RELEASE TOUR – The Embrace of Evergreen by Rayne Hawthorne
One man who’s desperately holding on to the belief that love exists, and another who’s been hurt enough to give up on the idea completely. Both cling to hope no matter how dangerous that is.
Length: 340 pages (approx)
Series: Unexpected Love, book 2
Prior Reading: recommended
Genre: contemporary, slight paranormal elements
Tropes: found family, hurt comfort, slow burn, demi-rep, friends to lovers, caretaking
Trigger/Content Warnings: loss and grief
Ethan
I’ve been in love before. It’s a fact that I cling to with frighteningly intense desperation as I try to convince myself that I’m normal. Ok, so I’ve only been in love once, but I know that for at least one brief, shining moment, the world and everything in it felt like magic. I know love exists. I know it does, because when I’m lying in bed alone at night, I can still feel it. I know deep in my soul that I’m capable of love. I have to be.
I don’t know why I continue to subject my broken, hollowed out shell of a heart to the idea of falling in love again, but I don’t have it in me to quit just yet. I’ll give it one more try. One more attempt to build a real life for myself before giving up, because some part of me is still holding on to hope, no matter how dangerous that is.
Blue
Love and romance aren’t for me. When I was young and naïve I dreamed of them, just like everyone else I suppose. Then I fell in love, only to end up hurt. I fell in love again, only to get hurt again. Eventually, I learned my lesson. Love, romantic love at least, isn’t usually real, and when it is, it never lasts. Every time I’ve fallen it’s been fast and hard, and every time I’ve ended up patching the broken, tattered pieces of my body and soul back together on my own. Love and I just aren’t compatible.
So why can’t I stop watching the beautiful auburn-haired man that’s recently become a regular at the coffee shop? I know what the result of indulging this hormone induced fascination will be. I’ll end up hurt, and alone, and wondering yet again how something that once seemed so good could have gone so desperately wrong.
The Embrace of Evergreen is a 90000 word, MM, slow burn, contemporary romance filled with loss, found family, longing, forest hikes, glass blowing, sweet road trips with only one bed, friends to lovers, demi-rep, quirky best friends, and of course a HEA. There is also just the tiniest bit of unexplained magic that is deliberately open to reader interpretation.
EXCERPT:
“Yes, you can kiss me Ethan. You can kiss me now and tomorrow and the tomorrow after that. I have thought about begging you to kiss me for days and weeks and months. Even just once, just one kiss so I can at least know what it’s like to have someone I want so much want me back. I’ve wanted you to kiss me even if it wasn’t real for you because then I could pretend for a moment. I could pretend there might be a chance that one day if I just held on to the excruciating hope that maybe I could somehow be enough for you, that one day it might happen. You can kiss me, Ethan. You can kiss me always.”
There is only the sound of his laugh and the heat of his knee and calf pressed up against mine as we pick at fries and drink our second and third rounds of beer inside our tie-dyed blanket fort. The gorgeous view of the water no longer matters, nor do the meticulously restored wooden boats that sail past or the sound of the waves and the gulls and the conversations around us. There is only Blue. I’ve never felt like this with anyone. Not on a date, not in bed. Not since Jordyn. And surely the warmth that’s rushing through my veins and pooling in my belly is just the result of more alcohol than I normally indulge in.
This is the closest we’ve ever been, and I can’t help the way I’m mesmerized by the way a few light-tan freckles are dusted across his pale skin. I want to count them or brush my lips across them to see if he shudders at my touch
https://geni.us/EvergreenTour
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Rayne writes emotionally charged, character-driven spicy queer stories.
After decades working in mental health, their goal is to tell queer adult love stories that include realistic, flawed characters who experience the same emotional obstacles and physical and mental health struggles that affect us all at times while offering the romance and happy endings we all long for.
insta @raynehawthornewrites
bluesky @raynehawthorne.bsky.social
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