Very Late Blooming

By Hayden Hunt

It feels like I've lost everything. 

I'm not at a particularly good point in my life right now. I've recently lost the only person I truly loved and I'm not sure how to get back on my feet. The things I once cared about so deeply simply don't seem to matter anymore. I've lost my passion for life and I have no idea how to get it back. Honestly, at this point I don't even have the energy to care about getting it back. 

Until my loud and overly perky florist neighbor, Oliver, decides to weasel his way into my life.

I've got a love for life but have never been in love... until I met him

Things are going good for me, they usually are. I've got good friends, a great relationship with my parents, I feel very passionate about my job as a florist. Things aren't going too bad in my romantic life either, though I do have a tendency to jump from guy to guy pretty quickly. But what can I say? I haven't felt that urge to settle down yet. 

That is, until I meet my new neighbor, Gabe. Getting involved with a neighbor seems like a terrible idea... But I can't help myself, my connection to him feels magnetic.

This standalone gay-for-you novella of 30,000 words and comes complete with a HEA ending!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hayden Hunt
• Release date: Jun 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393501633

Book preview

2

Scott

Icould feel my heart pounding in my chest. The sun was nearly blinding me as it made its morning peak and the glare overcame my window. 

It was hurting, I was very photosensitive, but I still didn’t want to get out of the car. At least, not yet. It’d have to happen eventually, but, for now… for now I’d sit in the car. Just for a few more minutes while I mentally prepared myself. 

See, this was the exact reason why it took me so long to change jobs, even though I was grossly underpaid and very overworked. Because my social anxiety absolutely destroyed me at any given opportunity. 

When I first started my last job, it hadn’t been so bad. I’d been younger, my anxiety hadn’t yet been at its worst, and I started in a very small, private office. Not only had I functioned well under social pressure, but I had made a few friends that I’d became very close to along the way. Many of whom were extremely sad to see me go…

And I was sad to see them go, too. But I’d needed to leave. I needed a change. Not only because I was getting offered double the money, either. 

The thing was, I probably would have stayed at my last job despite the money, if that had been the only contributing factor. But it wasn’t. My personal life had also had a lot of bumps in the road that I’d been trying my best to figure out. 

Namely, the destruction of my latest relationship with my long-term boyfriend. A slow, painful, frustrating destruction that had resulted in him moving out of our apartment and leaving me with all the rent. 

The rent I couldn’t afford because I was just not paid enough. Or I wasn’t, at my old job. So I decided to move. 

I mean, why not? Since I couldn’t afford the place I was at anyway, I think it was worth it to move. Worth it to go to a place where you could start all over. New job, new dating pool, new me. That was what this move was to me. 

It was very unlike me, too. I wasn’t an adventurous person, not by a long shot. Picking up and leaving was not really my style. 

But to be fair, I didn’t do the most adventurous thing or anything. I mean, it wasn’t as if I’d picked up and moved to a whole new town and started over. 

No, I couldn’t do that, I just wasn’t that comfortable with the unfamiliar. Instead, I’d decided to move back to my old college town. 

It was a town I’d always liked. It wasn’t big enough to be called a city but also not exactly rural. It had nice little neighborhoods, upscale shopping centers, the college, a movie theater, and other entertainment facilities. It was expensive, but with my new salary, it was no problem. And it really was