Lessons in Love Read online

  “Lessons in Love”

  M/M Gay Romance

  David Horne

  © 2018

  David Horne

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is intended for Adults (ages 18+) only. The contents may be offensive to some readers. It may contain graphic language, explicit sexual content, and adult situations. May contain scenes of unprotected sex. Please do not read this book if you are offended by content as mentioned above or if you are under the age of 18.

  Please educate yourself on safe sex practices before making potentially life-changing decisions about sex in real life. If you’re not sure where to start, see here: http://www.jerrycoleauthor.com/safe-sex-resources/ (courtesy of Jerry Cole).

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Products or brand names mentioned are trademarks of their respective holders or companies. The cover uses licensed images and are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any person(s) that may be depicted on the cover are simply models.

  Edition v1.00 (2018.04.02)

  http://www.DavidHorneauthor.com

  Special thanks to the following volunteer readers who helped with proofreading: Elryc Caledon, Jacy, C. Robinson, M. Demry and those who assisted but wished to be anonymous. Thank you so much for your support.

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  Free Book “Princes of Westlake”

  Chapter One

  Alexander Wright watched in horror as his things were taken, one by one, out of the pool house. There was nothing that he could do about it. Even if he had told the day laborers to cut it out, they would have just been back when he was out.

  His mother would have made sure of it. All he did was sit there and stare with his arms crossed over his chest. It was a hot day and standing by the pool wasn’t getting easier. Unseasonably hot, Alexander thought with a scoff. At least if it was cool, the laborers might have spent more time taking stuff out of what had been, up to that point, his place.

  At least he had started to think of it like that. It had only been a few weeks since everything had happened—since the humiliation of having to leave behind his shared suite, since not passing his general education requirements once more—and he had decided that he was going to comfortably live out the rest of his days as the bum of the family.

  The Wrights had more than enough money to keep him for the rest of his life. Sure, their only son was a disappointment, but if they hadn’t been gearing up for that, then they hadn’t been paying attention.

  “Wait,” he said when he saw a muscular man taking out his bookshelf. The man looked at him, his eyes wide. “Wait, you’re taking my bookshelf? With my books in it?”

  For a second, Alexander thought that it might be—it had to be—really heavy and he was stopping this man from doing his job. He was probably hurting the man’s back.

  The man shook his head and spoke in a language that Alexander didn’t understand. Alexander waved him off, sighing heavily, and stepped back into the shadow under the table umbrella.

  He wanted to sit down and sulk, but he was worried that was going to make his mother punish him further. Of course, she had said it wasn’t a punishment, but that’s what she always said. Alexander had twenty years to get used to what his mom said and what she meant. He thought he had escaped, but…

  He couldn’t think about that right then. He couldn’t go into the main house, either, because that would certainly be admitting defeat.

  He sat down in one of the plastic chairs, his arms still crossed over his chest, when he heard the clickety-clack of his mother’s heels on the tile floor surrounding the pool. He didn’t look up. That would have been admitting that he was paying attention, and that was the last thing that he wanted. He didn’t want to admit defeat. He probably wasn’t going to go back to the main house for as long as he could hold out, though he didn’t know how long that was going to last.

  There were some places where he could stay before he went back to the main house. He could crash on Logan’s couch and there were also a couple of fuckbuddies he had who never minded hosting. The sex was okay, but the bed was better. He had already started to plan his month in his head when his mom softly touched his shoulder.

  He turned to look at her. “Hey,” he said, trying to smile at her. He knew better than to be hostile to his mother, regardless of how annoyed he felt.

  The laborers stopped to stare at his mom for a second, but Alexander glared at them harshly enough that they started working straight away the moment they caught his gaze. It wasn’t as if Alexander wasn’t used to this, as if he hadn’t been used to this his whole life.

  His mother looked beautiful. She always looked beautiful, with curled caramel hair and big brown eyes, her skin perfectly tanned, her body carved from dieticians and life coaches and tennis clubs. She wasn't that much younger than his father, they had both been older when they had Alexander. But she kept herself in shape and for the extra trimmings—a face lift here, a tummy tuck there—her surgeons were as competent as they were pricey. His mother never spoke of the surgeries she had, and he didn’t think that she ever would. She wasn’t the kind of person to discuss her private business with other people like that. If he had been a girl—and his mother had never been shy about telling him that she’d always wanted a girl—Alexander was sure that he would have gone with her to all her appointments, whether they were to do Pilates or to get lipo.

  Unluckily, or maybe luckily, Alexander had been born a boy. Not a good enough boy. Far too girly to make it into his father’s business world, he had been deemed a sensitive soul, one who would one day make it as an “artist.” Alexander had written since he was a little boy, but he had never showed his efforts to anyone. With the way things were going, he didn’t think that he ever could.

  “Hello, darling,” his mother said, flashing him a smile. She was wearing her sunglasses, the big ones, so Alexander couldn’t see her eyes when she spoke. He couldn’t hear any edge to her voice, so things seemed to be going well, so far. There was a good chance that the conversation wouldn’t turn out nearly as well as he wanted it to. He bit his lower lip, waiting for his opportunity to talk. Maybe he would be able to talk her out of this. Maybe there was a way that he could talk some sanity into her.

  “Hi,” he said, smiling at her. Despite how uncertain he was feeling, his face was a picture of self-assurance. He couldn’t let his mother see a sign of a weakness. He knew that she would pounce.

  “Do you have a minute to talk?

  Alexander nodded, looking at the people who were still moving things out of his apartment. No, the pool house, not his apartment. Not anymore. He turned away from her and nodded, a thin smile on his face. “Well, it's not as if I have anywhere to go.”

  She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. “I know you're not happy about this.”

  Alexander sighed, rubbing the br
idge of his nose. “Well, yes, but there's nothing I can do. Is there?”

  She shook her head. Her voice was quiet, barely above a whisper when she spoke. “Your father and I are concerned about you. You should be finishing school. Instead, you're here.”

  Ah, yes, the ‘s’ word. Alexander’s parents hadn’t said it for a while, avoiding it as if it was going to give them a virus or something. It was just another reminder of how much of a failure he was, of how deep their disappointment went. Alexander closed his eyes, trying to ignore how tight his chest felt. He hated talking about this. “Yes, thank you. I'm well aware of my own situation, Mom.”

  She squeezed his shoulder again and Alexander resisted the temptation to shrug her off. “Look, honey,” she said. “I'm not saying it to upset you. We said that we would support you whatever your decision was, and your decision was to move here.”

  “I know, Mom,” Alexander said. “I was there.”

  She bit her lips. “Then I don’t understand how it’s possible that you don’t remember this part,” she replied.

  “What part?” he asked, though he knew exactly what was coming. Once again, he had fallen right into his mother’s trap.

  She turned to look at him, taking her sunglasses off and glaring at him. “We did say that you would have to abide under our rules when you lived under our roof.”

  Alexander looked back at her, his eyes equally as narrow. “I was happy to abide by those rules when I first moved in and you told me what they were,” he replied. “I just didn't realize your rules would be a pile of homophobic bullshit.”

  She shook her head. “I know it might seem like that to you right now, but that’s simply not the case.”

  Alexander scoffed. “Oh, please,” he said. “If Dad had walked in on me when I was balls deep in some girl, he would have high-fived me.”

  “Alexander.”

  “He would have!” Alexander replied. “Instead, he saw my date riding me and decided that I needed to stop being independent.”

  “Alexander!” she said, her tone sharp. “It’s not about who you’re having sex with. We’ve known you were gay since you were a child. It’s about the fact that you can’t do it responsibly.”

  “Excuse me?” Alexander asked. He knew he sounded more outraged than he should have. He had every reason to remain stoic. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? I know how to have gay sex, Mom.”

  “Great, I’m glad you’re so enlightened,” she said. “That’s information I needed to know. Alexander, you don’t do anything responsibly. You dropped out of college before you went back, you barely graduated from high school—what makes you think that we’d trust you to be responsible when it comes to sex?”

  Alexander shook his head, biting his lips so that he wouldn’t shout at her. “You’re being cruel,” he said, his voice quiet and about to crack. His parents had been accepting when he had come out—and he had done it by bringing a boyfriend home when he was only fourteen. They’d invited him to stay over for dinner and the fact that Alexander was gay had just become part of their lives, a permanent one. Or so he had thought. Then again, he had also thought that they had given him the pool house for privacy reasons and that had evidently been wrong. He’d been wrong about a lot of things.

  “This is temporary,” his mother said. “You’ll go back to your room and then go back to school when you can.”

  “Fine.” It wasn’t fine, it was anything but fine, but what could he possibly say? Nothing until he found a job, or his trust fund was released when he was twenty-five. Right, four more years living right next to his parents’ room. Even the very through of that put him on edge.

  “And I got you a tutor,” she said.

  “Excuse me?” Alexander replied.

  “We don’t want you living next to us until you’re twenty-five either,” she said, as if she could read his mind. “We want you to be successful. You need to graduate college.”

  “I’m aware of that too, Mom,” Alexander said. “I need me to graduate, too.”

  “That’s why I got you a tutor,” she said. “Look, the ones the school provided… they clearly weren’t working with your needs, okay?”

  Alexander said nothing, blinking a couple of times. He knew that she was right. He hated that he knew that she was right. He hated that she knew that he hated… oh, he couldn’t keep thinking about this. He needed to get out of this conversation somehow. The easiest way to acquiesce would be to tell her that he would meet with this tutor that she had found and stop talking to her.

  He wasn’t planning to spend a second more than he had to hanging around by the pool.

  “Fine,” he said. “Who is he?”

  “I think he’ll fit your needs,” his mom said. “He’s a very good tutor. Comes very highly recommended.”

  “Great,” Alexander said. “When do I have to meet him?”

  “Today,” his mom said. “In thirty minutes. In the house.”

  “He’s coming over here?”

  “Well, yes,” his mom said. “I did hire him, didn’t I?”

  Alexander rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You know that I can’t study in your house, Mom.”

  “Your house,” she said. “Our house.”

  “All these dead people are staring at me,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s weird and uncomfortable.”

  “Those are your relatives! The portraits are beautiful!”

  “Yeah, in a museum,” Alexander said. He took a breath and looked away from her. “It’s weird to have it in the house. Okay, you know what? I’m not going to judge your decoration choices. I know Grandma always gave you hell and you’re just doing what you can.”

  She watched him, saying nothing, her lips a straight line.

  “If he helps me graduate, I guess I don’t mind studying under him,” Alexander said. “I just wish you would have told me in advance so that I could get ready.”

  “There’s nothing to get ready for, Alexander,” she replied. “It’s just studying. I’m going to guess that you don’t have big plans for the day.”

  “Not anymore,” he said. “Who is this person?”

  “You’ll see,” she said, smiling sincerely for the first time since she had first approached him. “I think you’re going to learn a lot from him.”

  “Awesome,” Alexander said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “I can’t freakin’ wait.”

  He walked to the main house, gripping his phone so tightly that his knuckles were white.

  Chapter Two

  Josh knew that he shouldn’t have taken this job. He knew it the moment that he got the call from Mrs. Wright. He knew it the moment he called her back, and he knew it the moment he copy-pasted the address into his maps application. He knew exactly who this was for and he knew exactly what it meant.

  He especially knew it when he was standing in the cul-de-sac next to his car, facing the mansion. Josh wasn't sure exactly what constituted a mansion. He just knew that the house he was standing in front of fit the category. It was an American Colonial, with about twenty windows with white shutters and red double doors that were at least four times his size. He didn’t want to walk up to the door. If it had been entirely up to him, he would have turned around and driven back to his tiny apartment next to the Windham High School. He didn’t find it nearly as intimidating as he found this house.

  He swallowed, taking a couple of steps forward. He was aware that he was walking slowly, almost comically slowly, but he couldn’t help himself. He had crossed paths with the Wrights a couple of times before, and while it had never been pleasant, it hadn’t exactly been unpleasant either.

  Everything was different with Alexander Wright, though. Alexander, Josh thought. Not Al, not Alex, but Alexander. He had left the public high school during his senior year, but Josh had only heard about that. He had graduated by then and he was going to State, his top choice.

  He was there because he didn’t want to be too far away from his aging parents and his baby
sister. He needed to be able to drive back home from college and make sure that everything was fine. Now his baby sister was gearing herself up to go to college and their parents’ care would mostly be Josh’s purview.

  He was stalling. He wasn’t here to think about his own life and he certainly wasn’t here to feel sorry for himself. He only had so much time here. He took a couple of steps forward, swallowed, and then lifted his hand to knock.

  Before he could do that, someone opened the door.

  Josh looked at the man who had opened the door. Young and beautiful, he could only really see the outline of his face and he could already tell that he was gorgeous.

  Alexander had always been a good-looking boy, but that was all that he had been in high school. A boy, just a boy and nothing else. A cute one, but just a boy. When Josh had graduated, Alexander had started to grow into his features. Josh had always liked his smile, which was wide and perfect, and it only seemed to get more perfect as his face filled out. But Josh hadn’t been there for the rest of it. Even if he had been, he’d heard that he had transferred to Charlton before his junior year was out, which was quite a feat considering that his grades had never been that good. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He was a hard worker. He just had a hard time with some subjects and he didn’t seem to Josh like the persevering type. Of course, these were all things he’d heard secondhand from his sister. All the freshmen adored Alexander Wright. Personally, Josh didn’t really get it. Well, he hadn’t really gotten it, not until Alexander was standing in front of him in the darkened foyer of his house.

  Josh cleared his throat, trying to stop his thoughts from wandering somewhere thoroughly inappropriate. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Josh Trenton. I’m here for a lesson?”

  “Yes,” Alexander said. “Come in. My mother said to expect you.”

  Josh’s eyes widened. He had thought it was strange that it had been a parent who called to book a college level tutoring session, but a bunch of his students had helicopter parents. There was nothing outstanding or weird about that. The way he had said it, though, made Josh think that he didn’t want him there.