Page 1 of Tender
TENDER
There Miles stood…
Relationship over.
No car.
No place to live.
And no hope for his future.
And then a gorgeous, avenging angel appears. And not just any angel. The father of his ex-girlfriend. But it can't mean what Miles wants it to mean, right? After all, Emmett is married to an equally gorgeous man: a pediatric cardiac surgeon with abs of steel and a glare that could melt diamonds.
There isn't a chance in hell Miles is getting involved with them. Not even when Emmett and Cosimo take him in. Not even when they start flirting.
Not even when he starts realizing their relationship dynamic is not what he thought it was.
Emmett and Cosimo are the actual dream. A fantasy he conjured up once when he was lonely and not sure anyonewas going to want him for who he was. But the more he gets to know the pair, the more he starts to have hope.
And hope is a dangerous thing.
As Miles starts to crack and he feels himself start giving in to their attention, he realizes that his own salvation might come at the hands of sharp tongues, tender hands, and the promise of an absolute happily ever after.
Tender is the fourth and final book of the Beginning of Always series. It features a sunshine nerdy scientist with needs he keeps to himself, a grumpy surgeon who just wants the people he loves to be happy, a nervous, deaf grad student who isn’t used to getting what he wants, falling for your ex’s dads, power dynamics, high spice, high swoon, and a triple happily ever after.
CHAPTER ONE
MILES
“Would you rather…eata dung beetle raw—like alive and kicking—or marry your girlfriend right now?”
In any normal circumstances, a person being asked that question would immediately pick the girlfriend. Miles on the other hand immediately started contemplating how quickly he could chew. It wasn’t necessarily meant to be an insult to Selene.
Notreally.
But he was starting to feel like the very thought of her was choking the life out of him.
He’d just gotten back from his best friend’s wedding. It was supposed to have been a vacation, but apart from seeing Oliver and Juno, the two people he loved most in the world, it had drained him. Selene had treated him like shit, forced him to make ridiculous excuses for her behavior, left early and insisted he do the same, and now he was shopping for an apology present with the only one of his colleagues who liked to hang out with him.
And she was getting ready to leave town for good. She’d just defended her dissertation on the representation of virgins in Greek mythology and had been offered a job at UCLA.
He was really going to miss her.
Nancy never had a problem throwing verbal punches, and he knew what she was doing now. She was trying to rile him up because she hated Selene with a fiery passion. Everyone in his department did—except her friends, and he assumed her dads.
Though they never came around, so he had started to doubt whether or not they cared, or just threw money at her to shut her up.
Of course, when he asked if he was ever going to meet her parents, she just laughed in his face and said when he wasn’t a poor as fuck grad student who wouldn’t embarrass her. Miles took that in stride.
His entire life he’d been forced to work harder than anyone else for the same recognition. But that was always the tale of the deaf foster kid.
“Your hearing aids broken?” Nancy demanded at his continued silence. “Or are you just ignoring me?”
He didn’t bother correcting her that his cochlear implants weren’t hearing aids. She either didn’t get it, or she didn’t care. “I didn’t realize that was a serious question.”
“You’ve had the same look on your face that I did when I got back from Cabo and realized my brother let my dog shit in my bed the entire time I was gone. Which is to say that I wanted to set something on fire and also make him sleep in it. What did she do this time?”
Miles pulled a face and turned away from the collection of scented candles which he knew would not be a good apology gift for Oliver. Unfortunately, he was still a student living off his girlfriend’s good graces and his pathetic summer online session income until next spring.
