Chapter One Rowan

Seeing another man balls deep in my girlfriend wasn't how I wanted to start my weekend.

Now, to be fair, my relationship with Mia had been on the rocks as of late. I'd been spending a lot of late nights taking meetings with executives instead of with her. When the new responsibilities came in from work, I promised her it would just be a temporary thing. However, that had been nearly eight months ago. Each night I stayed up later and after a while, she stopped waiting up for me. Canceled dinners and missed events piled up along with broken promises I knew I wouldn't be able to keep. Not to mention we hadn't actually fucked in probably four months.

So, when I found out she was cheating, I wasn't completely caught off guard. But I was still upset.

I'd taken that promotion on her advice. We'd been together for a couple of years and we knew we wanted to get married someday, and she wanted to start a family. But that meant finding something better than a junky little two-bedroom apartment on the bad side of town. The only way out was with money, and her teaching salary wasn't going to get bigger anytime soon. So, after a long chat, I applied for a higher position. To my surprise, I got it. But nearly the moment I did, I had to basically say goodbye to my personal life.

I was willing to sacrifice it, though. The new position meant I was able to put away quite a bit of money for a down payment on a house. In fact, we'd scheduled a realtor to go look at a few next week.

But some strangers" balls slapping against her ass put a damper on those plans.

Mia begged me to stay, trying to win my forgiveness by telling me it meant nothing. She was just lonely. I didn't argue, and I didn't scream. Hell, I couldn't feel anything but this overwhelming numbness threatening to consume me. And when I didn't respond to her, she freaked out and stormed out of the apartment. I spent the next thirty minutes gathering up my things and took them down to my SUV. The apartment was in her name, and we weren't married. So I just left.

I didn't think twice about leaving all the furniture or appliances I'd bought. All I knew was that I needed to get out of there as fast as possible.

That's when I called my best friend, Adam, and asked if I could crash at his place. And while he said he didn't have room for me thanks to his new boyfriend, he did have a place I could stay out on Lake Michigan. It turned out he'd inherited a small lake cabin from his late uncle and he wasn't planning on using it for the rest of the summer. It was mine as long as I needed to stay there.

And that's why I was driving down the scenic route through bum-fuck Michigan. Trees flashed by on my left side while the lakeshore flew by on my right. His cabin was south of Ludington, but not by much. It was just far enough out of town to avoid having constant traffic, but close enough that there was a public beach within walking distance.

I looked up at the brown park sign that caught my attention.

Hardwood Beach, 3 miles

I scoffed, half a laugh blowing through my lips. Hardwood Beach? Really? Might as well call the damn place Boner Beach. Immediately my mind was filled with images of old naked men walking around the beach sporting erections with little tufts of gray hair above them. Then again, I was fairly sure nude beaches were not a thing in Michigan. At least not legally. Not that it ever stopped people. And, judging by the name, it sounded like a gay beach, anyway. That's probably why Adam liked it so much.

The thought almost made me write it off. But then something else deep inside me stirred, something I hadn't really thought about since college.

Men.

It was a complete secret, of course. I'd never told anyone about my wandering thoughts concerning a few certain guys. There were the normal ones, like celebrities, that were just too hot to be turned down by anyone, regardless of gender. But I never told anyone about the hockey guy I roomed with sophomore year who liked to walk around nearly naked all the time. Or how he liked to play video games in just his boxers. Or how, that one time, I noticed the head of his cock poking out of the front hole in his underwear, and I didn't say anything because I wanted to look longer and fantasize about how it might feel in my mouth…

That whole year was a strange one for me. There was a lot of self-loathing and repressing that happened during that year. But when I returned the following year to a different roommate, those feelings didn't persist. I wrote it off as simple confusion due to my roommate being practically naked all the time and young adult hormones. Women were my thing, and that's just the way I was.

And thankfully, those thoughts were easy to brush away again. The last thing I wanted was to get involved with anything complicated. And shifting the entire framework of my sexuality was complicated. I wanted to avoid that at all costs.

However, I also wanted to avoid women as well. The whole ordeal with Mia left a bad taste in my mouth, and I didn't want to be involved with anyone ever again, as far as I was concerned.

I truly thought I loved Mia. But the moment I saw her in bed with that stranger, something inside me snapped. Warmth turned to ice and walls went up around my heart immediately, if only to stop it from shattering into a thousand pieces. Everything I'd worked so hard for was for her, to give her the kind of life she so desperately wanted. And I felt more betrayed than I ever had in my life.

So, no. I wouldn't let anyone get close to me again. Not like that. Being single and free was safe. At least then nobody would have the power to hurt me like that ever again.

I was pulled from my thoughts when my phone chimed and said, "Turn right in five hundred feet."

I'd been so lost in my own downward spiral that I didn't realize I'd gotten so close to the cabin. Taking my foot off the gas, I slowed the SUV and looked for the cabin. I was immediately drawn to a large rainbow flag hanging high off a tree near the edge of one of the driveways. I didn't even look down at my phone, knowing that had to be Adam's cabin.

Pulling the car up the short driveway, I parked in front of a small single-stall garage attached to an equally small cabin. The place was painted a dusty blue and the front entrance had a small overhang made from honey-colored cedar. It didn't look like much from where I was sitting, but the place had fiber internet, meaning I could work remotely while I was there. Not to mention it was only a ten-minute drive to town where I could get anything I needed. And, from the looks of it, the neighbors weren't in their cabins right now either.

I had the entire place to myself.

I got out of the car, stretched, and headed around the side of the garage. There, I found a small but suggestive gnome statue tucked into the landscaping. I picked him up, flipped him over, and pulled a little handle on his butt, only for it to pop open and a key to fall into my hand.

"You're such a weirdo, Adam," I muttered to myself, pushing the gnome"s butt closed and placing it back in the wood chips.

Letting myself in through the front door, I made a quick tour of the cabin. It wasn't a mansion or anything luxurious, but it was functional and clean. It was a small two-bedroom with a single bathroom and a kitchen straight out of the eighties. The appliances were old, and the wood paneling on the wall made the place look extremely out of date, but everything worked. Once I flipped the router on, I had all the internet I could ever want and more.

But the real surprise came when I glanced out the sliding glass door at the back of the house.

With my jaw hanging loose, I pushed the doors open and stepped out onto a massive cedar porch that was easily bigger than the entire house and garage combined. There was patio furniture and a grill already set up and ready for use. On the far end was a long set of stairs going all the way down to the water. But it was the view that stopped me dead in my tracks.

The trees and yard fell away, leaving me with an incredible waterscape stretching across the entire horizon. White sand glared in the sun, leading into cerulean water that darkened as it stretched to the edge of the world. Beyond that was nothing but blue sky with a few puffy white clouds.

The entire scene took my breath away. I'd been to the lake as a kid, of course. But for the past decade or so, I'd been too busy with school, college, and then a job to make the trip back. After all that time, I'd forgotten what I was missing. To think I'd lived my entire life only a couple hours from something so majestic, and I never went to see it. Somehow, that felt like a crime.

But just as quickly as those feelings came, they were quickly washed away as I thought about Mia.

She always wanted me to take her to the lake.

With a deep sigh, I turned around and headed back inside. I didn't have time to waste sitting around and staring at the scenery. The cabin needed groceries, and I still had reports to get done before Monday. I might've been staying in a stunning location, but that didn't mean I could slack off.

I had an entire life to rebuild. One that was just for me and didn't include anyone else.

And I just wanted to be alone.