Finally...

By Heather Mar-Gerrison

“What do you mean, he’s already left?” My spoon was halfway to my mouth, having left my bowl of very milky cereal and was now dripping steadily onto the tablecloth that my mother had only put on the table, clean, that very morning. My heart was beating out of my chest as I stared at her. He’d already gone? How could he do that to me when he’d said he still wanted to be friends? How was I going to explain to him that I’d had a total epiphany in the night and had decided that I would happily hide in the closet with him – for as long as it took?
Fort Worth and Blake have been friends for most of their lives and inevitably, things change as they get older and they become lovers.
Blake, with his career taking off as a professional footballer, has a meltdown over them being found out and breaks it off with Fort Worth, breaking both of their hearts in the process.
Five years later, and totally out of the blue, he's back, begging for Fort Worth's forgiveness and asking for his help...
It's the most ludicrously reckless plan and it'll likely never work, but Fort is determined to help his oldest, closest friend in his hour of need - whilst at the same time, helping himself attain eternal happiness by finally getting the love of his life back for good...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Heather Mar-Gerrison
• Release date: Apr 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463769027

Heather Mar-Gerrison

I love to write M/M romance and as a sucker for a HEA, you're guaranteed one in my books. #happyheatherafters

Book preview

Prologue

Fort Worth

Once upon a time, in a land far away… Oh, God, if only my life really was like a fairy tale.

As I read the words to the completely enraptured class of six-year-olds, I allowed my mind to wander. Where exactly in the world was Blake these days, anyway?

He’d disappeared without a trace after sixth form, well, slight exaggeration, I could see him on the TV playing for his team and he’d even played for England for fifteen minutes at the last European cup, but he’d left me, taking my heart with him, whether he was aware of it or not, and leaving me an empty shell.

I sometimes wondered why my parents had named me the way they did, since I felt my self-worth was pretty damned worthless.

Still, the kids seemed to love me, no matter what – and my Instagram followers adored Fallon, my alter-ego...

My personal life might be a non-starter, but I made a difference to these kids’ lives every day – and a difference to hundreds of other peoples’ lives every day either through social media or if they came to a show at night – and all of that gave me a real sense of satisfaction and damn it, of self-worth…

I read on, looking up every now and again to see face after face, completely enraptured. I smiled, transported back in time to the long, hot, summer holidays, right up until our eighteenth year, when Blake used to look up at me reading to him with a similar expression on his face...

Blake and I had been completely inseparable for as long as I was able to remember. We’d pretty much grown up together. I was the youngest of the eight siblings. My five older brothers were well out of my age group, my next sibling up from me, being my brother, El Paso, who was five years older. Blake’s older sister had always been good friends with San’s twin sister, Virginia and her best friend, Verity and the two of them had long since mucked in with the rest of the Fender family and enjoyed many a day messing around at the marina.

Blake had always loved stories but hated reading, so I’d spent many a summers afternoon up in my treehouse with Blake, reading my many books aloud to him. It would be fair to say that Blake and I were opposites that had somehow or other, in spite of the universe and all of its scientific reasons for us not to, attracted…

Chapter 1 – Five years ago

Fort Worth

It would also be fair to say that I was quite a shy kid when I was young. My siblings were all a whole lot older than I was, with the exception of my nephew, Starr, who was a couple of years younger than me – not that I saw a whole lot of him, back then. I spent most of my time alone.

Starr was my eldest brother Dallas’ son. I first met him when I was around six years old. He was about four when we first met and his sister, Aurora was two and a half. They came to visit quite a lot after that initial meeting – at my Dad’s birthday party, as it happened. It was, really, quite the event. It was the first time Dallas and his husband had come home since Dallas had left under a bit of a cloud when he was sixteen with his girlfriend. Yeah, all a bit of a mess but it had come good in the end.

The reunion had been a teary affair but they’d all sat down together and worked it out and now our family was just bigger and better than ever with Dallas and his husband, Slade running the on-site pub and restaurant between them and putting on a Pride event every June, which had only got bigger and better each year as it gained momentum. Starr was about twelve when they finally came back for good. He was a great guy. He didn’t believe in being gay or straight or bisexual. He just believed that you fell in love who you fell in love with, be that person gay, straight or indifferent. I found his attitude very refreshing – and he was probably right too. I mean, why on earth was Austin the only straight boy out of six of us? And why was Georgia the only straight girl?

Maybe we were all just fluid with our sexuality and Austin and Georgia had just met people of the opposite sex to fall in love with, whereas the rest of us had fallen for people of the same sex. Who knew? And frankly, I couldn’t care less.

I couldn’t deny that I generally found men to be more attractive to me than women – but I could appreciate a good-looking woman as well as the next straight man. Whatever…

It was all Starr’s fault that I met and fell in love with Blake, though. I will always blame him for that. Like I said, we were six and it all started one very hot afternoon in the middle of the six weeks holidays…

Hello.

I turned, feeling suddenly rather exposed. It wasn’t often we had other kids to play with and I was aware, even at six years old, that most people didn’t really think boys should be dressed head-to-toe as a fairy princess, with perfectly painted finger nails and toenails and their mum’s best heels on… Who on earth was Starr talking to? I did a double take. Holy moly. The boy was perfect. Where on earth had this kid come from?

Hello. He said, I’m Blake Foster and me and my family have just moved here from Somerset.

He had the most charming accent I’d ever heard and his round face was tanned, with the blondest eyelashes and eyebrows I’d ever seen – particularly since he had the darkest brown eyes I’d ever encountered. It was an intriguing contrast. All of this was topped off with a shock of very blonde hair. He was very pretty for a boy and I was instantly smitten. I immediately wanted him to be my best friend and set about pursuing him – really quite relentlessly…

Do you want to play with us? I asked.

He nodded shyly, Yes, please. He said politely, I love your dress. He went puce as he realised what he’d just said and floundered for a moment before recovering himself with, I’ll just go and tell my mum where I am. We’ve hired one of the holiday homes while we wait for our house purchase to complete.

I nodded. I hadn’t got the faintest idea what he was talking about but he sounded extremely knowledgeable about the whole thing. Great. I said, We can play in my treehouse.

He nodded, giving me a slightly incredulous look. He probably wondered how I was able to climb a tree with my heels and my long dress – but he’d never seen the treehouse – it had the most amazing staircase that I loved to walk down as if I was coming down the stairs of a castle into the waiting arms of my prince charming…

The treehouse was magnificent – and it was where most of my siblings had fallen in love with their partners. Even at six years old, I figured it was worth a shot…

*

From that day forward, wherever I was, and whatever I was dressed in, Blake was generally there, too unless he had a football match on. Starr and Aurora were totally smitten with him as well and the four of us spent most of our summer holidays together right up until Blake and I were sixteen, Starr was fourteen and Aurora was twelve but I preferred it when Starr and Aurora went home so I could have Blake all to myself – and he didn’t mind me wearing dresses when we were alone together, either... I had quite the collection in my treehouse and I put on shows for him.

When I wasn’t walking the cat-walk, both Blake and I were really into sport and we were both on the football team at school. The reason things changed at sixteen was that he was taken on by his club as one of their junior players and he had to spend most of his life outside of school away from me – which was a wrench but not nearly as bad as when he left me for good…

No one in my family were particularly tall, Austin was the tallest at six feet three, the rest of the boys ranged from five feet six (that would be me) through to six feet (that would be San Antonio). I didn’t really expect to get as tall as San Antonio but he’d only managed those heady heights by the time he got way past eighteen, so there was always a chance that I might. I didn’t really want to between you and me – it was fine to pass for a woman at five feet six, but at six feet tall, I’d be noticeable for all the wrong reasons.

I was quick though, and I might not be the tallest player on the football squad in school, but neither did the other players’ height and weight intimidate me and I wasn’t easily pushed off the ball.

I was a defender and I was pretty good – well, good enough for the school team, anyway.

Back then, Blake was still on the school team. He was our best striker and he was every bit as good a player as I was. He was also on the local football team’s youth program and as such, there was a lot of time that he was busy in the evenings and weekends, his time taken up with away matches and a whole lot of training. The writing was on the wall, even then. It just never occurred to me that I’d never see him again, once he was signed…

He’d been hoping to be taken on as a player for the actual team even then, and I always knew, deep down, that he would be. I loved the game but I wasn’t anywhere near as dedicated as Blake but in my defence, Dad would never let me go off playing football for a living, anyway.

Blake had many female admirers and our training sessions were always well attended by girls desperate to be noticed by him in the hope that they might be his next girlfriend.

He went out with a whole load of girls during our time at school, something I never did, since I was perfectly aware, having four gay brothers, that my lack of interest in girls, apart from getting make-up tips from them and being up on the most up to date, most fashionable item (not to mention my total adoration of my best friend) likely meant that I too, was gay. I didn’t see the point in concerning myself about Blake’s interest in girls.

If he was straight, there wasn’t much I could do about it to change his mind – any more than he could make me fancy girls. Even though he always seemed to have a girlfriend (and seriously, I could never remember any of their names – they were totally interchangeable to me) he never really seemed all that bothered about any of them.

The fact that they existed in his life certainly didn’t make much of a difference to the amount of time he had for me. It made me wonder just how much time he actually did spend with any of them… It never occurred to me that they might be a cover.

Chapter 2 – Fort Worth…

Blake

Fort Worth was my best friend in the whole world.

I met him at six years old, when, in all honesty, I couldn’t decide if he was a girl with really short hair, or a really pretty boy with a thing for girls dressing-up outfits and nail polish. As it turned out, he was the latter, which was very exciting.

At that time, I had no idea that his family owned the massive holiday park that we were staying on while our house was being built – not that it would have made any difference to me at the time anyway. I wasn’t intimidated by anything when I was six – not even being unable to read and write…

No, all of my insecurities began a couple of years later, when I still found reading really difficult and found writing almost impossible. I had no idea why Fort Worth could pick up a book and immerse himself in another world entirely and I was pretty damned jealous of him for his ability to do so.

At first, I tried everything to hide the fact that I honest-to-God could not make head nor tail of any word on a page. I would try to memorise what the teacher had read out, I would make up any excuse not to have to write anything down – you’ve never seen a kid go to the toilet so much – and I prayed that I would never be picked to read aloud in class.

Eventually, of course, the teacher found me out and I was referred for testing. I had dyslexia. Something that I was told was nothing to worry about – even though it sounded to me like something to be