December Beginnings

By K.L. Noone

Stunt double Matthew Reid’s been in unrequited love with actor Finn Ransom for years. And now Finn’s getting married to the love of his life, who isn’t Matthew.

Matthew’s happy for him. They’re friends, after all. He’s Finn’s double, and he’s good at hiding his emotions. Playing his role. And rehearsing action scenes with Dylan Li, their show’s lead actor. Dylan’s adorable, optimistic, and hardworking ... and Matthew really likes making him smile.

Except that Matthew’s in love with Finn. Isn’t he?

When Dylan’s injured on set, Matthew realizes what he truly wants ... if he isn’t too late.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Dec 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685503512

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

Finn Ransom was getting married. And Matthew Reid’s chest wanted to cave in, to crumple, to collapse.

He read the headline again. And then he put his phone down, with careful precision, on his kitchen counter. And he let himself slump back against granite and wood, and took a deep breath, and let it out.

The morning—pale grey, sharp, December-brittle—hurt like the edges of broken ornaments.

He’d known. Of course he’d already known. There’d been other headlines; this wasn’t the newest. The engagement had happened back in October. Finn and his boyfriend—now fiancé—Wesley Kim had been out on dates, going to bookshops, sharing bites of each other’s food at restaurants, holding hands on hayrides and pumpkin-picking and apple-cider-pressing excursions, both of them wearing visible rings and thrilled to confirm their engagement when asked. They were adorable and adorably in love and utterly perfect together.

Matthew discovered that his hands hurt. They were tight around the countertop. Hard stone. Biting into his curled fingers.

He’d known even before the world had. He’d known since the day Wes—Professor Kim, internationally recognized scholar and medievalist, tall and brilliant and piercingly gorgeous in a distinguished way, grey in his black hair, dark smoky eyes that had made Matthew feel like an unprepared student—had come to visit the League of Tomorrow television set where everybody’d been filming.

Matthew, who’d been Finn’s stunt and action double for over three years, had been watching Finn on set. Everyone had, of course, because Finn was worth watching. But Matthew had been watching more.

He might need to step in sooner. He might need to have another chat with Finn’s local physical therapist, or massage therapist, or their overall stunt choreographer. If Finn seemed tired. If Finn’s legs, once upon a time so badly injured, gave out. If Finn needed him.

He’d been aware from the start that Finn had a boyfriend. It’d been kind of theoretical, because he hadn’t met Wes yet, and consequently had been able to shove that whole vague conception to one side. But he’d been unable to avoid the knowledge, because Finn talked about Wes, smiled while talking about Wes, came back to filming in Vancouver full of stories about vacations and scholarly conferences and visiting museums of medieval fashion with Wes.

Matthew would never have said anything, done anything, to get in the way. He wanted Finn to be happy, because Finn Ransom deserved to be happy, because Finn had been through so much and put his life back together and managed to be the most sunshine-bright person Matthew had ever met, making everybody laugh, never complaining, doing take after take with a grin and a promise to bring a locally famous Vietnamese fusion food truck to set the next day, which he’d done, and Matthew loved him, had loved him from the first day they’d met for a rehearsal and Finn had smiled and the lights had slid through his hair and over his bare shoulders because he’d come dressed in a tank top and clinging athletic pants, ready to put in the work, and Christ, Matthew’s entire heart hurt.

He slid down, slowly, to sit on the floor of his tiny kitchen. The tile, cold in hopeless sunrise light, tried to offer support. It couldn’t do much.

He’d known back in August, over four months ago, because he had finally met Finn’s boyfriend, and Wes had looked at Finn as if seeing the entire sun and moon and stars all shining at once, and Wes had said, I’m going to ask him to marry me.

Matthew, who loved Finn, who could see exactly how much Wes loved Finn and how Finn lit up at the sight of Wes, had been honestly happy for them. He’d even said so. He hadn’t lied.

He was happy for Finn. Really. He was.

But every headline since then—

Every story on a slow news day, with the media and Finn’s fans delighted by a fairytale happy ending, and then the League cast and crew deciding to send a flurry of excited texts and a congratulatory cookie basket because Finn was back in Los Angeles taking two weeks off before getting ready to shoot a spy thriller—

Matthew had contributed to the cookie-present. More: he’d made sure that baked goods were all either autumn-flavored, because that was Finn’s favorite season, full of cinnamon and pumpkin, or else dark chocolate, because that was what Finn kept as a guilty pleasure snack in his trailer.

The autumn flavors had been a