Marked by Grief

Six months ago, Kit lost his brother to a drunk driver. Now, feeling alone and like everyone has left him behind, he struggles to even get out of bed. He's barely eating, his parents are strangers and worst of all the man that he loves, his brother's best friend, hasn't spoken to him since the funeral.

Kit turned off the television with an angry snarl. He supposed he should be happy the man responsible for his brother's death was dead. But he'd taken the coward's way out like Kit expected he might. While the court had been watching the prosecutor as he'd flashed images of Bear, finalizing his image as the "All-American Boy Next Door" in the minds of the jurors, Kit had been watching the man who had been too stupid to realize he'd been drunk that night. And he'd seen the regret in that haggard face. But Kit hadn't cared. He remembered being glad the man who had murdered his brother was suffering. Six months to the day of the accident, the sentence had been announced. The man would rot for twenty-five years. Bear was only twenty-four on the night they'd been hit from behind as they walked home. And Kit had held onto that anger, clutching it tightly to his chest, for six whole months. He'd breathed in the hatred, living on it when food lost all meaning, when sleep was just a nightmarish string of flashbacks. And he could have existed on it for years to come. Twenty-five to be precise. But the coward had stolen that from him as well.

Jason always thought that he'd have time to tell Kit how he felt someday, when the younger man might be ready to handle Jason's sexual dominance. Bear's death changed all of that. He was giving Kit time to heal but couldn't have imagined how wrong he was.

When a broken Kit comes back into Jason's life, will love be enough to heal them both?