1 Chapter 1

1

No matter how many times Jett Walker refreshed the window, the information page for the Jefferson High School Class of ‘84’s 30thReunion stayed the same. It wasn’t the RSVP list that scrolled below the date and location information that captured his attention. It was the announcement that flashed across the top of the screen.

Special performance by our very own Trev Chambers as he reunites Godless Crisis for this one amazing night!

Trev Chambers. Jett hadn’t thought of that name in, well, thirty years. Okay, not quite thirty, since Trev’s band had hit the billboards and achieved their one-hit wonder status two years after they’d graduated. A long time, nonetheless. In high school, the only thing they’d had in common were their honors classes. They sat in different parts of the room, had different sets of friends, did different activities after school.

Meaning Jett hit the field while Trev flipped off anything institution-related and disappeared until the first bell the following day.

Jett didn’t give a fuck about the reunion. He’d been deleting the notifications for the past six months, ever since Megan Cahill-Lau started sending out the invitations and poking people on Facebook to look for those faces that seemed to have dropped off the grid. He hadn’t even been back to Louisville in over a decade, not since his ex-wife Aubrey had relocated to Dallas with her new husband. There was no point. After the divorce, he’d moved to New York for a reason, the same reason he had no desire to see ninety percent of the people he’d gone to high school with

They knew him as Jett Walker, football star.

None of them knew he’d been a world-class liar, pretending to be straight because the alternative scared the living shit out of him. It wasn’t until he’d tried being married for a decade that he realized he was more terrified of spending the rest of his life as a phony.

The only reason he’d logged into the reunion site at all was because Megan had emailed everyone she had contact information for, regardless of whether they were attending or not, bragging about an unprecedented surprise.

Trev showing up at the reunion and singing with the band that had made him a national name for at least a couple months in 1986, definitely counted as both.

With a sigh, Jett leaned back in his chair and scrubbed his hand over his head. What the hell was he going to do? He had zero desire to fake socializing with any of those people, because while he might be out now, nobody back in Kentucky knew.

But Trev Chambers.Shit. If ever there was an example of someone living his truth, it was Trev. He had been out in high school, the first gay person Jett had ever been aware of. He was also the first in their conservative corner of Louisville to embrace the punk movement, shaving most of his black hair except for one long shock in front he dyed a neon pink, wearing eyeliner that brightened his blue eyes even more, piercing his ears. Jett had looked at him more than once and wondered if he’d pierced anything else hidden out of sight, which didn’t help his fantasies when Trev would strut down the aisle wearing Levi’s so frayed in the ass they revealed the bright red underwear he wore beneath them.

Jett had admired him, envied him, wanted him more than anyone else then and every day since

And now Trev was going to be in Louisville. Jett had a time and a place he could see the man one more time.

The question was…What was he going to do about it?

His ringing phone put a halt to his mental debate. Especially when he saw the caller ID and realized that once again, Trev Chambers had completely thrown him off his game.

“Don’t tell me,” he said, rising and grabbing his jacket. “I know I’m late.”

“Then why are you there and not here?” Tatum hissed. Glasses clinked in the background, which meant she was at the restaurant. “Dad’s already on his second beer.”

“I’m sorry.” And he was. Tatum rarely asked for favors. When she’d asked him to convince her father not to throw his money away in some new scheme, he’d agreed without hesitating. “Give me five minutes.”

“If he starts nagging me again about my biological clock winding down—”

“He won’t have the chance,” Jett promised. “I’m going to be right there.”

Though he knew his knees would hate him in the morning, he opted for the stairs instead of waiting around for one of the elevators, jogging down them in record time and hitting the street with two minutes to spare. He’d deliberately told Tatum to make the lunch reservation for the steakhouse across from his office to save having to navigate Manhattan traffic. All he had to do was dart between a line of cars waiting at the red.