Chapter 1

ONE

Morning was Rhys Hawthorne’s favorite time of day. It was the beginning, a fresh start, a way to package up the shit that might have happened the day before and shove it way back on a shelf where he wouldn’t have to think about it anymore. It was ripe with promise, forward-facing, and free from the distractions of yesterday’s heartache.

It was also the best time of day to paint his favorite view of the landscape around Hawthorne House. He often got up early, well before his first morning class, to sit in the bay window of his classroom, in the isolated nook he’d carved out for himself, even though it was in plain view of everyone else, to work with the early morning light.

He’d often gotten up early and just sat in the window seat of that nook, fresh tea in hand, chatting with his sister, Raina, about life, the family, art, and everything else under the sun.

The familiar ache of grief that thinking about Raina gave him surprised Rhys enough to make him lower his paintbrush and clench his jaw. He glanced at the still— still! —imperfect landscape in front of him, then out the window at the beloved view he was trying to render, then at the empty space where Raina used to sit with him.

“ You’re going to have to get on with your life eventually, Rhys ,” he heard her teasing, scolding voice in his head. “ Just because you haven’t gotten it right yet doesn’t mean you won’t get it right eventually .”

Rhys’s mouth pulled and twitched at those remembered words, like it wanted to smile, even though the rest of him definitely wasn’t in a smiling mood. Raina had been talking about his recent break-up and the deeply vulnerable things he’d confessed to her about the whole ordeal. He’d been dating a woman, Angela, who he’d really liked, but who just didn’t have the vibe he was looking for.

Six months before that, he’d sat in the same spot with his sister, complaining about Michael, the guy he’d just broken up with, because as hot as he was in bed, he just didn’t have that soft streak that he liked.

Raina had always been his go-to sibling to have those sort of deep, confessional moments with. She’d never judged him for not knowing what he wanted, and she’d encouraged him to sample a little of everything before he decided.

Which was ironic, considering she’d married Nick after just a handful of dates. They’d married within six months of meeting, had their first kid, Jordan, seven and a half months later, and their second, Macy, a scant year after that.

And then she’d been killed in a highway accident when Macy was barely a month old, nearly fourteen months ago.

Rhys and Nick had been in the car with her. Rhys was in the back seat. Raina had teased him that he was too drunk to drive and had taken the keys from him.

They’d all laughed about how responsible and motherly she was, not just for her babies but for Rhys, too.

Twenty minutes later, she was gone.

Rhys sucked in a breath and battled to push that memory out of his mind before it could take hold and ruin his day. He’d dealt with it. He and Nick both had gone to therapy for months after they’d recovered from that horrible night. He still checked in with his therapist once a month, though in the back of his mind, he knew it should be more. He’d dealt with life going on without one of the most important people he’d ever had by his side. He’d accepted the way things were in his new reality.

He still bent over backward to avoid driving at night, though, and he hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since.

And he still couldn’t get the damn landscape right.

He cleared his throat and forced his gaze back on the painting in front of him. The canvas was so much larger than he usually worked with. It was as tall as he was and twice as broad. It held the same view that he’d painted a dozen times or more on a smaller scale. His thought was that it would make a great centerpiece for Hawthorne House’s foyer.

He’d been working on the piece for months now, since the early summer. He needed to get it done sooner rather than later, since it was fall now and the colors of the landscape had definitely started to change. The view had changed with it.

Maybe that was the problem with the piece. He’d been trying to create a summer scene, like that view had been during all those balmy, sunny days when he and Raina used to yammer away with each other. Maybe he needed to make it an autumnal scene, full of russets and ochres.

Maybe he just needed to abandon the whole thing as an utter failure.

He twisted to the side and pushed his brush through some of the blobs of paint that he’d squeezed onto the oversized palette he liked to work with, blending Alizarin Crimson with Naples Yellow to try to get the right shade of orange to match autumn at Hawthorne House in his memory.

The red was a bad idea, though. Swirling it across his palette brought to mind the colors that had dripped onto Raina’s shirt from the head trauma she’d received when the intoxicated driver of the MG had lost control and slammed into?—

Rhys sucked in a loud breath and dropped his brush entirely as a bout of shaking overtook him. The screech and crunch from that night echoed in his brain for a moment before he forced it away. He shook out his hand, which morphed into him shaking out both arms and rolling his shoulders. Diane, his therapist, had encouraged him to push his awareness into his body by moving it and being physical when the haunted thoughts of that night infiltrated their way into his mind.

He stepped back far enough to bend over and retrieve his paintbrush from where it’d fallen to the floor, splattering paint on the linoleum. Not that the entire studio wasn’t crisscrossed with layers of oil and acrylic paint from dozens of classes in the past. Rhys liked the floor messy. It meant that the studio was used and given the attention it deserved.

There. That was a better thought to have than either the crash or his failure to render the view he looked at nearly every day. He should be thinking about his upcoming class at any rate, since his students would be showing up soon.

“It’s looking lovely,” his mother’s voice dragged him even farther from the thoughts that flayed him.

Rhys turned to her from where he’d taken his fallen brush to the sink to clean it, then glanced back at his canvas.

“It’s not right,” he said with a frown as he swished his brush in a small cup of turpentine to clean it.

“Not right?” his mum asked with a blink, focusing on the painting instead of him. “It’s lovely, dear. What isn’t right about it?”

Rhys shrugged tightly and winced. “The light isn’t right. The colors aren’t what they’re supposed to be. It just doesn’t have the right…feel.” He shrugged again, pinching his face into something tighter than a wince.

His mum dragged her eyes away from the painting to study him, like he was the canvas that just wasn’t right. “It’s beautiful, Rhys. Just like your tender soul,” she said.

“Mum,” Rhys moaned impatiently, rolling his eyes. He grabbed some paper towels to continue cleaning his brush as he walked back over to his nook. “I’m nearly thirty-five years old. I do not need you buttering me up with compliments like I’m one of the primary school students.”

“I will always need to butter you up, love,” his mum said, closing the space between him so that she could throw her arms around him. That was some feat, considering Rhys was well over six feet and his mum was barely five-five.

Rhys set his brush down and hugged his mum right back. It was good to have her home. She’d been off galivanting in Europe with her girlfriend—yes, the Hawthorne parents were involved in every sort of open relationship and polycule pairing imaginable and had been since Rhys and his siblings were kids—for months, but with all the fuss Willoughby Entertainment had kicked up, she’d come home to devote a little needed attention to running and expanding the offerings of the Hawthorne Community Arts Center.

It was good to have her home, to have her there to hug.

He sighed as his gaze settled on his canvas. He might as well have been a primary school kid bringing home an art project to Mum for all the indiscriminate praise she would give his work.

“Enough of that,” his mum said, rocking back and slapping his arm, like she could hear his thoughts. “You are a brilliant artist, Rhys Hawthorne. You always have been.”

“Mum,” Rhys rolled his eyes again.

“Your work is displayed in some of the finest galleries in London. You’ve been featured in Art of England on more than one occasion. I don’t want to hear you disparaging yourself because you think you can’t make very good into perfect.”

“It’s not even very good,” he argued, throwing an arm out toward the painting. “It’s decidedly not right.”

He expected some sort of further argument or undeserved encouragement, but his mum simply shrugged and said, “So? If it’s not what you want it to be, then put it aside and do something else.”

Rhys gave his mum a flat look. “That’s your solution to everything, isn’t it. Do something else.” He arched one eyebrow.

“Don’t you get up on your high horse to judge me, or your father,” she said, pointing a finger at him, a wicked sparkle in her eyes. “Variety is the spice of life. Robert and I have always believed as much. Our scandalous and questionable life choices have always provided us with inspiration and given you lot the freedom to live your lives in whatever way you choose. And you have.”

Rhys couldn’t maintain any appearance of censure for his parents’ choices. He laughed, even though he shook his head while he did.

“Thank you for being the most embarrassing parents in all of Kent and for being the reason Geoffrey George’s mum wouldn’t let him be friends with me in year six,” he said, pulling his mum into another embrace.

“Those Georges were absolute pills,” Rhys’s mum growled. She hugged him tightly, then let him go. “The joke’s on them, though. Little Geoffrey turned out to be quite the queen, didn’t he.”

Rhys laughed. “Yes, in fact, he did.”

Geoffrey was not only the first boy he’d kissed and messed around with, he was the one who had given Raina the best make-up tips whenever they’d had lunch together in the canteen of their secondary school.

Rhys’s smile started to falter as grief seeped back in, like black paint spilled across his lovely, colorful floor. His mum must have felt it. Her arms tightened around him.

It was the bustle of two of his students arriving for class that shook him out of his impending gloom, though.

“I need to get ready for class,” he explained to his mum in a quiet voice.

“Yes, you do,” his mum said, letting go and glancing at the classroom. “This is the new live model class you’re teaching, right?”

“Yep,” Rhys said, his face preemptively flushing.

With the infusion of cash that had suddenly arrived at Hawthorne House, thanks to certain members of a centuries-old group in London called The Brotherhood, the arts center had expanded its catalog of offerings for the fall session. On the one hand, that involved hiring new artists and teachers to develop programs in disciplines that none of the members of the Hawthorne family were experienced in, like photography, woodworking, and watercolors. On the other, it meant that family members like Rhys could teach classes that they’d never dared to consider before.

“Where’s your model?” his mum asked, looking around eagerly, like someone had told her there were donuts to be had. “I hope you hired a looker.”

Rhys laughed. “Mum. Stop being so embarrassing.” He shook his head and walked his mum away from his nook and through the wide circle of easels that had been set up around a big, black-painted block in the center of the room. “And for the record, Gary Fisher offered to be the model for the class.”

His mum pinched her face and made a sour noise. “Gary Fisher? He’s ancient, darling. Nobody wants to look at, much less paint, those saggy old balls.”

Rhys laughed even louder. “Painting from life is not porn, Mum,” he argued. “In many ways, it’s better to start with imperfect bodies, because then the students aren’t distracted by being horny.”

His mum chuckled and slapped his arm again as they neared the classroom door.

She turned serious as they paused there, stepping out of the way of a few more arriving students.

“I am serious about trying something else if your tried and true skills are hard to find at the moment, dear,” she said, tenderly rubbing the spot she’d just slapped and gazing at him with maternal affection that made him feel warm and cared for. “Sometimes a change is as good as a rest, as they say.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Rhys said, bending down to kiss his mum’s cheek. “I’ll think about it. Now, why don’t you go bother Rebecca or something? I have to teach this lot to draw and paint saggy old man balls.”

His mum laughed loud enough to startle another student walking through the door, then lifted to her toes to kiss Rhys’s cheek before leaving.

Rhys smiled after her before turning back to his classroom. His family was the most unconventional collection of queer trainwrecks that he’d ever heard of, but he was damn lucky to have all of them.

Raina had always thought so, too.

It just wasn’t the same without her.

He sucked in a breath and pushed his grief away by striding back through the room to greet the new students. Raina would have wanted him to carry on.

When the sign-up form for the live model class had gone up over the summer, Rhys had been surprised at how quickly his class had filled. He liked to think it was the press that Hawthorne Community Arts Center had received after the donation from The Brotherhood and the small news piece that had sparked. It was encouraging to see the sudden interest in all things artistic. But Rhys wasn’t na?ve enough to think it didn’t have something to do with people thinking they’d get to look at beautiful, naked bodies as well. That was one of the chief reasons he was starting the class with Gary as the model.

Except Gary wasn’t there yet. Rhys checked his watch as more students showed up and took their place at one of the easels placed around the block. Five minutes to go, and no sign of Gary.

“Are you going to be our model, then?” Leslie, one of the retired ladies who, along with her friends, had taken every art class Hawthorne House had offered in the last few years asked, wiggling her eyebrows.

Rhys laughed. “Not a chance,” he said.

“I wouldn’t mind,” Violet, one of Leslie’s partners in crime, asked.

“I know you wouldn’t.” Rhys winked at her. “I’m just going to pop out to the office to see what’s holding our model up,” he addressed the room in general, then turned to go.

The majority of the class was made up of retirees, with a few carefully vetted college students taking classes at Hawthorne House for school credit scattered in with them. Rhys felt alright about leaving them alone, but the clock felt like it was ticking to get the class going and to make the students happy.

He headed straight to the office, but even before he reached what had once been Hawthorne House’s grand front hall and the incongruously modern office, bubbles of inconvenient giddiness started to fizz through him.

If there was one thing at Hawthorne House that he’d been avoiding as much as his grief over Raina, it was the arts center’s intrepid young admin, Early. Early had been a fixture at Hawthorne House for almost two years. They’d started out taking graphic design classes way back when they were still in sixth form, and when they dropped out of uni a year and a half after that, they’d taken a job in the office, working alongside Rebecca, who had been desperate for help by that point anyhow.

Early was already hard at work as Rhys stepped into the office, helping one of the new students complete their registration. They looked perfectly well put together as always, wearing a flowery button-down shirt that could probably be described as a blouse, though it didn’t quite qualify as feminine, and navy blue trousers. They had their long, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, also not quite feminine, but not strictly masculine either, and Rhys noted just a hint of eyeliner framing their expressive, blue eyes.

Rhys had a lot of feelings about Early, and none of them were convenient. Early was more than a decade younger than him, for one. Younger men might have been some guys’ thing, but Rhys had never thought he was one of those guys. Physically, Early was the type he usually went for, all lithe lines and grace. But Early was a family employee, and if there was one line Rhys absolutely did not want to cross, it was that one. It would be cruel to put Early in a position where they would feel like they had to quit their job if things became awkward, and Rhys knew that Early couldn’t afford to lose their job.

Rebecca suddenly cleared her throat beside him. “Can I help you?” she asked, too much of a sparkle in her eyes.

Rhys ignored her meddling implication. “Yeah, where is Gary?” he asked.

Rebecca’s sly look dropped. “Gary?” she asked.

“Gary Fisher,” Rhys said. “He’s supposed to be posing for my live model class today.”

“Oh, that Gary,” Rebecca said, her grin returning, but for an entirely different reason. “Chickened out, did he?”

“God, I hope not,” Rhys said, pushing a hand through his hair and feeling increasingly desperate. “I really don’t want to end up posing for this class myself.”

Rebecca laughed.

That drew Early’s attention just as the registering student stepped away from the desk.

“Hi, Rhys,” Early greeted him breathlessly, adoration in their eyes.

Rhys’s body immediately went hot and cold. He liked the way Early looked at him a little too much. The draw he felt toward the young person was intoxicating and dangerous.

“Morning, Early,” he said, telling himself to be professional and friendly, but not to encourage them.

He was pretty sure he failed at that.

“Don’t you have a class you’re supposed to be teaching right now?” Early asked, their expression turning all business as they glanced at the master class schedule on the wall behind the desk. That color-coded bit of genius had been Early’s idea.

“His model hasn’t shown up,” Rebecca said. “Have you heard anything this morning from Gary Fisher?”

“Oh, yes,” Early said, their voice both soft and masculine. They smiled up at Rhys as they said, “He called half an hour ago to say he isn’t going to be able to pose for the class after all.”

Dread pooled in Rhys’s gut. He should have known that Gary would back out at the last possible moment. Posing nude for a roomful of strangers sounded great, until you actually had to take your clothes off.

“Shit,” Rhys sighed, rubbing his face with both hands. “I was afraid of this. This is one of the new classes, too, and it’s full.”

“What are you going to do?” Rebecca asked. “You can’t just cancel the class when—” she glanced to the side, at the clock on the office wall, “—when it’s already started. We can’t go handing out refunds like that.”

“I know, I know,” Rhys said. He rested his weight on one leg and glanced out at the rush of students running to get to classes that had just started. “I suppose I could ask one of the students to pose. It’ll just be for three or four sessions.”

“I could do it,” Early said, standing from their office chair.

Every instinct in Rhys shouted for joy, for more reasons than one.

Then sense kicked in.

“I’m not sure that would be a good idea,” he said.

“I’d love to do it,” Early said, stepping proactively out from behind the desk. “I’ve always wanted to be a model for a drawing class.”

Rhys winced a little as he studied Early. He was in a pinch and no one else was offering, but it felt like a terrible idea for him to see Early nude when his emotions about them were going places they really shouldn’t.

Time was ticking.

“Seriously, I’d love to pose for you,” Early said, then immediately stammered, “I mean, for your class. The class is only an hour long, right?”

“Right,” Rhys said hesitantly.

Early glanced over their shoulder at Rebecca. “You can spare me for an hour, can’t you?”

“I can,” Rebecca said, her eyes dancing with mirth as she tried to keep a straight face.

“Then let me do it,” Early said. “Let me help you out.”

Rhys sighed and glanced at the clock. Class had started five minutes ago. He didn’t have any choice.

“Alright,” he said, heading out of the office and gesturing for Early to follow him. “I just hope you’re ready for a bunch of mischievous old ladies ogling your junk.”