Page 36 of Country Road Romance

“Jared, come on, give me some credit, huh? I didn’t just give up, and it didn’t happen right away. I tried again a couple of years ago, but things had gotten even uglier in the intervening years. I finally got tired of having doors slammed in my face and gave up. I know that’s probably not what you wanted to hear. But then again, maybe it is, because it confirms what you thought you knew about me all along, but I thought you deserved the truth.”

Jared took a deep breath, because there were a lot of things that he wanted to say, a lot of pieces of the puzzle that he was still trying to fight together. Charlie was right, at least to an extent. This did confirm what he’d thought, but also it didn’t. So much of what he’d thought about Charlie Garrett had been built out of his own assumptions, rather than the truth, and if he was being perfectly honest with himself, it was also about jealousy.

It was time to put all of that away and try something new.

“I can’t say that I agree with everything that you did in the past,” he said, choosing his words with care, “But I can also see that it was quite a difficult and treacherous path that you had to walk. My real question is: why didn’t you just tell me all of this before? Or anyone else, for that matter? I’d think that it would be good for your brand to have everyone know that you were trying to do good things for your home state but that a bunch of religious jackasses were standing in the way.”

Charlie shook his head. “It’s not like that. I have a very specific fan base, and they…well, they don’t like it when their favorite gay star does anything that’s not squeaky clean and nonconfrontational. It’s why Sheri has a fulltime job just keeping my name out of the gossip sites, because she knows that if my fans get too much of a whiff of just how much I’ve been involved in any kind of gay politics, they’re not going to be happy. They like their stars to be the good kind of gays, the ones that look pretty on-screen and not much else.

“And as for why I didn’t tell you before…well, you can be a bit prickly. And besides, every time I’d get close to getting there you’d change the subject.” He shrugged. “I’m glad it’s all out in the open. Now you’ve gotten to see therealCharlie Garrett beneath all of the hype.”

This was all a lot to absorb, and it didn’t help that Charlie looked even sexier and more handsome in the afternoon sunlight, which hit his hair in just such a way as to bring out its darker golden hues. The fact that it also highlighted his biceps didn’t hurt.

Behave yourself.

“I can see that,” he said, because it was the only thing he could think to say at the moment. “It…it must be difficult to always be on and to perform for someone else. It must be even harder to feel like you can never be your authentic self.”

“I’m guessing you know something about that too.”

Damn Charlie Garrett and his ability to read other people like a book.

“I guess you could say that. It was hard enough to be a gay kid around here without also being the creative type.” He snorted. “I think my parents were more concerned about the fact that I wanted to take up such a precarious profession than they were about who I slept with.”

“Did they just look at it as a hobby?”

Jared took a moment to consider his words.

“I suppose you could say that. I think it’s probably more accurate to say that they just didn’t see how that could ever possibly be a way to make money. It turns out they were right.”

It hurt to say those words, but there was also something liberating about being able to say them aloud.

“We sometimes have to do what we want despite what our parents have to say about it,” Charlie said. “No matter what, though, you should always follow your heart. If there’s a book in you that you think needs to be written, if there’s a story that you know only you can tell, then you should do it.”

Jared almost told him then about his secret plan to write a memoir of what it was like growing up gay in Appalachia. He didn’t, though, because he wasn’t yet ready to share that particular dream with anyone.

Instead, he settled for just drinking in the beauty that was Charlie Garrett. As he caught glimpses of him out of the corner of his eye, Jared found himself imagining him in one of the movies that he was trying to break into: some brooding hero from a Jane Austen novel, perhaps, or a cold baron with a heart of gold that just needs the right lady, or lord, to melt his heart and open him to a new world of erotic and amorous experiences.

Before he could think about what he was doing, Jared reached out and put his hand on Charlie’s, even as that little voice in his mind was screaming at him to stop, demanding to know what he thought he was doing. He steadfastly ignored it, though. Hannah had been right; it was time to seize some of his own happiness, and let the chips fall where they may.

He’d secretly been dreading that Charlie would ask him what he was doing, or that he would be turned off by his presumption. What he didn’t expect was for Charlie to turn his smile on him and then, before Jared could say or do anything else, lean over and kiss him.

At first Jared didn’t know what to do. It’d been so long since anyone had kissed him, and also up until a few hours ago he’d resented the guy who was sitting next to him as nothing but a poser and a fake. But also this wasCharlie Garrettand he was kissing him and, though he would never admit it to anyone else, he suddenly felt light as a feather.

The writerly part of his mind was already trying to fit this whole experience into something that he could write about later, or that he could try to make sense of once he had time to collect himself. The more that the kiss went on, however, the more comfortable he felt just abandoning himself to the pleasure of it, savoring the way that Charlie smelled and the way he tasted, the way that his skin felt brushing against his own.

Just enjoy this,he thought.Don’t overthink it.

So he didn’t.

CHAPTER 12

Charlie hadn’t known that he was going to kiss Jared before he did it, but he had most definitely known that he wanted to. There was something about the other man– the way that he was the right combination of sensitive and tough, nerd and country boy, masculine and feminine–that continued to draw him in. He was also unlike anyone else he’d met in either West Virginia or California, which made him that much more appealing, even if he remained something of a tough nut to crack.

He was thus more than a little surprised when Jared actually started kissing him back.

He reached up and put his hand behind Jared’s head, running his fingers through his hair, loving the way that the strands passed through his fingers. Jared’s breath was coming faster and faster, and Charlie dared to run his other hand up and down his body, savoring the way that his muscles rippled with every move he made. Charlie suddenly wanted to pull off the other man’s clothes, but he resisted the urge, mostly because he wasn’t sure that Jared was ready to go that far.

Then Jared’s hand crept down south and started stroking Charlie through his jeans, and he knew that this was going to getvery intense very quickly if he didn’t do something to stop it. The trouble was that he didn’twantto stop it. In fact, he wanted it to keep going for as long as Jared was willing to let it do so.

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