After December Read online

  After December

  L.A. Witt

  Contents

  About After December

  1. Tim

  2. Alex

  3. Tim

  4. Alex

  5. Tim

  6. Alex

  7. Tim

  8. Alex

  9. Tim

  10. Alex

  11. Tim

  12. Alex

  13. Tim

  14. Alex

  15. Tim

  16. Alex

  17. Tim

  18. Alex

  19. Tim

  20. Alex

  21. Tim

  22. Alex

  23. Tim

  24. Alex

  25. Tim

  26. Alex

  27. Tim

  28. Alex

  29. Tim

  30. Alex

  31. Tim

  32. Alex

  33. Tim

  34. Alex

  35. Tim

  36. Alex

  37. Tim

  38. Alex

  39. Tim

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright Information

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  After December

  First edition

  Copyright © 2022 L.A. Witt

  Edited by Robin Covington

  Cover Art by Lori Witt

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact L.A. Witt at [email protected]

  ISBN: 978-1-64230-132-8

  Print ISBN: 979-8-35346-661-1

  Created with Vellum

  About After December

  May-December love is sweet… but December doesn’t last forever.

  Tim Davis always knew he’d likely outlive his older husband. He just thought they’d have more time. He also never imagined that their final years together would revolve around a grueling and protracted battle with cancer. Eighteen months later, he’s still coming to terms with his loss and his new life. Where does he go from here?

  Alex Ouellette is drowning in grief and survivor’s guilt, constantly reliving the moment his world stopped. Then a friend suggests that a change of scenery and the company of men who’ve been through similar losses could do him some good. Alex is dubious, but he agrees to go.

  Neither man has high hopes for this widowers’ retreat. Grief and loneliness have been constant and unwelcome companions, though. At this point, they’ll try anything.

  The last thing either anticipates when they get there? A powerful spark of attraction.

  Friendship blooms. Then more. They bond over their grief, but also find joy, laughter, and a connection neither expected to ever feel again. As their broken worlds collide, both Tim and Alex finally have unexpected hope that there’s life after loss.

  But grief’s dark clouds are never far behind, and the past could be the one thing standing in the way of a happy future.

  * * *

  After December is a 120,000-word standalone gay romance novel.

  Chapter 1

  Tim

  Alex Ouellette walked into the cabin, and for the first time in over five hundred days, the sun came out.

  I should backtrack here. Tell you where I was and why. After all, light can’t be understood without shadow, and to truly grasp the sudden brightness in my world, you need to know about the dark.

  Support groups and the like had never been my cup of tea. I was sure there were people who benefitted from sitting in a circle and discussing their feelings with relative strangers, and more power to them. But that wasn’t me. My emotions poured out on canvas. They weren’t words. They were tone and value, form and texture. I had a friend who did the same through music; the only place either of us could cut open a vein and make sense of what came out was through art. I didn’t imagine others—even those going through the same thing—would gain much from watching me silently paint while tears rolled down my face. So no, group therapy wasn’t for me.

  At some point, though, the paint had stopped helping. Grief, anger, pain—it had all morphed into frustration because I couldn’t get them out of me and onto the canvas. Not in any meaningful way. Not in any way that brought relief or comfort or whatever else I’d hoped to find.

  A worried friend had gently suggested that perhaps I needed help. One-on-one therapy hadn’t done much except make me realize how woefully incapable I was of articulating my feelings through words, and the only art therapist my insurance covered had a six-month waiting list. Then my counselor told me about this place.

  “It’s not group therapy,” she’d insisted. “It’s spending some time in a beautiful, peaceful place with people who’ve been through what you have. People who can empathize and understand even when you can’t put it into words.”

  That still sounded like group therapy to me, but at this point, I was desperate. Grief had become an anchor chain, and though I knew there was no cutting it away and returning to anything like normal, maybe I could find a way to loosen it. Find a way to breathe.

  And that was how I’d ended up in this enormous cabin deep in the forested hills of West Virginia, both cautiously optimistic and stubbornly dubious about what I might take away from a ten-day retreat for widowers.

  The retreat didn’t formally start until tomorrow. Today, attendees were driving in and would be arriving throughout the day and evening. I’d been one of the first, pulling in around eleven o’clock in the morning since I’d only had to come down from Pittsburgh. Clancy, one of the two guys running the retreat, had already been here, and I’d met him along with Mike, Rick, and Javier. I’d settled into my assigned room, and when I’d come down, I’d met Hank and Jason.

  Through introductions and small talk, the theme of the retreat hung over us like a bad smell that no one wanted to acknowledge. No one mentioned the partners they’d lost. Some of the guys were chatty and seemed happy. Rick and Hank were both enthusiastic about a recent basketball game, and Hank managed a flicker of interest when the conversation turned to hockey. Javier didn’t say much. Jason barely seemed to be here at all. Me, I was somewhere in the middle—I could carry a conversation and even inject some enthusiasm, but I wondered the whole time if Rick and Hank were faking it as much as I was. Or if they’d discovered some secret to moving forward. They were here, after all, so they must still be struggling with their grief.

  But damn, they made it look easy.

  Our ages were all over the place, too. I’d envisioned a widower group full of men older than me. Hadn’t people been telling me for a year and a half how tragic it was to be just forty-seven—now forty-eight—and widowed? So, I’d expected a lot of guys closer to my late husband’s age—he’d been seventy when he’d passed.

  Clancy and Hank were both at least in their fifties. If I had to guess, Rick was around my age, give or take a handful of years. Javier was forty at the absolute oldest (I suspected closer to thirty-five), and Jason? Jesus. He looked about thirty, which, given grief’s tendency to age people prematurely, made me think he was in his mid-twenties. I had no idea how I’d have coped with this at his age. I wasn’t even coping with it at my age.

  More attendees arrived. Around the time Clancy and Lawrence, the other organizer, were setting up for dinner, another car pull
ed into the gravel lot out front.

  Rick craned his neck to look out the window, and he exhaled. “Oh, good.” To Hank, he said, “That new guy Mike was trying to bring—looks like he made it.”

  Hank also gave a relieved sigh. “Thank God. I didn’t think he was going to come.”

  From where I sat in one of the armchairs, I watched the exchange, but I didn’t ask.

  Hank rose and stepped out onto the porch. There were some footsteps and muffled conversation. Then the door opened again, and as Hank carried a suitcase inside, he was saying, “Mike, you want me to put these in your room? Alex, what about you?”

  “Nah, I got ‘em,” came another voice. Then, quieter—likely to someone else—he said, “It’ll be a change of pace. I promise it’ll do you some good.”

  Someone replied quietly, but I didn’t hear the words.

  The first of the two stepped in. Mike, I assumed, since he seemed to know a few people.

  Then the other newcomer, Alex, followed Mike inside, and my whole world came to an abrupt halt.

  He was probably in his thirties—maybe early forties—and white with sharp features, stunning hazel eyes, and a dusting of gray in his otherwise dark hair and the stubble on his sharp jaw. A black leather jacket sat on broad shoulders, and his jeans were just snug enough to make me think about things I hadn’t in a long, long time.

  It wasn’t love at first sight, this sudden zing he sent through me. The man was a complete stranger, after all. No, what hit me in that moment was an undeniable spark of attraction. An earth-stopping jolt of desire that was both familiar enough to recognize and beyond alien because I’d convinced myself I’d never know it again. Immediately on the heels of that spark came the overwhelming rush of another thing I’d believed was gone forever—hope.

  Holy shit. I didn’t know if this retreat’s program would do me a damn bit of good, but the trip was already well worth it for everything that happened the instant I laid eyes on Alex. Even if I never made more than a fleeting connection with him, it was encouraging to know I could feel attraction or desire again. That there could be light where there’d only been dark.

  The other men were making introductions, so I rose to do the same. As I offered my hand, our eyes met. He offered the faintest of smiles and I realized that I had all but forgotten what this retreat was for. The smile was like a beam of bright light that emphasized the shadow—specifically, the soul-crushing sadness in Alex’s beautiful, tired eyes.

  My rush of hope and attraction was immediately dashed by a nauseating wave of empathy. Alex was here. That meant he’d lost someone, too. Like me, he still wore a gold band on his left ring finger. Like me, he was grieving. He had lost someone, likely much too soon, given his age.

  In the not-too-distant past, I’d had a lot of moments of this isn’t fucking fair.

  This was one of those moments.

  I cleared my throat and managed a smile. “It’s good to meet you. I’m Tim.”

  “Alex,” he said quietly as we shook hands. “Nice to meet you, too.”

  Then the room was full of activity, and we were both swept in different directions. Mike whisked Alex away to get him settled into his room, and I joined the other guys in helping to get dinner arranged in the huge dining room. As we were all sitting down to eat at the long table, Mike and Alex returned, and they took the two empty seats across from me.

  Before I could think of a reason to strike up a conversation with the men around me—especially Alex—Clancy grabbed the room’s attention.

  “So,” he said. “I know the program doesn’t start until tomorrow, but this is a good time to break the ice and get to know each other a bit. How about we go around the table, and everyone can tell the group your name, where you’re from, and what you do for a living.”

  Alex froze, sudden horror breaking through the mask of sadness and fatigue.

  Mike nudged him with his shoulder and murmured something. “It’ll be fine,” was what I thought he said.

  Alex didn’t look convinced, and he didn’t look at Mike, Clancy, or anyone else. He just stared down as he spread some mayonnaise on the bread for his sandwich. I watched him so intently, so curiously, I almost missed when it was my turn to speak.

  “Oh. Um.” I cleared my throat and absently tugged at a piece of lettuce on my own sandwich. “I’m Tim. I’m from Pittsburgh, and I work as an artist, and also a content creator on YouTube with my daughter.”

  That prompted a murmur of curiosity. Even Alex peered at me through his lashes, some interest in his eyes. I responded with a smile.

  The introductions continued. When they reached Alex, he once again avoided eye contact with anyone. “I’m Alex,” he said quietly. “I’m, um… I’m also from Pittsburgh.” He glanced at me again before his eyes darted away. “Kind of between jobs right now, so I don’t really ‘do’ anything.” Some color rose in his cheeks.

  I cringed inwardly. God, no wonder he hadn’t been thrilled about the icebreaker. I wasn’t a mind reader, so I had no idea what his job situation actually was, but he clearly wasn’t happy about it. Or eager to share it.

  After a few more introductions, the icebreaker had done what it was meant to do—conversations started, a lot of which seemed to center on hometowns or jobs. About half of us were from Pittsburgh, others from various cities here in West Virginia, and two were from Ohio.

  Across from me, Mike picked up his Coke. “So, you’re an artist? What kind of art do you do?”

  I swallowed a bite of my sandwich and tried not to notice—or at least be conspicuous about noticing—that Alex was watching me curiously now. “A lot of portraits. Landscapes. Animals. A little of everything, honestly.”

  “Yeah?” Mike rested his forearms on the table’s edge. “So, digital? Or like actual paint?”

  I chuckled. “I’m old school—actual paint on canvas.” Or paper, or boards, or whatever else I felt like painting on, but I didn’t elaborate. No need to bore everyone to tears with a nervous ramble of all the available substrates I could apply pigment to.

  “Can we see some of your work?” he asked.

  “Sure.” I shrugged, took out my phone, and pulled up my Instagram. Then I slid it across the table.

  As Mike thumbed through the images, Alex leaned in and watched over his shoulder.

  “Wow.” Alex glanced up at me. “These are amazing.”

  I could usually take a compliment about my work, but for some reason, the praise from Alex made heat rise in my cheeks. “Thanks.”

  “And you do YouTube content, too?” Mike asked, still looking at photos.

  “Yeah.” I picked up my sandwich again. “My daughter and I have a channel for art tutorials and whatnot. She mostly does watercolor and gouache, plus some digital. I mainly do oil.”

  “I’ll have to get the link from you.” Mike slid my phone back across to me. “My sister-in-law is trying to teach herself to paint, and she’s been looking for some good tutorials.”

  “Sure. Yeah.” I pocketed my phone. “Madison’s got a lot more content on there than I do.” I gave a quiet, self-deprecating laugh. “She’s probably a better teacher, too.”

  At that, Alex chuckled, and fuck me, but I would have done almost anything to get him to smile like that again. I didn’t know if it was because he was so jaw-droppingly attractive or if I just felt such a camaraderie with that bone-deep sadness etched into the lines of his face. Hell, I didn’t even know if he was into men. What I did know, however, was that those brief smiles that broke through were sunbeams, and whether it was for his benefit, mine, or both, I wanted to bask in as many of them as possible.

  No, I couldn’t explain it. I couldn’t really make sense of it. Not in any rational way that hadn’t been shaped by the grief that had brought me here in the first place.

  I just knew that my world had been dark and cold for so long, I’d forgotten what warmth and light even felt like.

  Maybe this week, I could remember.

  Chapter 2 r />
  Alex

  I hated sleeping. Ironic, given that I’d spent my whole life wishing I could fall asleep and stay asleep like normal people did.

  Now I dreaded drifting off.

  That was when everything happened all over again. Every night, the tires squealed and the glass shattered. Every night, the seat belt broke my collarbone in the same heartbeat it saved my life.

  And every night, Jeff went still.

  Lying in the darkness of that unbearably silent room in the cabin, I wiped a hand over my face. Sweating. No surprise there.

  With a heavy sigh, I rubbed my aching left shoulder, then traced my fingertips over the edge of the plate that had held my broken clavicle together while it had healed. It was oddly comforting—a reminder that the bone and the incisions had healed. That time had gone by. The accident, while painfully fresh in my mind, was in the past. So was the physical pain, though my neck, back, and shoulder sometimes hurt.

  Everyone kept telling me the rest of the pain would fade eventually too.

  Some days, I itched for that to be true. Others, I was afraid it would be. That when my grief faded, it would take all the other feelings and memories with it. This was utter hell that I wouldn’t wish on anyone else, but I also didn’t want to lose the profound love I’d had for Jeff that made his loss so unbearable.