Tempests in April

By K.L. Noone

The weather might be terrible, but Wes is having a good day. He has a boyfriend he adores, Finn’s acting career’s going well, and Wes just might be making plans to ask a certain question very soon.

But when an accident leaves Finn injured, none of Wes’s plans can help. There’s nothing he can do, and he’s afraid it was his fault. Even worse, Finn’s the one comforting him when Wes falls apart.

Wes wants to be strong for the man he loves. But he’s scared he isn’t doing enough. And there’s something Finn isn’t telling him.

With love and checklists and cinnamon-walnut scones, Wes will try his best ... and hope he and Finn can weather rainy days and tempests together.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Apr 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685501037

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

April rain was happening. It drenched Los Angeles in silvery enchantment, and made the freeways shine glossy and slick, and drew the scents of ozone and ocean and glass-windowed buildings into the air. It dripped from eaves and overhangs, and flooded unprepared small side streets.

Wes generally liked rain, and felt that they did not get enough of it. He knew that Finn liked rain too, but then his boyfriend liked everything from pumpkin-shaped throw pillows to death-by-habanero chili, and therefore Finn was not a reliable judge.

It’d been Finn who’d said they could fit in a bookshop run before the promised weather arrived. Wes had tried to protest, but had given in.

He nearly said the I told you so now. Didn’t. Wouldn’t be productive.

The cozy neighborhood bookshop hugged them with shelves and science-fiction book covers and the scents of dry sweet paper and locally-made candles and crafts. It was one of their favorite places, independent and warm and friendly and devoted to stories and community.

It had been a favorite for both of them, separately, before they’d ever gotten together. Something they’d had in common. Shared.

Beyond the steps and the curved awning, rain lanced down in pointy needles. Their car waited in the small side lot, a short walk and an ocean away.

Finn, beside him, offered, We could always make a desperate heroic run for it. He said it casually, as if that were possible; Wes turned to look at him, shifting the bag of newly acquired stories and research texts into the other hand.

Finn’s eyes were blue-green and wry, and his hair was doing the lazy golden-brown former beach-kid tumble that happened when no stylist was present. He was wearing, as usual, jeans and a local rock-band shirt and a zip-up hoodie—from Wes’s history department, in fact, because the graduate students had been doing a fundraiser for their annual conference—and might’ve been a grad student himself, if students had ever looked like former teen idol and present-day quietly brilliant actor Finn Ransom.

He was also wearing the ring, the one Wes had given him: turquoise and gold and medieval-inspired, linking their lives together in delicate historical curves. He never took it off, unless he absolutely had to. It caught the light with a protective glint.

It hadn’t been an engagement ring, exactly, though Wes had several versions of plans that direction, sooner rather than later. It had been a promise, though. An anchor, when Finn—who’d been so alone for so much of that mega-star childhood—needed to feel it. A certainty.

Wes loved him wholeheartedly and completely. At the moment the love felt frustrated. Helpless. Unable to solve this particular pluvial problem with facts about fourteenth-century sumptuary laws or his grandmother’s recipe for spicy chicken stew. Finn did like spice, and had also loved being welcomed even more firmly into the Kim family.

He said, Or we could wait. If you— A cacophony of children, released from a storytelling event in the back, interrupted; they zoomed past and were gone. Wes sighed, and tried again. I’m fine staying here for a while. Lots of books.

I do like books, Finn agreed. And you have papers to grade, and I’m supposed to have a video call with Neil about that spy thriller and the role they had in mind for me. Before three, he said.

Wes eyed his watch. They had some spare time. For now. Finn’s prospective director might or might not mind any lateness; they hadn’t worked together before, but Hollywood gossip said Neil Yates was a good guy, and he’d asked to set up a virtual meeting with Finn specifically, not even requiring an audition, so that was flattering.

Spy thrillers, he thought. Cerebral ones, complicated ones, but nevertheless: action. Lots of it. And the world was still raining.

I can hear you worrying, Finn said. I appreciate it, I love you, but it’s not that far. I can make it. Thunder burst in on the heels of that claim. The clamoring hiss of rain redoubled.

Finn sighed, Thanks, weather, and shifted weight, preparatory.

The rain hadn’t been this bad when they’d gone out. Drizzling, damp, pewter-lined. But not torrential. Finn hadn’t even brought the cane, because both legs had been having a good morning and the bookshop was familiar territory.

Wes looked at rain-soaked steps. Looked at his boyfriend, and thought about car crashes and joint replacements and metal implants and shattered bones and reconstructions. Years ago, yes. Healed, generally speaking, yes. But bad. Enough that everyone’d thought Finn might die, or lose the legs, especially the left. Tabloid rumor had