Tom's Turn

By Rafe Jadison

Tom Whitmore's feelings for Logan White began the first day he saw him back in middle school, but somewhere in those wild college years, Tom's crush turned to love.

A year after college, all that was well and good, and Tom had even learned how to deal with being in love with his straight best friend, until stupid Logan White ran off and married a complete stranger ... an older, gorgeous, wealthy stranger who looks like a soap opera star, and just so happens to be able to turn into a shark.

No matter how idiotic the mistake, Tom has never given up on Logan, and he doesn't plan to start now. If he has to plot against this shark shifting man while battling Logan's own stubbornness, then so be it.

Because this time, it's Tom's turn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Jun 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781370057085

Rafe Jadison

Rafe Jadison is the author of The Divorceary, Little Tree, Snowed In: Dane and Heath, Seduced by Shark Shifters, Seduced by Shark Shifters II: Logan’s Tail, Seduced by Shark Shifters III: Tom's Turn, Seduced by Shark Shifters IV: Mark's Midlife, Reap This, Reap This Too, Blake Blacks Out, and Peter Passenger and the Mothman. He has a great love of the water and of people, and tries to show that in his writing. You can find out more about Rafe at rafejadison.com. He looks forward to hearing from people legally old enough to read the things he writes.

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Seduced by Shark Shifters Three: Tom’s Turn

By Rafe Jadison

Copyright 2017 Rafe Jadison

Smashwords Edition

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OTHER BOOKS BY RAFE JADISON

PROLOGUE

Sometimes you find yourself in situations that just don’t seem possible or plausible. If you dreamed scenarios like these, you would wake up and say something like, Wow, that was insane. Wonder what the symbolism was in that. Or perhaps you wouldn’t say a thing. You would just immediately seek out the help of a good psychiatrist. For instance, this evening, I am standing half-naked, in a cage that looks like something out of an old Jacques Cousteau episode on some retro TV channel or maybe one of those cable shows where people practically beg sharks to attack them. The metal cage is suspended above a three-story glass aquarium tank that begins on the first floor of a rather kinky bar and grille. Two sharks, that appear to be bull sharks, are swimming in the tank. I’m wearing an oxygen tank and mask, and a gold lamè thong that looks like it was sewn on me.

For some reason that I can’t explain, all of this seems okay. Hold on, let me be honest, I do know why it seems okay. It all seems okay because I am in love with an idiot. He’s the same idiot I have been in love with since college, and quite possibly before that. He’s also wearing a gold lamè thong, an oxygen tank, and a mask. Logan looks up at me and even through his oxygen mask his face tells me that everything is going to be all right. And being the idiot that I am, I believe him.

Logan leans up and holds me, and that’s about the time I feel the cage suddenly drop and begin to sink into the water. As we sink I am more caught up in Logan’s arms around me than I am in the water, well at least until the water completely covers us. That’s when it sets in that there is no top on this cage. It’s open to anything that wants to come in here. As I see the two sharks slowly circle the cage while it descends, my heart begins to sink as well. That’s when I get the biggest surprise of all, the kind of surprise that those of us who live by the water eventually come to expect. You can tell that I’ve been around Logan a while because like he often does, I am getting ahead of myself. Let me go back to how Logan and I got into this mess in the first place. My name is Tom Whitmore, and this is our story.

CHAPTER ONE

So you may actually be familiar with parts of this tale, or the things that happened up until now. I’ve heard that there’s an asshole who wrote down this whole story about me and Logan (and the whole thing about Logan’s brother Sam too). Perhaps that’s just a rumor, but from what I’ve heard, it’s not. Anyway, in case you aren’t familiar with our little adventure, let me catch you up.

I met Logan in middle school. We actually did a project together once. Of course, he never remembered me after that. My last name is Whitmore. His is White. So in high school I sat behind Logan in more classes than I can count. Of course he was completely oblivious to this and never noticed me, which was kind of odd because I am usually the tallest person in the room. Although I imagine that my glasses and buttoned up collars didn’t really help draw anyone’s attention. Either way, Logan’s blond head was often buried deep in a novel, especially if we were in a math or science class.

When I got to college, there was Logan again. This wasn’t a complete surprise to me. I had seen Logan filling out an application to Bear Lake University and that was actually why I applied. I found out that it was his first choice when I overheard him talking to a guidance counselor. Bear Lake had a great writing program, and writing was all Logan wanted to do. I was relieved to find that their pre-med program was strong as well.

Of course when Logan showed up in my college zoology class, I was excited. I thought that all my years of longing had finally paid off when he turned and asked me to be his lab partner. I was sure that he had remembered me and finally realized just what a great guy I was. Two seconds later, I was furious when I realized he didn’t even know we had gone to high school together, not to mention that we had lived in the same neighborhood since middle school. I just stared at him for a minute wondering what the hell I had been thinking.

That’s when he won me over. He turned on the charm like nobody’s business and tried to be the best friend I had ever seen. It worked. If up until then I had had a huge crush on him, then after that I fell head over heels for him. This, of course, was a little awkward, as Logan began to see himself as my best friend.

Day after day, night after night, and drunken weekend after drunken weekend, I became more enchanted, spending virtually every day with him. And, as you might imagine, on one of those weekends, I came out to him. He, of course, was amazing. He told me it was great, but that I needed a serious make-over. Then the next day, he took me out shopping and dressed me like a model. After that, he even made me go to a few gay bars.

The problem was, that like many gay men who have extremely gorgeous straight best friends who they drink with in college, we occasionally crossed the line between friends and lovers. Well, we actually just spent a fantastic amount of time teetering on the edge. As a matter of fact, we spent so much time teetering on the edge, that one night I told Logan that I was done, and that night, I tried to walk away, but Logan chased me down and promised that we would stay off the edge and just be friends.

We did a great job with the friend thing. He dated hot chicks. I dated hot guys. Of course, we weren’t really interested in them, and those relationships didn’t last, but Logan and I managed to keep our relationship strictly friendly. At least until the night we found out that his mother died. I held him that night, and he held onto me like someone lost, weeping and sobbing. It was that night that I realized that I loved him no matter what. I realized that no matter how hard it was for me, I wasn’t ever going to let him go, even if all he could ever offer me was friendship.

Logan made it through his mother’s death, and I stayed around, still holding him when needed. After graduation, we both decided to take a year and get ready for life, so we headed back to our homes in northern Florida. At his rather cool father’s behest, Logan was going to write. I took the year to study for the MCAT, and do a little volunteering at a local hospital. We both knew what we wanted, and we spent some portion of almost every day together.

It was going rather smoothly until Logan showed up one day at my place furious with his father. Unbeknownst to Logan, Robert White had taken some of Logan’s stories and other papers and filled out an application for Logan for Suncoast University’s master’s program in writing. The cool thing was that Logan was accepted. The not so cool part was that he would be moving to southern Florida.

After I told Logan that he should go, he barely spoke to me. He wasn’t just angry at his father then; he was pissed as hell at me. I understood why he was angry with his father. You see, Logan’s father wasn’t just pushing his will on Logan, who he thought was a talented writer in need of guidance; Robert White was also pushing his will on his other son, Sam. Robert was sending Logan to Suncoast not just because of their writing program, but also because he wanted Logan to check up on Sam. Logan had agreed to go for a short time, but he didn’t plan on living there indefinitely. Logan was incensed about that because Sam had never done anything wrong. Well, at least until he had gone off to Suncoast’s law school. At Suncoast Law, Sam met two hot male twins and ended up moving in with them in what Robert White calls a long term ménage a trois. I think they just call it polyamory. What I didn’t understand at first, was why Logan was mad at me.

Logan isn’t exactly subtle though, so it didn’t take too long for me to figure it out. Although he didn’t admit it, Logan felt like I was pushing him away. The weird thing was that maybe I was. It wasn’t that I didn’t care for him. God knows the time I spent with him every day was the highlight of my life. What wasn’t good was that I think it was the highlight of his life also. He was spending all of his free time with me. He wasn’t writing much, and he wasn’t dating. I pictured us just being together for years, and him finally giving into my wishes just because I was around, and because on a friend level, he loved me more than anyone. I saw this image of us at forty. I was sitting on the couch holding him with a contented look on my face, and he was staring into space wondering what else might have been out there for him. If Logan were going to be with me, I wanted it to be because it was the one thing he wanted most in the world. That’s why I encouraged him to go to Suncoast.

On the day he left, Logan was a little rude, but he promised to call. The problem was that he didn’t, and the one time I called, he was in a bit of a frenzy. After that, he didn’t answer my calls. That’s when I went into a panic. What if I had sent him off to something disastrous or crazy? What if I never saw him again? So I rushed down to Shark Beach, the beautiful place Logan was going to be