The Rest of Forever

By Kate Aaron

Written for the Goodreads M/M Romance Group's "Love is Always Write" event.

When they were eighteen years old, Paul told his best friend that he was in love with him. Scared and stupid, Jack ran away. Seven years later, haunted by what he lost, Jack returns to claim the man who'd been his since they were four years old. But has he left it too late?

WARNING. This book contains explicit scenes unsuitable for readers under eighteen. It also contains buckets of angst, crying in the rain, a jealous boyfriend and a very lonely bear.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Croft House
• Release date: Jun 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476219622

Kate Aaron

Born in Liverpool, Kate Aaron is a bestselling author of the #1 LGBT romances What He Wants, Ace, The Slave, and other works. She holds a BA (Hons) in English Language and Literature, and an MA in Gender, Sexuality and Culture, and is an outspoken advocate for equal rights. Kate swapped the North West for the Midwest in October 2015 and married award-winning author AJ Rose. Together they plan to take over the world.

Book preview

THE REST OF FOREVER

Kate Aaron

Copyright 2012 Kate Aaron

Smashwords Edition

Croft House

Croft House | Licence Notes

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact: [e-mail]

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover image by alleswilli at www.sxc.hu

KateAaron.com

WARNING: This book contains scenes of an adult nature.

Index

The Rest of Forever

About the Author

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Join Kate’s mailing list to get all the latest details of new releases, special features, discounts, and more!

About the Author

Born in Liverpool, Kate Aaron is a bestselling author of the #1 LGBT romances What He Wants, Ace, The Slave, and other works.

Kate swapped the North West for the Midwest in October 2015 and married award-winning author AJ Rose. Together they plan to take over the world.

Visit Kate’s website

Join Kate’s mailing list to get all the latest details of new releases, special features, discounts, and more!

About this Story

The Rest of Forever was written for the Love is Always Write event, sponsored by the Goodreads M/M Romance Group. For more on the group and the event, visit their Goodreads page

http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/20149-m-m-romance

For Cheri

THE REST OF FOREVER

Kate Aaron

Copyright 2012 Kate Aaron

Croft House

Eight o’clock Sunday morning in the middle of February and I’m jogging around my local park. I hate Sunday mornings, and I hate jogging. So why am I here? Because he is: Paul Adams, my best-friend-forever, the guy I’m totally, heartbreakingly, nauseatingly in love with.

I know, I know, I’m a total cliché. What gay guy doesn’t grow up and fall in love with his best friend, right? I’ve read enough sappy romances in my time to know I’m not alone. There should be a support group or something. And in all those stories the supposedly straight (they’re always straight) best friend suddenly wakes up and realises he feels the same. Cue sunset.

Except my best friend isn’t straight. And, once upon a time, he did feel the same.

Not so sympathetic now, are you?

I was named Jackson by my mother in a fit of Gaelic traditionalism, that being her maiden name and her being an only child. I guess she didn’t want the line to die completely, and at least my dad stuck around long enough to bestow us with his name—Campbell—saving me from the ignominy of being christened Jackson Jackson. You’d think with ancestry like that I’d be all peaches ’n’ cream with a shock of curly red hair, but I’m not. Coal black, my hair is, like soot. So black it shines blue in the light and everyone thinks I must have dyed it. Guys fall over

Reviews for The Rest of Forever

[annebrooke · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was an unexpected surprise. The grief and regret felt by the main character as he once again meets "the man who got away" is very powerfully and poetically conveyed, and I loved it. I did feel it ended too abruptly though - I wanted more explanation as to how things changed at the party, and the epilogue was unnecessary. Otherwise, very good stuff.

[peepers82 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

4.5. It lost half a star b/c I ended up feeling bad for Curtis. Still great though.

[L'eau · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The story itself was touching, but the protagonist was over the top dramatic, and it ended somewhat abruptly.

[Isabel Coria · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Story about that got away poor guy full of regret petty sad really .... but with kinda a happy ending book to short though but I still liked it

[serenayates · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Short, hot, and fun, this free story is about two men who have been best friends forever. In this case, they both know they're gay though, and they split up when Jackson 'ran away' seven years earlier. In this nice variation on the 'best friends' theme, we get to see the story from Jackson's point of view; he is the one who did the running, only to come back regretting that he didn’t have the courage to admit he loves Paul rather than evade his feelings.

Jackson has a problem, since Paul now has a boyfriend, clearly having moved on. Jackson has to figure out what to do, because one thing is certain: he loves Paul more than ever and he wants to have a relationship with him that goes far deeper than friendship. He only recently started to understand his own confused ideas about friendship and love, and how they don’t have to be mutually exclusive. As much as he wishes it was easier to reconnect with Paul, he has a lot to make up for, and he knows it.

Paul is a great guy and I really felt for him. All the signs he gave before Jackson even left were always overlooked, and even though he was courageous enough to tell Jackson about his feelings before the man ran off, Jackson left him behind and broke his heart. The pain is still visible, but it takes the much older Jackson quite a while to figure all of that out.

Told with a great sense of humor, and including some pretty funny observations, I enjoyed this story a great deal. If you like to read stories about second chances, if you enjoy lots of emotions and romance without sappiness, and if you're looking for a short read that will make you smile, give this one a try.

[steelwhisper · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is so utterly lovely, erotic, romantic and realistic at the same time that it gives me one huge warm fuzz of wellbeing. Sweet and hot in the very, very best sense! Major kudos for pulling off a love triangle in a believable and ethical manner, drawing out the conflict and misery from the upright behaviour of the intruder. Just wonderful.

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Another free ebook from All Romance Ebooks, which I really have to stop looking at now. It's got more of a build-up than the other books I've read from there recently, but since it revolves around strong emotion, the fact that I didn't connect with the characters got in my way. I skimmed the sex scene -- I'm not interested in sex scenes where it's all about bodily fluids and so on; I'm much more interested in sex scenes as a moment of connection/communion, and without the emotional investment, this whole story fell flat.

It's quite a typical storyline, really, too, which doesn't help: best friends in love, one guy runs away in fear, spends the rest of his life regretting it and eventually tries to fix the situation. Yawn.