The Unbeaten Track

By Vivien Dean

Insomniac Sean Diaz spends his nights riding the subway around Manhattan, ignoring the people he might encounter, getting lost in the rhythms of the train so he's exhausted enough to sleep once he gets home. A hallucination about his dead high school boyfriend turns it into an obsession, but when Sean sees him a second time, he nearly falls apart.

That's how Judah Morey finds him. Concern prompts conversation, which in turn sparks friendship. When Judah invites Sean back to his place, Sean decides to take a chance for the first time in nearly a decade. Dating is new territory for him, but he thinks he's ready for it. He just needs to figure out how to let go of the past so he can take that step into his future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Jan 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646562442

Vivien Dean

A firm believer that love doesn’t care about gender, four-time EPIC eBook Award winner Vivien Dean has been writing since 2006 in a wide variety of genres. She currently resides in California’s Bay Area with her British husband and two teenagers. For more information, visit viviendean.com.

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The Unbeaten Track

By Vivien Dean

Published by JMS Books LLC at Smashwords

Visit jms-books.com for more information.

Copyright 2020 Vivien Dean

ISBN 9781646562442

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Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

All rights reserved.

WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States of America.

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The Unbeaten Track

By Vivien Dean

I don’t sleep.

Okay, that’s obviously a lie. Everybody sleeps, or else we’d be a planet full of psychopaths. I can already hear Dr. Willoughby scolding me. Stop exaggerating, Sean. You’re not doing yourself any favors.

She was a bitch, but she was right most of the time, so I guess I should probably listen to her when she decides to poke her nose into my psyche these days.

I don’t sleep much.

That’s more accurate.

I go two, maybe three hours tops. That’s my last parting gift from Dr. Willoughby and the staff at Bronx Lebanon. It’s not their fault. Fuck, they were great, everything considered. It’s just that after spending so many weeks sedated and stuck in bed when that hospital was the last place I wanted to be, I think my body has revolted. It’s like it thinks that if I go to sleep again, really asleep, I’ll end up back there, and that’s the last thing I want. I’ve worked too hard to move past it all. Even if it has been over a decade since I got out.

So after work, I get on the train and I just ride until my head feels like a cannonball and my brain is tripping over itself trying to remember where my stop is. That usually happens around four, five in the morning. I don’t leave Manhattan. I’m not that fucking nuts. Plus, it helps that I look the way I do. People don’t mess with a guy who’s six-two and packing a hard two-twenty. They take one look at the shaved head and tats and assume the worst.

If Dr. Willoughby saw me now, she’d probably have a field day telling me how I’m trying to live down to people’s expectations, but that’s not it. It’s about putting on armor. It makes me feel stronger if I think people see me that way. Trust me, I need that boost. When you get broken bad enough and then fix yourself up, you never want to end up in that place again.

The thing about the train is how easy it makes it for me to shut off. Sure, the homeless camp out for the night, and sometimes there’ll be pockets of people coming from a late night party or show, but I mostly avoid the parts of the city where I’d most likely run into annoying people. I like that I can sit there, and the rhythms of the train, the rocking, the hum, the hollow roars, all of it works to erase the effects of my day. Nothing to distract me. Nothing to do. Just be.

That’s why I wasn’t prepared the first time it happened.

I was on the 4 southbound, after just switching trains. At that time of night, it takes about half an hour to do the length of Manhattan, from 125th Street to the Brooklyn Bridge, so I ride it out, and then hop off and go back in the direction I came from. Train pacing, I call it. With the train doing all the work. I love the damn express.

It was about three o’clock, and the car I was on was