Ethan Gold Feels Like Home

By Suki Fleet

After being thrown out of his home by his aunt, Ethan Gold finds himself living out of his car. One night he parks up in Black Rock Forest and wonders about getting lost in the darkness, in the trees, like the boy he once cared for did. When a snow storm sweeps in, Ethan rescues a naked young man he finds freezing on the forest road. He needs to get Win to a hospital or at least somewhere warmer than his car, but he can't see well enough to drive in the snow. When the wolves begin to surround his car, he realises he has to get them out of there. He tries not to think about how much Win reminds him of the boy he lost.

 

Win must survive the next twenty-four hours in order to break his curse. If he can't get warm, he'll die. He hoped he'd be able to warm up in the town of Black Rock somewhere, at the supermarket or the library. He didn't expect Ethan to find him in the road. The last thing Win wants is to hurt Ethan and steal his warmth, but he can't help but be drawn to him. Ethan Gold feels like home. He's always felt like home to Win. When the wolves track them down, Win begins to realise surviving his curse isn't enough, he must protect his home. With his life if he has to.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stars and Ink Press
• Release date: Jul 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223284949

Suki Fleet

Other books by Suki Fleet- This is Not a Love Story (published by Dreamspinner press) Suki Fleet currently lives in the heart of England. Her childhood was quite unconventional and she spent some time living on a boat and travelling at sea with her family. Since she was very small she has always dreamed of writing for a living, but though she has written original fiction online for years and encouraged many new writers to keep going and follow their author dreams, it is only recently she got the courage to make her own dream a reality and actually send something off to a publisher. By day she runs her own business selling fabric (her second love) and spends time juggling family commitments, by night she weaves the stories that the characters in her head dictate. These stories often start with pain or longing but always end with love.

Book preview

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's weird imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Ethan Gold Feels Like Home

© 2023 Suki Fleet

Cover Design by Suki Fleet

All rights reserved.

This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Thank you for your support.

Ethan Gold Feels Like Home

After being thrown out of his home by his aunt, Ethan Gold finds himself living out of his car. One night he parks up in Black Rock Forest and wonders about getting lost in the darkness, in the trees, like the boy he once cared for did. When a snow storm sweeps in, Ethan rescues a naked young man he finds freezing on the forest road. He needs to get Win to a hospital or at least somewhere warmer than his car, but he can’t see well enough to drive in the snow. When the wolves begin to surround his car, he realises he has to get them out of there. He tries not to think about how much Win reminds him of the boy he lost.

Win must survive the next twenty-four hours in order to break his curse. If he can’t get warm, he’ll die. He hoped he’d be able to warm up in the town of Black Rock somewhere, at the supermarket or the library. He didn’t expect Ethan to find him in the road. The last thing Win wants is to hurt Ethan and steal his warmth, but he can’t help but be drawn to him. Ethan Gold feels like home. He’s always felt like home to Win. When the wolves track them down, Win begins to realise surviving his curse isn’t enough, he must protect his home. With his life if he has to.

Contents

Ethan Gold Feels Like Home

Prologue ~ The Black Rock

I Ethan

II Win

III Ethan

IV Win

V Ethan

VI Win

VII Win

VIII Ethan

IX Win

X Ethan ~ Epilogue

Author Bio

Trigger warnings: Brief mentions of death of a parent. Though vague, there are hints at abuse.

Terminology: Water butt (UK) = rainwater tank (US).

Prologue ~ The Black Rock

From the beginning, mostly everyone thought the black rock and the forest that covered it to be cursed. It wasn’t, the man knew. But then, he wasn’t really a man—it was just the form he took sometimes. In the summer, he liked to spend time running as one of his wolves along Black Rock Ridge. In the winter, he drifted upwards, stirring up the rain and the snow and clouding the sky. He could be the weather and he could be the trees. He could be the fat flakes of snow and the icy earth they fell upon. Within the bounds of the forest, all was under his control.

Nobody had cursed the people who had disappeared in the forest over the centuries. The man who wasn’t really a man always offered them an exchange. They did not have to take it. If they did, he hoped they would learn something and then he would let them go. A few learned a lot. Most learned nothing. But it wasn’t a curse. It was a lesson.

For half a century, people had kept away from the forest with their broken hopes and their failing dreams. The man who wasn’t really a man grew annoyed with the rumours of the curse.

Then the boy came.

The boy was interesting. Though he was almost too young to understand the offer being made to him. Almost too innocent. And the man who wasn’t really a man considered not offering him anything. But it had been so long since anyone had stayed in the forest with him, and the boy’s desperation was great. Besides, he did not think the boy could live for much longer with all the pain he carried within him.

When the man who wasn’t really a man took that pain away, the boy’s gratefulness was so huge, he offered far more than he should have in exchange. And being what he was, and more than a little bit greedy, the man who wasn’t really a man, took it all.

I Ethan

Please, Ethan whispered, his heart breaking. He hated that he’d been reduced to this, to begging her, even after all the awful things she’d said. But he knew once he walked out of the front door, he was going to lose the only home he’d ever had.

Aunt Margot stared at him, her eyes as cold as chips of ice in her thin bony face. Before this awful day had started, Ethan had always tried to see echoes of his father in her, of himself, but really, Aunt Margot looked so little like either of them she might as well have been a complete stranger. Perhaps it was the fact that she was so religious. Ethan’s father had said religion changed people sometimes. Inside and outside. Sometimes that was a good thing. And sometimes it wasn’t. Before he’d died four years ago, Ethan’s father had never spoken of much about his sister, only that he had one. Perhaps her change hadn’t been a good one.

You don’t have to do this, Ethan pleaded. It’s almost Christmas, he thought, though he couldn’t bring himself to say the words. Since Aunt Margot had arrived, Christmas was the one day she seemed to soften, but they’d never really celebrated. Not like Ethan had with his dad.

He caught a flash of desperation in Aunt Margot’s expression, but it was gone so fast he was sure he’d probably imagined it.

What does she have to be desperate about? Ethan thought hopelessly. It wasn’t like she was about to be thrown out on the street with all her belongings packed into a single bag.

Ethan watched her miserable expression close off even further. Aunt Margot had been unhappy since the day she’d arrived in Black Rock. All the determined hours she’d spent at Black Rock Cathedral hadn’t changed that. One of the neighbours had suggested someone had stolen the reasonableness out of her life, the kindness, long before she’d come here. But Ethan had thought it was just grief. Just sadness as deep as his own—Marcus had been her brother after all. But now Ethan wondered if he hadn’t been wrong about her feelings all along.

For four years, he’d tiptoed around her, never causing trouble, never wanting to be the reason for a single moment’s more grief, always willing to show her how grateful he was that she’d come here to take care of him and not allowed him to be sent to some terrifying kids’ home in the city.

He’d tried to find out what her favourite meals were, pored over the heavy cookbooks in Black Rock’s neglected library to write out recipes in his spidery left-handed script, bought ingredients out of the last scraps of the pocket money his father had given him, and although those meals weren’t always a success, some had been nice, he’d thought, and most had been okay.

Every week, he’d dusted the silly pictures in the hallway his dad had taken of his smiling younger self. Until she’d taken them all down and replaced them with pictures of Black Rock Cathedral.

He’d carefully mended the holes the sunlight wore in the curtain linings in the living room, pleased with his neat, almost invisible stitches, satisfied they were worth his sore fingers, until the following week she’d replaced the curtains with cheap wooden blinds.

It wasn’t enough. Whatever small things he’d done, had never been enough for her to notice him. To notice that he was trying. Trying so hard. It cut Ethan deep that he’d never figured out how to be more. To be what she wanted him to be. He’d long since lost the childish hope that she would grow to love him, but he’d still hoped one day she’d see him and like who he’d become. Tell him that his father would like who he’d become.

But that was never going to happen now. Not after this.

Ethan’s breath shuddered treacherously in his chest, made his