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Keep Reading for an Excerpt from

Torch Songs ,

Book 4 in the Bonfires Series

by Amy Lane.

Long Long Time….

"OH MY god," Roberta practically squealed. "Really? You want me to go as your plus-one?"

Guthrie Arlo Woodson tried to keep the melancholy out of his smile and mostly succeeded. "Yep, darlin'. The invite said I could bring someone, and I choose you!"

Roberta Querling sat across from him at the Washoe House, on the bar side, as the joint closed down, and now she lowered her voice even below the closing-time babble and murmured, "They, uh, know I'm just a friend, right?"

Guthrie worked hard to keep his laugh from being bitter. "Babydoll," he drawled, "these guys knew I was gay before I did." He shuddered. "I kept saying I was bi, and then I'd go home with a pretty girl and have a truly shitty time."

Roberta groaned. "I don't even want to know," she said—and she was right. There were things a man did to fake an orgasm that were a lie for the woman and not fantastic for a man's self-esteem. The taint of those days gave Guthrie a case of the cringes even two years after he came out to himself completely.

"And I don't want to tell you," he said, managing to make it roguish instead of ashamed, "but this is a bit of short notice. I appreciate it."

"What about the hotel room?" she asked. "Should we go halfsies?"

He shook his head and laughed a little. "No. Uhm, Seth is renting two houses next to each other, side by side. I told you he and Kelly are adopting Kelly's niece and nephew, right?"

She nodded, clearly as enthralled now as she had been two years ago when they'd auditioned for each other to form their little dive-bar band. Roberta was a violinist—and a good one—and she had better-paying gigs during the week, but she'd been a fan of rock and pop music her entire life. Since that's what Guthrie had been born playing, pretty much, she'd been happy to help him reassemble a band that had been torn apart by time and, well, his father's bigotry, so he could continue to do his favorite thing in the world.

There hadn't been a time in their acquaintance that Roberta hadn't appeared starstruck by Guthrie's friendship with Seth Arnold.

Of course, Seth Arnold was literally an international superstar, a young phenom who had taken the music world by storm in his first years in the conservatory by releasing a series of innovative videos featuring him performing multiple instruments and his own compositions or arrangements. Guthrie was pretty sure that now Seth had the hang of monetizing his channel (or more likely somebody had stepped in and started doing it for him and was being generously paid for their time), he was making roughly twice what Guthrie made in his day job just from YouTube, but that wasn't the sort of thing Seth paid attention to.

Guthrie had known Seth for six years, four of them playing together in Guthrie's dad's little honky-tonk band, Fiddler and the Crabs—with Seth as the Fiddler. During that time, Guthrie had learned Seth had two things that really caught his attention. One was music, and the other was his family, starring the love of his life, the boy he'd worshipped in high school and on through adulthood, Kelly Cruz. Kelly wasn't the only member of the family; Seth's dad was in his sights, Kelly's mom and sisters, and Kelly's late brother's two children, both of them suffering the effects of a mother who used narcotics during her pregnancy.

Seth adored the children like his own. Watching him play with them over Zoom calls was one of the things that gave Guthrie hope for the world, and he couldn't imagine a world in which his Fiddler didn't get a happy ending with Kelly as his husband and the two children living with them, cared for and beloved, in their happy home.

So hearing that Seth was renting two houses for his wedding in Monterey during the frigid-cold off-season didn't surprise Guthrie in the least. Being invited—and invited to bring a date—to stay in one of the houses and to attend the wedding and play with the family for a week— that was one of the proudest things in Guthrie's life.

What wasn't to be proud of by maintaining that friendship? Seth was a violin virtuoso who had brought the house down in Italy and New York and probably had a thousand other venues where he'd be invited as a soloist, and once he and Kelly were married and the adoption finalized, Seth would be bringing his husband and their children with him.

Guthrie loved that Roberta had a celebrity crush on his old friend, who had subsidized Kelly's struggling family with his income from Guthrie's father's band.

What he didn't love so much was that his feelings for Seth went way beyond crush, and he'd had them for six long goddamned years.

"So," Roberta said now, completely oblivious to the turmoil in Guthrie's heart, "we get to stay with the family in one of the houses?"

Guthrie shrugged. "Fiddler—erm, Seth and I go way back," he said. "He and Kelly had to overcome a lot of obstacles to have this moment in the sun. I'm proud that he invited me. But yeah. We're in with the family."

Roberta was a pretty young woman with long, straight brown hair that she pulled back from a long oval of a face with a band at her nape. She was a few years younger than Guthrie, right out of school, and still had some of the spots and the awkwardness that went with spending all her attention on her studies and very little on her fellow students. In a way she reminded Guthrie quite a bit of Seth, but Roberta had never had to hide in her own mind like Seth had. She still had some brain power left to observe other humans.

"You must be really good friends," she said softly, "for him to invite you like family."

Guthrie swallowed and looked out into the thinning crowd. He, Roberta, and two of her friends from her own conservatory/music days all performed at Washoe House three nights a week. They spent two other nights at a slightly more upscale place closer to San Francisco, and another night practicing, because they liked to play. During the day, Neil Chase, Owen Cuthbert, and Roberta all worked recording and teaching gigs in San Francisco, commuting from San Rafael, where Guthrie kept a small apartment as well. Playing with The Crabs was their happy place. It was fun music, with a lively, enthusiastic crowd, and while Neil, Owen, and Roberta were all top-notch musicians who could probably do way better, it was nice, Guthrie thought, for the three of them to play with an organization that didn't have reviews posted in the national press or frothing-at-the-mouth conductors who went on power trips designed to deconstruct even the strongest psyche.

Guthrie was under no illusions that The Crabs wasn't a step down for all three of them, just as he knew that for himself, it was the only thing that gave meaning to his life.

He hated to burden Roberta with the stupid, painful details of that life—but she was taking a week off from playing, practicing, and spending time with her family to be his plus-one so he didn't have to go in alone, and he thought maybe… just maybe… he could let her in a fraction.

But apparently she'd already seen a crack and shined her own light into it.

"Oh," she said softly.

"Oh what?" he asked, but he was watching Owen and Neil break down the instruments. The drum set was provided by the venue, thank God, because hauling around his own set was a colossal pain in the ass. He knew because he had to provide it for Scorpio, their other steady gig.

Her hand on his sleeve called him back to her, but he went reluctantly.

"Oh. You were in love with him," she said, like she knew for certain.

Well, it was a certain thing. "I was," he said, hoping the little lie would go unnoticed.

"Oh, Guthrie," she said, holding her hand to her mouth, her eyes watering. "No."

Apparently not. "Look," he said, touching her hand in return. "He knows. He's known since the beginning. For that matter, so has Kelly. They… they hung with me because I was a friend—and darlin', when I say friend, I mean friend . You can't get any better loyalty than Seth Arnold and Kelly Cruz. Don't ever doubt it. I do not want to repay that friendship by mooncalfing all over Seth during his wedding. He invited me—Kelly invited me—and I need to respect that means they both love me, and I am going to go hang out with their family and have the time of my life. Please come with me and make sure nobody gets hurt while I do that, okay?"

"Oh, Guthrie," she said again. "Nobody but you."

His own eyes burned. "And only you can know that," he said earnestly. "Please."

She squeezed his fingers and gave a watery smile. "Think he'll play for us?"

Guthrie laughed. "The boy plays like he breathes. Yeah. I think he will."

"Totally worth it," she said.

He was forced to agree.

AND DURING the ceremony, when Seth stood on a promontory at Pebble Beach, overlooking a thunderous winter ocean, playing a composition he'd written for his beloved and nobody else, Guthrie still agreed.

When Seth was done—and his best friend, Amara, had taken his violin and put it tenderly in a slightly heated case while Seth turned to Kelly to say his vows, Guthrie knew his face wasn't the only one freezing with brine.

Roberta clung to his arm and damn near sobbed, so he got to comfort her, and that was nice. Gay or not gay, it did make him feel a little more powerful to be able to comfort a pretty girl.

The vows were short, and equal parts foolishness and mooncalfing, as Seth would have said. And they were perfect. Guthrie and Roberta had played their share of weddings, but this one…. Guthrie was just as glad Seth provided the music here, because anything either one of them could have done would have made them both seem underaccomplished in comparison.

And that wasn't Seth's intention. That's what made him the boy Guthrie couldn't get over. Seth had written and performed that composition to make Kelly smile at him. Kelly, who was a year younger than Seth, was a short, compact boy with coarse black hair he pulled back from his face in a half-tail for the occasion, and wide, almost guileless brown eyes that practically sparkled with mischief and joy. He stared at his new husband with a fond look that said he knew he was stupid with love but didn't care.

For his part, Seth, who was tall and who never had managed the knack of wearing clothes that fit, had trimmed his blond corkscrew curls tight to his head and returned Kelly's expression of profound stupid love with green eyes that were only ever focused when he was looking at Kelly. Those eyes in Seth's pale brown face—his mother had been Black and his father was once a blond, blue-eyed high school basketball player—were striking enough, but the faraway expression in them made him almost otherworldly in his beauty.

The fact that Guthrie knew that the two of them had overcome more tragedy than people twice their age in order to stand on this ice-fucking-cold romantic cliff and stare hopefully into each other's eyes made their love even harder to resent.

Guthrie had no choice but to be happy and proud for the two of them. To love them like the small gathering of family and friends around him.

When Amara's husband, Vince, was done with the short ceremony, they turned toward their parents, Seth to his father and Kelly to his mother, who both held out their arms. Seth's father deposited an almost pitifully thin little girl into Seth's arms. She clung to his neck and laughed excitedly, talking a mile a minute about cold and wind and pretty coats and "Set'" and "her music." Kelly took a limp, placid little boy, bundled in a warm winter-blanket sleeper. Even from fifteen feet away, Guthrie could see the baby's arms weren't as active as most children's would be at eight months, and Guthrie's throat tightened. Kelly gazed down at this baby with affection and love. He and Seth were twenty-five and twenty-four, and they were embarking on their new life together with two children with special needs—and Guthrie could only gaze at them as they posed for a joyous, unself-conscious picture, and think about what a happy family they made.

"I present to you," Vince said, his handsome, boyish face wreathed in smiles, "the Arnold-Cruz family. They've already kissed, so now we all get to hug them and then bundle up and go back to the houses for a hot drink and some good food."

To general laughter, Guthrie jostled up with the rest of the family to kiss the babies and hug the men and greet Vince and Amara, who had arrived that morning along with Guthrie and Roberta and he hadn't had a chance to hug them yet.

The five of them used to hang out in Seth's dorms and watch movies and eat pizza and talk about their lives together. It was damned good to see them.

He expected Seth and Kelly to be distracted and generally high with happiness by the time they got to him, but instead Seth focused on him, and Kelly gave him a super tight one-armed hug while the baby drooled on his good suit.

"You came!" Seth said happily. "I'm so glad you came. We didn't give you much time."

"And miss an opportunity to freeze my balls off?" Guthrie asked, eliciting warm laughter from both men. "How could I?"

"Speaking of which," Amara murmured, coming up between them and holding her arms out imperiously for the placid baby, "let's load into the cars and go back to the houses. You guys, I can't wait to catch up." She kissed Guthrie on the cheek and gave Roberta a smile. "And you are…."

"His totally platonic plus-one," Roberta said cheerily. "He didn't want to make the drive alone."

"Roberta plays fiddle in The Crabs," he told Seth, who cackled with laughter.

"You kept the band name!" he said, like this made him unutterably happy. "I'm so glad! Are your dad and Uncle Jock—"

Guthrie cut him off with a quick shake of his head. "Naw. Just me and some of Roberta's conservatory friends. We do five nights a week—keeps me out of trouble and lets me hold down the day job without any corporate fatalities."

Seth blew out a breath. "You're too good to have a day job," he said seriously, which, Guthrie admitted, could be yet another reason he loved the guy. Then right on the heels of the one thing came another. "You brought your guitar, right? You're gonna play for us tonight? 'Cause I'm saying, I've got some prime musicians here—Amara, Vince, you—" He grinned at Roberta. "And you, probably, cause you wouldn't play with Guthrie if you sucked!"

Roberta grinned, obviously enchanted. "I'm not bad," she said primly.

"Good." Seth nodded, taking her at her word. "You guys, me and Kelly are going to talk to all the people, and we're gonna dance and we're gonna eat and we're gonna have us a helluva party." He sobered. "I got us a house all lined up, and we're moving at the end of January. I'm gonna miss the hell out of everybody until we get to visit again, so you gotta make it good."

Guthrie nodded, a solemn oath, and held out his hand for Seth to shake. "I promise upon my honor," he said soberly.

"God, you're fun," Seth told him, shaking his hand.

They all broke up then to load into cars and minivans and rental mobiles—Guthrie watched as Kelly chivvied Seth into the passenger seat of an obviously new SUV after Seth had put the kids in the back, and laughed.

"What?" Roberta asked after they'd climbed into the cab of his ancient pickup truck, a vehicle so ugly Guthrie had almost expected to be stopped when they'd paid the fee for the lot at the state park where the wedding had been held. Across the street a few die-hard duffers were struggling through the bitter wind to capitalize on the famed golf-course's available tee times, but Seth and Kelly had managed to reserve a spit of sidewalk with a fenced-in promontory over a shoal of storm-tossed rocks. Guthrie had to admit, the scenery was right out of a Bront? movie. Who wouldn't be moved to confess undying love when right below their feet was proof of the mutability of life and the ever-present threat of mortality?

"Nothing," Guthrie said, slamming his door hard to make sure it shut. He cranked up the heater after he hit the ignition, because Roberta had worn a dress and her knees under her black tights were practically blue. "Just that he's traveled the world, he's overcome hardships, he's married the man of his dreams and is adopting two precious children, and that boy still hasn't learned how to drive."

Roberta let out a half laugh, because in California, that was practically heresy. "Why not? Does he have some sort of disability?"

Guthrie shrugged his shoulders. "Let's say the opportunity didn't present itself when he was younger, and our Fiddler is highly distractible. He's a sweet kid, but practicality ain't his strong suit."

"And I got to hear him play at his own wedding." Roberta gave a happy shiver. "And the week isn't over yet. Guthrie, I know you're probably eating your heart out, but I have to say thank you again, for being the most awesome friend."

"You know what?" Guthrie said, steering the truck around the 17 Mile Drive, careful not to go too fast around the curves. The ancient Chevy pickup was not exactly known for hugging the road.

"What?" she asked, huddling deeper into her wool coat and lush wool scarf.

"I may not actually be eating my heart out." He felt the words as he said them, a sort of letting go, a freedom from the burden of heartache that had plagued him for so long.

"Really?" she asked, sounding sort of excited.

"Yeah, darlin'. I… I mean, I love them both. I love Amara and Vince, and given how absolutely adorable Kelly's sisters were and how kind his parents seem to be, I could love them all too. But… but that's not the same as being in love, you know?"

"Yeah," she said carefully. "I know."

"Well maybe, after this, I can just love them. I don't have to worry about being in love with Seth. That would be load off my heart, you think?"

Roberta nodded. "Yeah," she said softly. "But you know what would put the cherry on the being-free sundae, don't you?"

He grimaced. "Can't we be happy with my heartfelt revelation right now?"

"Honey, I'm not going to be happy until you get laid."

WELL, IT didn't happen that long, long weekend—but Guthrie wasn't looking for that. Instead, all the things Seth had promised happened. People ate together, talked together, reminisced together. The musicians played together, and the friends and family danced together.

They even went to the aquarium together and on short, brine-tossed boat rides that made Guthrie feel like singing sea shanties and playing the theme from Jaws .

As far as he and Roberta were concerned, it was a sweet, happy holiday with people they came to regard as family by the time it was over.

On the last night—New Year's Eve—most everybody went to bed after the ball dropped, but the original core of movie-watchers from Seth's old school—Vince, Amara, Kelly, Seth, and Guthrie—all stayed up late, lounging in the front room in front of a gas-powered fireplace, drinking wine. The wine thing was new for Seth, and he only drank a little, but apparently Amara had been trying to teach him how to order and accept a glass of wine in a restaurant so it wasn't a production.

"Even if you hate it," she said soberly, "you're only sipping it anyway, so nobody questions if you don't finish the glass."

"Just don't order red," Seth said seriously. "Headaches. Oh my God."

Kelly snorted. "Hate to tell you all, but I've actually been clubbing . I order shots. I'm fine."

Seth grunted. "I tried once—it was in front of my conductor in Italy. He knocked it back, I tried to do the same, and I coughed so hard I threw up all over us both. It's a good thing we were in his kitchen. God."

"Which is why he came to me when we moved to New York," Amara said. Seth had been all over the world in the last four years, while Kelly had been forced to stay home to help take care of his family, which Seth had subsidized with his music. Guthrie could tell the stories were their way of making up for lost time, but they were fun nonetheless.

"Yeah," Vince said. "I was with a dorm of three guys, and they were like, ‘pub crawl!' So I learned to drink beer. I can tell you all about beer." He shuddered. "So much."

"Like, draft or bottled?" Guthrie asked, because those were the kind of bars he played at, but Vince—a beautiful native Hawai'ian man with skin a pale teak color and brown, fathomless eyes—shook his head.

"No, brother. I wish. This is, like, thirty taps in a place, and you go in and get a ten-shot flight and taste all these beers, and you have to know things. Like, ‘Hmm, taste of citrus with a hint of plum and coffee!'"

Guthrie stared at him in horror. "Who?" he demanded. "Who? Who does this to beer?"

"Fuckin' heathens," Vince said, and he clinked his Sam Adams bottle with Guthrie, who had enjoyed it as an exotic taste when apparently it was like Coors to the people Vince hung out with.

Everyone else laughed, and the conversation went on. At its end, Seth and Amara had crashed next to each other, head on each other's shoulders, because they'd been friends from high school as well, and Vince curled up on the end of the same couch, his head in Amara's lush lap.

Guthrie smiled at the three of them as he and Kelly polished off the last two beers.

"How you doin', Guthrie?" Kelly asked. His eyes were a little glazed, but his speech wasn't slurred, and Guthrie had the feeling that Kelly was the one who could drink them all under the table.

"Fine," he said. He'd been nursing his alcohol, which was a trick you picked up when you'd been playing in dive bars since you were way underage. It was either that or his dad's route, which was full-blown alcoholism, and Guthrie wasn't a fan.

"Mm?" Kelly's eyes had sharpened, and Guthrie was forced to shrug.

"I've got a band right now," he said. It was his one good thing—he knew that.

"What about a man right now?" Kelly asked bluntly. "God, Guthrie. I know you had it bad for Seth. I couldn't even blame you. But neither of us want you to live alone forever because you"—his voice dropped—"fell in love with a guy you couldn't have. That's… that's not fair. You're a good guy, Guthrie. We want you to have more than a band for a minute."

Guthrie glanced away. Kelly was more right than he knew. Kids like Roberta, Owen, and Neil were too good to stay in The Crabs for long. They had places to go, real performances, spots in orchestras to achieve.

"What do you want me to say?" he asked finally, knowing there wasn't enough alcohol in the world to soothe over this rawness inside. "I'm…. Kelly, you know what I am. If… if your boy hadn't come wandering into that dive bar, looking for a job, I could have lied to myself my entire life. I could have slept with girls and told myself I wasn't the type to fall in love. I could have gotten drunk every night with my dad and Uncle Jock, and they could have yelled at me to get my shit together, and I would have known they were right, but I wouldn't have had any way, anywhere to reach higher. Your guy comes along and suddenly I'm, like, ‘Hey, I can learn piano and get better at guitar! I can go to school! I can get a job with health and dental!'"

"You can fall in love with a guy, and it can last forever," Kelly said. "Man, I've been to school. I got the papers behind my name. Just like you, this wasn't a common thing in my family. And I can tell you right now, it's not the job or the health and dental—it's the guy you love forever and ever. That's the difference in your life. That's what makes it special."

Guthrie tried for condescension. "Maybe, sweetcheeks, I'm not special enough to get a special guy."

Kelly didn't blink. He simply stared at Guthrie until he shifted uncomfortably.

"What?" Guthrie finally asked.

"We love you, asshole. Seth worries about you. We know how to have friends from far away—you and me never stopped contact, not even when he was all over the damned planet. I want to hear there's a guy in your life. And don't tell me they don't fall in your lap. Keep your heart open for us, Guthrie. Learn to let someone in."

Guthrie swallowed, beaten and done. His eyes were burning, and it was all he could do not to sob his heart out on the shoulder of the guy married to the guy Guthrie couldn't seem to get over.

"It's hard," he admitted gruffly. "I… I know what it feels like now, when it's real. In your heart. Just like you two—I can't settle for anything smaller or dumber now."

"That's real good," Kelly said, nodding. "But don't let it hold you back. A kiss won't kill you, buddy. It's the way to see if there's sunshine in the corners."

Guthrie could only nod. He didn't remember much more about that night. They all fell asleep in the front room in front of the fire, bundled in blankets. Kelly took a recliner, and Guthrie lay in front of the couch, and when it was time to get up and leave in the morning, the five of them hugged and cried a little, because they were all old enough now to know times like that didn't come as often as they should.

But he kept Kelly's words in his heart: A kiss won't kill you, buddy. It's the way to see if there's sunshine in the corners.

He knew what to look for now. He'd look for sunshine.