t worried that Mike might try to hurt himself, then again, depending on how much alcohol his friend had managed to consume, that statement might not be entirely true.

Mike was an alcoholic, except not a functioning one who could hide his dependence on the substance from prying eyes. No, Mike was a destructive drinker instead… he drank to forget, to wipe out the pain in his heart, and the sense of failure that plagued his mind. He couldn’t see that no one else saw him that way—a failure—not even when he’d managed to be stone cold sober… and until recently, Mike had spent more weeks drunk than sober. It was how Hunter had found after all… a call from the emergency department of a hospital not in Greertown because Mike had been dropped off there on the dangerous edge of alcohol poisoning.

Hunter wondered if it’d been wise to bring Mike back to Greertown and expect him to face his issues head on… it might’ve been smarter to convince his brother to sign the divorce papers Mike had sent.

A resigned sigh slipped from his lips when Hunter finally shoved the door of the apartment open and stepped inside. He wasn’t surprised by the mess that greeted him, but it still disappointed him. Bottles, cans, and half-eaten takeaway meals were scattered across the floor, sofa, and the coffee table while the man responsible for it all was nowhere to be seen.

He hated that Mike had fallen back off the wagon and slipped into his destructive ways once more.

Hated too that it was his brother’s actions that had contributed to it.

Hunter might’ve wanted to see his brother and best friend reconcile, but now he was beginning to think that the cost of doing so might be too high of a price.

“Mike!”

“Fuck… Hunter?” a groggy answer came from within the murky depths of the apartment.

“So… you’re still alive then?” He opened the curtains to let in daylight, wincing as the extent of Mike’s three-day binge was revealed. “You could’ve answered my texts… my calls… you know so I didn’t think you’d gone and died on us.”

“Sorry… battery died.” A bedraggled Mike appeared in the bedroom doorway, a sheepish expression on his face. “I couldn’t find the energy to shove it on the charger.”

“Do better, Mike.” Hunter sighed. “There are people who’ll worry when you don’t answer your damned phone.”

“People, huh? Mike replied with a snort. “You mean you’ll worry… and only you.”

“That’s not fair on Jordan, Mike. He doesn’t know about this”—gesturing at the three days’ worth of rubbish littering the floor, the blankets piled on the couch from when Mike slept there, and at the man’s own disheveled appearance— “or the extent of the issue that leads to this. If you talked to him properly… explained—”

“Like that would achieve anything.” Mike shook his head. “Jordan wants the Mike of the past… the man who married him… who crouched behind Homeplate ready to catch his pitches. He doesn’t want this Mike… the one who is broken.”

“That’s… that’s not true.”

Hunter winced at the voice, one trembled with anger while also being soaked in tears. He wasn’t sure who was more surprised to see Jordan standing there, him or Mike.

“You aren’t broken, Mike.”

“Of course, I’m fucking broken! I can’t play baseball anymore,” Mike snarled. “It wasn’t only my knee that was destroyed that day… but me too. All I ever wanted was to play baseball. Lived and breathed the sport from the time I could lift a bat… and if I don’t have that anymore… then I don’t have anything at all.”

*****

Books I've set in Invercargill/Southland

Dangerous Love

(The Yakuza and the English Teacher 2)

Crossing the Line

(The Yakuza and the English Teacher 4 - Brian and Ken's story)

Not Invisible to Me