Falling for the Geek Read online

  Falling for the Geek

  His Best Friend’s Brother

  R. Cayden

  Copyright © 2020 by R. Cayden

  All rights reserved.

  Cover by Black Jazz Design

  Beta reading by Megan Dischinger, LesCourt Author Services

  Editing by MA Hinkle, LesCourt Author Services

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Synopsis

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by R. Cayden

  Synopsis

  My high school crush, my older brother’s best friend. Now Cass is back to crash my summer alone.

  Shawn

  When I was a kid, I had the biggest crush on Cass.

  He was broody, with these beautiful eyes. A troublemaker who was infinitely cooler than I would ever be.

  Ten years later, I definitely didn’t expect to see him standing at the front door of my family’s house in the Kentucky woods, tatted up and even hotter.

  I was supposed to have the summer to myself and my geeky astronomy project, but my brother hired his old friend to do a massive carpentry project on the house.

  Just because Cass is straight doesn’t make it any easier to keep my eyes off him.

  He was always the man I wanted. I just never dared believe a couple opposites like us could attract.

  Falling for the Geek is a sweet and steamy M/M romance about an adorkable guy who gets a second chance with the bad boy he always dreamed of. It features stargazing, secret hookups, and discovery for both men on their way to an HEA. Enjoy!

  Chapter One

  Shawn

  There’s nothing quite like the shock of your high school crush busting through the front door. I just wished I hadn’t been running around in a little pink pair of boxer briefs when it happened.

  Like, could I have chosen a more embarrassing way to see Cass again after all those years? What an absolute nightmare.

  The evening before, everything had been peaceful as I steered my old Subaru down the winding Appalachian road. The trees were so lush and full, they held the evening rain in their branches like clouds, and I couldn’t have been happier as I headed toward a quiet, relaxing summer alone. I looked for the familiar bend that led to my grandma’s old house, then turned at the tilting wooden post, the only thing left from an old horse fence.

  Rolling slowly down the dirt road, I grabbed my phone from the console, then called up my best friend, Audrey. “I made it,” I said brightly. “And right at sunset, too.”

  “With how many books you packed, I’m still surprised the car could haul it up those hills.”

  “This guy?” I joked. “We’ve been together since high school. We can go anywhere.” I reached out and patted the dashboard, and the car lurched across a hole in the road. “Anyway, just wanted to let you know I’m here safe!”

  “Enjoy the peace and quiet, Shawn. And promise me you’ll call if you get lonely out there.”

  “I promise I will.”

  “I mean it,” Audrey stressed. “We both know you’d disappear into the library forever if I didn’t come and drag you out for a cup of coffee.”

  “You work in the library,” I pointed out.

  Audrey sighed. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be good, and I promise to call soon.”

  I parked the car and hopped out. The old two-story farmhouse still looked just as good as it did in my memory. Big square windows framed either side of the covered porch, and while the glass needed cleaning and the siding begged for a coat of white paint, the silver light of dusk made the house shine. The brick chimney sticking out the top filled me with a cozy, satisfied warmth. I paused and inhaled the familiar scent of the budding spring woods, sweet and earthy. Perched at the top of the hill, Grandma’s house received plenty of light during the day. And although the woods had reclaimed the farming land years ago, the yard stretched out in the rear, clearing a path toward my grandma’s old art studio.

  Best of all, though, was the sky. Perfect stargazing. Ever since I was a kid, these were the stars that captured my imagination, stunning me with their beauty and igniting my curiosity. I was only a tiny part of a massive universe, and it sent shivers across my skin to think about my place in relation to it all. For just a moment, I stood there, eyes pointed upward as I found myself again in the splash of glittering light.

  Audrey understood how much I cared about that place. Even if she always tried to drag me back down to earth, she understood why those stars were so important to me and worth putting everything else in my life on hold for.

  Inside the house, I flicked on a light and was glad to see everything in working order. Grandma died a few years ago, and my mother, my brother, and I had all found we unwilling to sell the place. There were just too many good memories there. Instead, each of us used it as a retreat once or twice a year, as well as spending the holidays there together, and we paid a local guy to do upkeep while we were away. I quickly tossed my bag on the couch, scuffled across the wooden floor, and hit the bathroom to relieve myself.

  Grandma would love that I was spending the summer in Kentucky, and she would especially love what I planned to do with my time. I was fresh off completing a master’s degree in Astronomy, which had consumed the past three years of my life. I’d devoted myself to the studies, which required a depressing amount of math, even though my brain wasn’t naturally gifted at scientific reasoning.

  But I threw myself into the grueling work anyway and forced my tired head to understand the concepts, and I did it all with a big grin on my face, too. I never got high scores, but I wasn’t trying to run NASA or anything. All I cared was that I was going to spend the rest of my life thinking about the stars and the mysteries of the universe. If I could contribute in even a tiny way to answering the questions I started asking as a lonely, daydreaming kid, I’d be satisfied with my life.

  Sentimental, I know. Just like Grandma was. When I was growing up, I wasn’t the happiest kid in the world, but she would always welcome me for a visit, share her paintings with me, and encourage my stargazing. What most everyone saw as wasting time, she saw as curiosity that should be encouraged, and she was always happy to sit there with me and just gaze.

  Now, with my degree in hand, I decided to give myself one shot to pursue one of my secret dreams. I wasn’t going to rush off to some laboratory job like the rest of my graduating class but to take one summer in the Appalachians and to actually follow my heart.

  I stepped outside again to get the groceries I’d grabbed on the way, then stopped to look at the moon, just starting to rise as a tiny sliver. I cast my eyes around the sky until I caught Venus, glowing bright and close to the horizon.

  Audrey suggested one time that I let myself get lost in the sky so I wouldn’t hav
e to face the fact that I was missing romance in my actual life, but I disagreed. When I looked out over the galaxy and thought about my tiny place in it all, I didn’t feel like I was hiding from anything. I felt like I was right there, seeing it all with clear eyes.

  She was right about the lack of a love life, though. I couldn’t deny that.

  It’s not that people didn’t like me. I was good-natured, even if I was a little shy and occasionally awkward. But I knew I was cute, in a way, with my big eyes and nervous hands.

  It was just that the few times I had tried to date someone, it had fallen flat pretty much from the start. I wanted to wait and be patient, like how boyfriends are supposed to come along when you least expect it, but as the years passed, still, no one ever aligned with me.

  Eventually, I kind of stopped looking.

  I dropped the bag of groceries on the old linoleum counter. The ceilings throughout the house were high and lined with old cedar, and the walls were still covered with framed family photos and paintings of the hillsides by Grandma. The family had all added our own touches to the house, too, like some clay flowerpots Mom had made and the record player my brother Leo and I had dragged to the house last year.

  I found the bottle of red I had picked up from the gas station and popped the cork with a grin. Four months alone wouldn’t bring a boyfriend, that was obvious. But it did give me the chance to write my book, a book I’d been thinking about for years. I wanted to tell the story of the stars and to share the wonder they inspired in me with other people. Scientists had figured out so much about our universe in recent years, but most people still had the same understanding that they’d learned in high school science. I had taken in all this information at school, and now it was zipping around in my head and banging against my skull, demanding to be let out and shared with someone else. And for some reason, the way my heart sang when I looked at the stars convinced me that I could tell that story and make it sparkle for people who weren’t experts.

  Profound fascination, awe-inspiring beauty—all the emotions bubbling inside of me could find a home in the book.

  Not that I expected anyone else to really care. Even if I could get a publisher interested, astronomy wasn’t thrilling to the average person. But sometimes, I felt that I would be happy if I had even one person who bothered to read my book. Just so long as I could write it, and share it with someone, I thought I would be satisfied.

  Sighing, I took my wine into the living room. I sipped as I unloaded my bag, setting up a few books and notepads on the coffee table. I rolled out a star map on the floor, then wandered over to flip an old David Bowie album on the record player. I fully intended to sprawl out across every inch of the house. After living in a small studio in Atlanta for three years, I wanted to pin my notes on every wall, blast my music, and pour my heart onto the page without a thing to distract me.

  I knew it was dorky, but I stopped caring about that a long time ago. My brother Leo was the cool, outgoing type. He got all the hot men, and if I ever needed to feel vicariously hip, I just had to call him up and listen to him talk about his cool new public relations firm.

  I set my wine on the table, then scratched the back of my head. I was a little tired, but there was no reason I couldn’t get started on setting up the house that night. It was what I had come there to do, after all.

  And so, until well past midnight, I did exactly that. I grabbed my telescope from the back of the car, carried it carefully to the back porch, and indulged in a quick peek at the stars. For a few hours, I wandered back and forth, hauling books and papers from the car and then messing with my telescope a little more. I pinned notes to the wall, turned the living room into a mini library, and generally made a big, geeky mess of the place.

  At three in the morning, looking around my new workspace with a satisfied hum, I finally hauled myself up the stairs and collapsed in bed.

  The ring of my cell pulled me from a deep sleep. I rolled out of bed with a groan, grabbed my glasses, and then shuffled downstairs in my boxer briefs, groggy and confused. My brother Leo’s name was blipping on the screen.

  “Shawn, you’re there! How’s the house?”

  I yawned. “Fine,” I answered, casting my gaze across the transformation I had completed the night before. Little notes of inspiration greeted me, stuck to the doorframe and declaring You got this! and Go Shawn go! “You’ll have to come visit while I’m here, if you can spare the vacation days.”

  My older brother and I were good friends, even if we both kept ourselves so busy we didn’t get to visit much. When Leo became a teenager, he went off the rails a little, and we drifted apart for a few years. After I came out of the closet at seventeen, though, we reconnected, and over the years, we’ve come to appreciate each other in new ways.

  I was pretty damn lucky to have an older gay brother who could take me under his wing. I just wished some of his charm and confidence had worn off on me, too.

  “Why are you calling me in the morning, anyway?” I asked, then found my laptop on the dining room table. I flipped on some recordings of deep space, figuring the strange sounds would be a good way to start my first day writing. “You’re usually busy at work already.”

  “Right. Well, Shawn, here’s the thing.” Leo sighed, and I tensed, aware that something might be wrong. “You remember Cass?”

  I stopped at the kitchen counter, my heart in my throat. “Yeah, of course,” I said, as though I could possibly forget Cass, and the way he moved his hips, and that soft, troubled smile that always played on his lips. He’d been Leo’s best friend during his rocky years in high school, and the two of them had gotten into all kinds of trouble together. They ran off to the city on the weekends and smoked weed in the garage and generally drove my mom up the wall.

  But Cass? The hottest guy I have seen in my entire life, still to this day?

  He saved me.

  The first time it happened, when I was fourteen, he’d turned down the hallway right when a couple bullies came for me, knocking my bag out of my hands and calling me a queer. Some of the kids had always teased me for being shy and a little effeminate, a fact that only made me shyer, but that day was the first time they’d come for me physically. Before I could even think, Cass had shoved one of them up against the locker with a growl. He tossed the other bully to the ground. Then the two guys ran away, scared shitless. I was freaking out just standing there, but he patted me on the back, offered me an easy smile, and walked me to my next class.

  We barely talked, but for the next two years, anytime someone tried to give me shit, Cass was there to stare them down.

  I was definitely grateful, but at the time, it felt humiliating. You want to look cool and strong in front of your crush, after all, not like a scared dweeb who needs defending.

  And Cass earned himself the biggest, most heart-fluttering crush of all time.

  “What’s new with Cass?” I asked, my voice almost breaking. “He’s still drumming for that band?”

  “He’s okay. Actually, you’ll see him pretty soon.”

  My stomach flipped. “I’ll see him? When?”

  “Please don’t be upset, Shawn, but with everything going on with my business, I kind of forgot you were going to be at Grandma’s house this summer.”

  I stared at the tile floor. “Okay…”

  “Cass called me last week, looking for work. I remembered how we’d been wanting to remodel the old art studio behind the house and thought it would be a perfect surprise for Mom.”

  My brain started spinning. I set the empty glass on the counter, then peered out the back window in the direction of the studio, which was hidden behind the trees. “That would be a nice surprise,” I said cautiously.

  “I hope you don’t mind, then! I already told Cass it would be okay, and he doesn’t have anywhere else lined up to stay. Thanks for understanding, Shawn.”

  “Wait, what?” I yelped. “Cass is coming to remodel the studio this summer?”

  “More like th
is morning.”

  “This morning!” I snatched one of the inspirational sticky notes from the wall, crumpling it in my hand. “Leo, what?”

  “Aw, crap, Shawn, I’m sorry, I’m getting another call that I need to take. Thanks for being so understanding!”

  The line went dead. I stood there, the phone hanging limply in my hand. The sounds of deep space echoed through the house, howling like electric wind. I looked at the stacks of old books and the star maps I had pinned to the walls and then to the picture of the astronomer Carl Sagan that I had cut out from a magazine and shoved in an old frame.

  I looked down at myself, naked except for a pair of pink boxer briefs, as short and tight as they came.

  “Shit,” I whispered.

  I scrambled for a cardboard box, desperate to hide everything away. I had embarrassed myself in front of Cass enough times for one life. But before I could even cross to the living room, a loud knock on the front door sent a shock down my spine.

  Definitely not the way I wanted this high school reunion to begin.

  Chapter Two

  Cass

  Idling my truck on a back-country road, I squinted at a post that was sticking out of the ground, then looked back at the directions I’d written out.

  Was that an old horse fence post? How the hell was I supposed to know?