Scott had spent thirty-two years becoming himself.It wasn't a phrase he used lightly. Becoming implied a process, a journey, a series of choices that accumulated into something real. And his journey had been longer than most—years of confusion, then clarity, then the slow, painful, glor...
Read MoreThe studio was small, just big enough for a bed, a dresser, and the easel that held Mira's current painting. Morning light filtered through a single window, falling across the hardwood in golden rectangles. Outside, the city was waking up—the rumble of trash trucks, the first birds, the...
Read MoreJason had always considered himself an open-minded man. He'd traveled, read broadly, dated women who challenged his assumptions. But there was a part of his desire that he'd kept locked away, a door he was afraid to open even in the privacy of his own mind. It wasn't something he'...
Read MoreThe room was called The Study, but it was unlike any study its visitors had ever seen. It occupied the top floor of a converted warehouse in a part of the city that didn't ask questions. The walls were lined with books, real books, leather-bound and gilt-lettered, but they were not for readin...
Read MoreMira had always been a collection of hidden things. The dutiful daughter, the reliable friend, the competent project manager whose chaos was contained to colour-coded spreadsheets. At thirty-two, she had built a life so orderly, so predictable, that sometimes she would stand in her pristine apart...
Read MoreJulian had always been an observer. It was his nature, his profession, his secret shame and his private glory. As a photographer, he made his living by watching—by finding the precise moment when light and subject conspired to reveal something true. His portraits were famous for their intim...
Read MoreThe lighthouse had stood on the granite spine of Blackrock Point for two hundred and forty-seven years. Its name was not a name in any human language, but if it could have been translated, it would have been something like Keeper or Witness or simply Light. It was born of stone and mortar and the...
Read MoreDarren had always thought of himself as a solitary creature. A sculptor who worked alone in his studio, shaping metal and stone into forms that spoke of connection even as he held the world at arm's length. His lovers were few, his trust smaller. The idea of being truly seen by another person...
Read MoreKevin was a man who believed in systems. His bookshelf was alphabetised. His sock drawer was a marvel of chromatic organisation. His approach to romance, therefore, was necessarily methodical. He had spent the last six months studying the subject with the same rigorous attention he'd applied ...
Read MoreThe house was finally quiet.For Julian, silence was a luxury more precious than gold. His days were a cacophony of demands—clients with impossible deadlines, a phone that buzzed like an angry insect, the constant, low-grade hum of a world that wanted pieces of him. But at midnight, on this ...
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