The Story of Us Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Legal Page

  Book Description

  Trademark Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  Read more like this

  More exciting books!

  About the Author

  THE STORY OF US

  LOGAN MEREDITH

  The Story of Us

  ISBN # 978-1-78651-836-1

  ©Copyright Logan Meredith 2019

  Cover Art by Cherith Vaughan ©Copyright September 2019

  Interior text design by Claire Siemaszkiewicz

  Pride Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Pride Publishing.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Pride Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2019 by Pride Publishing, United Kingdom.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorised copies.

  Pride Publishing is an imprint of Totally Entwined Group Limited.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book”.

  Sometimes getting everything you’re dreaming of means letting go of what you think you want.

  There is nothing special about Kyle McMillan. The forty-year-old construction manager for a high-end home builder is pursuing a lifelong goal of obtaining a college degree when his average, uneventful life literally collides with Lucas Cass. When Lucas opens the door for a spontaneous sexual encounter, Kyle walks through it. Soon, the hottest, most instinctive thing Kyle has ever done turns upside-down. Lucas isn’t only out of Kyle’s league and seventeen years younger, but he’s also a gay porn star.

  Lucas is so used to being reduced to a single body part that he’s not sure how to react to Kyle’s interest then rejection. He loves what he does and the company he works for, but Kyle is exactly what he’s always wanted. He’s not walking away without taking another shot. After finding themselves in the same summer class, the two put off the discussion of Lucas’ porn career and agree to date casually. Lucas is determined to show Kyle how fun kinky sex is and how amazing they can be together.

  When the road gets rocky, Kyle must finally deal with Lucas’ job and his own sexual hang-ups or risk hitting a dead end. But if they can negotiate a compromise, they might just end up someplace extraordinary.

  Trademark Acknowledgements

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Queer As Folk: Russell T. Davies, Red Production Company

  Texas Instruments: Texas Instruments Incorporated

  Scooby-Doo: Hanna-Barbera Productions

  iPhone: Cisco Technology Inc.

  Advil: Wyeth LLC

  M&Ms: Mars Incorporated

  PlayStation: Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC

  Blank Space: Taylor Swift

  XM: Sirius XM Radio Inc.

  iTunes: Apple Inc.

  Single Ladies: Christopher ‘Tricky’ Stewart; Terius ‘The-Dream’ Nash; Thaddis Harrell, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter

  Will and Grace: Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution, NBCUniversal Television Distribution

  PornHub: Licensing IP International S.AR.L LLC

  Chaturbate: Multi Media LLC, Chaturbate.com

  Onlyfans: Fenix International Limited, dba Onlyfans Corporation England

  Twitter: Twitter Inc.

  Pittsburgh Steelers: Pittsburgh Steelers Sports Inc.

  Trophy Boy: Andrew Christian

  Starbucks: Starbucks Coffee Company Corporation

  Fifty Shades of Grey: E.L. James

  Facebook: Facebook Inc.

  Instagram: Instagram LLC

  Google: Google Inc.

  Slinky: POOF-Slinky LLC

  Mustang: Ford Motor Company Corporation

  Spotify: Spotify AB Corporation

  iPad: AVG Group LLC

  Band-Aid: Johnson and Johnson Corporation

  Gold’s Gym: Gold’s Gym Licensing LLC

  Visine: : Pfizer LLC

  Bellagio: Mirage Resorts LLC

  Palazzo: Las Vegas Sands Corporation

  Kama Sutra: Vātsyāyana

  Pinterest: Pinterest Inc.

  YouTube: Google Inc.

  Snapchat: Snap Inc.

  Vans: Vans Inc.

  Botox: Allergan Inc.

  Back to the Future: Universal Pictures

  Ocean’s Eleven: Warner Bros.

  Boy Scouts: Boy Scouts of America Corporation

  GQ: Gentlemen’s Quarterly, Conde Naste

  Coke: Coca-Cola Company

  Grindr: Grindr LLC

  Uber: Uber Technologies Inc.

  Look What You Made Me Do: Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff, Fred and Richard Fairbrass, Rob Manzoli

  Jacuzzi: Jacuzzi Inc.

  DisneyWorld: Disney Enterprises Inc.

  Viagra: Pfizer Inc.

  Lush: Lushusa.com

  ESPN: Disney Enterprises Inc.

  Hoover: Techtonic Floor Care Technology Limited

  McCarran Airport: Clark County, Nevada

  Venetian: Las Vegas Sands Corporation

  Sixteen Candles: Universal Pictures

  Casablanca: Warner Bros. Pictures

  Oscar: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Corporation

  Rain Man: MGM/UA Communications Company

  Super Glue: Innovative Security Products Inc.

  Mine: Taylor Swift

  ExerSaucer: Evenflow Company Inc.

  Styrofoam: The Dow Chemical Company Corporation

  Barbie: Mattel Inc.

  Jeep: FCA US LLC

  Introduction

  This is the love story of two men. One of these men—that’s me—is an ordinary part-time college student. And when I say ordinary, I mean utterly normal. So, let me dispel any misconceptions you may have. I am not straight. I didn’t start college thinking I was straight, meet a hot roommate and discover I’m into dicks, nor did I seduce my straight roommate. I don’t even live on campus. So, I didn’t go from acknowledging I might enjoy dick to power bottoming for some well-endowed jock in a span of three weeks. There’s nothin
g wrong with those stories. They’re just not ours.

  I became a—gulp!—forty-something last December. Around puberty, my gay gene activated and I couldn’t ignore it, although I tried. Like most gay men, my coming-out story was a process. I lost friends…but nobody close. Most of my family, my parents included, recognized and accepted my attraction to men. So, I didn’t put off college because an ultra-conservative, homophobic mother disowned me and neither was I cut off by a wealthy father. I delayed college because I couldn’t afford it and neither could my parents. Like most of my peers, I found a job after graduation and learned a trade—construction, in my case. Now I’m a manager for a custom home builder in Central California.

  Perhaps you’re saying to yourself, ‘Aha—a blue-collar gay man.’ This must be the story of a hot, hunky construction worker who rocks my world and fucks me while I operate power tools. Don’t get me wrong, I would have fucked a sexy, hunky construction worker if they’d offered. Although not on a job site because I don’t relish the prospect of being unemployed and I’ve never been so turned on that I couldn’t avoid taking my dick out around machines that might sever it from my body. I’m sure other gay construction workers exist, but the twenty men I work with are all as straight as they come. So, this will not be the story of me trying to resist an inked-up jock who works for me.

  I’m out with the guys I work with. Not in a ‘Hi, my name’s Kyle and I’m gay’ sort of way. But I don’t do pronoun gymnastics when describing my most recent weekend blind date disaster. Trust me. They all know what team I bat for. While this doesn’t get me invited to many weekend barbecues, it doesn’t get me beaten up either. To lay it all on the line… I won’t be raped, outted, discriminated against, extorted, blackmailed or otherwise emotionally damaged in this story and neither will the other man.

  How can this be, you wonder? How can an average, forty-year-old construction manager tell a romantic story without drawing on any of these clichés and keep it interesting? You may ask, “Kyle, will there be sex?” Of course. Just not the unlubed, drill-me-hard-with-your-ten-inch-dick anal sex that is so prevalent in gay erotica. Gay men don’t enjoy anal sex without lube. Well, I should say, this gay man doesn’t, and none of the fifteen—give or take a few—men I’ve had sex with over the years did. Despite what you might have seen on Queer As Folk, we don’t carry around packets of lube everywhere we go. So, I’ll concede that I’m no Brian Kinney—promiscuous uber-top with an anaconda between my legs, ready to fuck whenever and wherever the mood strikes.

  So, you’re probably wondering why should you read this story? It sounds like a boring gay romance. That’s fair. After all, I’ve only told you everything this story is not. I should say what happened and let you make up your own mind.

  This is the story of how I, Kyle McMillan, came to meet, date and subsequently fall in love with Lucas Cass. You already know I’m a forty-year-old, blue-collar, part-time student and a versatile gay man of average intelligence, sexual experience, dick size and financial means. So perhaps it would be a good time to mention that Lucas is better known as Tommy Bruiser. Yep, that’s right. My boyfriend is a gay porn star.

  Got your attention now, didn’t I?

  Chapter One

  Years before

  I never stood a chance. All the ingredients for a true romantic comedy meet-cute were present and accounted for. Seriously. If Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks themselves had been in the library during our encounter, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Let me paint the picture.

  Rainy spring day… Check.

  Accidental collision of two handsome strangers… Check.

  Sexual tension… Double check.

  What started as a slight drizzle strengthened into a wallop of a springtime shower midway from the parking lot into the building. I had two hours between the end of my workday and my algebra midterm. My faded navy-blue sweatshirt covered my head while I powered through the pounding horizontal rain.

  A revolving door marked the entrance to the main library at Simmons University. Midterms had packed the two-story building and a steady stream of students flowed in and out, keeping up a constant whirl-whishing-click sound I used to time my entrance into an open wedge. Lucas approached from the opposite direction. I kept pace, entering at the precise moment the opening became available—only so did Lucas and his oversized umbrella.

  Two full-grown men both with loaded backpacks proved too much for the small space and the whirling of the door came to an abrupt halt with the stem of Lucas’ umbrella in his hand and the opened top still outside. The student in the other wedge hit the glass in front of her with a hard whack, and since I had entered our side before Lucas, I did the same. I couldn’t turn around. We were squeezed in tight. Between the hysterics behind me and the laughter from the students inside the library, I determined what had happened. I gathered we were a comical sight.

  “Fuck, my umbrella is stuck,” Lucas said, laughing too hard to do much about it. I could hear him cycling through attempts to push the handle out and retract the top in. Nothing worked. The force of the door and the unamused girl trapped next to us who inexplicably kept pushing on her side wedged us in further. “Stop pushing,” Lucas hollered. “See if we can back up enough so I can free this.”

  I wiggled my arms out of my backpack and turned around. The three of us coordinated our efforts to work against the natural direction of the door.

  “Push it out,” I said when enough space opened to heave the umbrella outside. He did, and the girl next to us shoved the door hard enough to send Lucas and me flying into the library. I fell over my backpack and Lucas fell on top of me. His weight jammed the corner of the calculator I kept stashed in my bag into my balls.

  “Fuck me.” My anguished groan echoed in the quiet confines of the library. Snickers from several students bounced back. All eyes shifted to me as I writhed, grabbed my crotch and muttered every swear word I’d ever learned and a few I invented in the moment.

  Lucas scrambled off me, scarcely able to breathe. His contagious hilarity infected me and forced me to smile, despite the excruciating pain of having a TI-83 calculator smack hard against my scrotum. Through my wincing, something resembling a laugh escaped. We lay together on the library floor and recovered our breath while students who had resumed using the revolving door stepped over us into the library.

  Following a stern look from the librarian, Lucas regained enough composure to stand. He offered me his hand and assisted me to my feet.

  “Man, I’m so sorry. Tell me how I can make it up to you,” Lucas said, handing me my sopping wet and muddy sweatshirt from the library floor.

  I took my sweatshirt and sized him up for the first time. Shorter than me by two inches, Lucas had a blond Southern California surfer boy vibe going on—shaggy hair curled on the ends fell into perfect place with the shake of his head and blue eyes roughly the color of the Pacific Ocean. And young… Oh, so young.

  “You owe me something after that.” The words could have come out sexy if I had bothered to lace them with any innuendo. Instead, they came out like the grumpy old man in the Scooby-Doo cartoons. I’d essentially called him a pesky kid.

  His smile yielded to a conciliatory grimace. “Sorry, sir.”

  Sir? Damn if that didn’t hurt worse than being hit in the nuts. “Don’t worry about it. I’m fine. It’s not like I need my balls to take an algebra test.” Oh my God. Shut up, Kyle. What the fuck am I saying?

  His gaze dropped to my pelvis and my sweatshirt-covered crotch and traced back up. A blush flushed his cheeks. “Yeah, I guess not,” he said. “I should let you study.” He entered the revolving door again, and I followed him, my mouth opened wide in case the remaining fragments of my brain wanted a chance to escape.

  I noticed it had stopped raining seconds before Lucas swooped to retrieve his umbrella. He stood and once again shook his head, silently commanding all of the golden strands back to their proper place. He repeated the motion twice more when one blon
d wisp refused to fall in line.

  With his halo back in place, he looked at me, breaking the hypnotic spell of his hair-flip ritual. Lucas’ focus reacquainted me with a level of mortification I thought reserved for puberty. Not only was I blatantly staring at him, but I also had no explanation for leaving the library we’d spent an exorbitant amount of effort to enter. I knew it, and by the bemused expression on his face, so did he.

  “Cool. Cool.” My spectacular conversation skills displayed once again.

  Lucas’ lips curved upward. “What’s cool?”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. I turned to leave. That’s it. Walk away and pretend you’ve got somewhere else to be.

  “You’re leaving?” he hollered, laughter escaping in the same breath.

  Desperate for any plausible explanation, I turned toward him and stopped at the edge of the covered entrance. I opened my mouth, but only random, meaningless sounds came out. I couldn’t hide how flustered I was, and his expression told me he’d determined precisely what had caused my reaction. He checked me out again, that time with all sorts of lascivious intent, and grinned. “Don’t you need to study?”

  “Um. I… Um.” I pointed and gestured but said nothing intelligible. Maybe I contracted an acute case of brain damage from my fall?

  Like a lifeline, he offered his hand. “I’m Lucas.”

  I stopped rambling long enough to shake it. Lucas’ satiny-smooth palm in my clammy, calloused hand fired off inappropriate urges. “Kyle,” I returned, still flustered. “I’m sorry,” I added, although I had no idea what for. Blatant ogling?

  He shrugged off my apology but kept my hand in his and adjusted his mane again with another small shake of his head. “So, Kyle, would you like to go find a private enclave and…um…study with me?”

  Fuck. Now that’s how you say something with innuendo. Why couldn’t I have done that earlier? “Oh. Um, sure. Yeah, I guess you owe me that.” The rest of the English language escaped me and I bobbed my head to convey my enthusiasm. Saliva pooled in my mouth and I gulped so hard my throat ached.