October by Candlelight

By K.L. Noone

Living with former teen idol Finn Ransom isn’t like a movie. But it’s worth it.

Wes loves his boyfriend, and he knows all the stories about Finn’s celebrity past and old accidents and rebuilt career -- or he thinks he does. But Wes also loves his organized historian’s life, neat and tidy and efficient -- and moving in with Finn is the opposite.

Finn’s messy, colorful, exuberant ... and in love with autumn. Pumpkins. Black cats. Fall leaves. Rain. Wes wants to be patient, but one more cinnamon candle might be one too many.

But maybe Wes doesn’t know everything about Finn’s past. And autumn candlelight is good for sharing stories ... and opening up hearts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Oct 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781646569472

K.L. Noone

K.L. Noone loves fantasy, romance, cats, far too sweet coffee, and happy endings! She is also the author of Port in a Storm and its upcoming sequel, available from Less Than Three Press, and numerous short romances with Ellora’s Cave and Circlet Press; her fantasy fiction has appeared in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress anthologies. With her Professor Hat on, she teaches college students about Shakespeare and superhero comics, and has published academic articles and essays on Neil Gaiman’s adaptations of Beowulf, Welsh mythology in modern fantasy, and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels.

Book preview

Chapter 1

You bought what? Wes, coming in, set down his keys and laptop bag and the mountain of student papers he’d have to grade later. The entire house smelled like nutmeg and brown sugar and spice; when he’d opened the door, he’d thought Finn must’ve been baking.

He’d been looking forward to that, despite having consumed a decent amount of sugar at the university’s reception for the day’s guest speaker. Finn’s cinnamon-sugar pinwheels beat out mass-produced chocolate chip any day.

Finn said again, apologetically, They’re candles. Sorry.

Rain hummed in the background, a low musical counterpoint. October doing its best, even in Southern California. Cool steely skies and pumpkins appearing on porches. The leaves-and-wheat-and-berries wreath Finn had hung on the front door. The smooth dark wood floors and large fluffy furniture they’d picked out together, at the moment adorned with couch-pillows in themes of harvest and corn and gourds and spiced lattes.

And the scent of baked goods all through their house, tantalizing. How many of them did you light?

Only two? I’ll experiment with molasses gingerbread if you want, just give me a sec—

Weren’t you reading a script? Don’t get up. He bent over the back of the sofa to kiss his boyfriend, deeply and thoroughly. Finn tasted like tea—also autumnal, pumpkin and ginger—and reached up to tug him down closer.

Wes loved kissing him. Loved tasting him. Loved everything about him, from floppy brown-gold hair to the sparkling blue-green eyes that’d once upon a time made Finn Ransom a teenage Hollywood heartthrob. Finn always kissed as if taking every sensation seriously: paying attention, completely devoted to the moment, taking nothing for granted. Wes knew why, and loved that too, understanding how much Finn trusted him to see it.

That made it feel real, an answer when this all occasionally didn’t: himself, Wesley Kim, ordinary historian and professor, hand in hand with someone whose name he’d known a decade ago, because everyone had known Finn’s name a decade ago.

That was still true, if less so. Years out of the spotlight would do that.

Though these days Finn’s name was out there again, and the parts were coming, if not a deluge then at least a steady river. Which made Wes’s heart skip a few beats, at times, for different reasons.

I’m fine. Finn moved the script, making space on the sofa. In plaid pajama pants and one of Wes’s old grad-school shirts, wrapped up in an orange-and-brown blanket a co-star had knitted for him, he looked younger than he was, all hair and big eyes and dimples. It was entirely possible, Wes considered, that Finn could still play a teenager, on camera. At least a college student. A precocious and precious one.

He was in fact thirty-one, seven years younger than Wes; nobody, from friends to casting directors, ever believed that without looking it up to confirm. Wes, whose hair had started sprouting flecks of silver around the fourth year of his PhD, suspected that if ageless fantastical elves actually existed, his boyfriend definitely was one.

He sat down. Tugged Finn’s legs into his lap. Ran a hand over that left knee, over the knit of the blanket. Really fine, or fine in the sense of, last week was awful and today’s not quite as awful?

The last week had been awful. Finn had been working, filming a dramatic World War One period piece, right up until the day before his flight home from Ireland. He’d gotten off the plane—private, because airports were hell for multiple reasons—and all but fallen over into Wes’s waiting arms. Wes, heart in his throat, had shoved his boyfriend into bed, ordered him not to move for a week or possibly a month, and called both Finn’s usual doctor and his physical therapist on the spot.

Finn made a face at him but relaxed into the touch, legs lazy and trusting. Somewhere in between? I can totally get up and bake something if you want. Cupcakes? Banana caramel? We have bananas.

We do, and maybe later. He’d