1 Chapter 1

1

I’ve seen a lot of naked guys online. Don’t believe me? Look at the facts. I’m a twenty-six year-old closeted gay man with undiagnosed social anxieties who still lives at home. I do have a job, though. I’m not that pathetic. I’m a sonographer at the hospital which actually pays well enough for me to rent a place of my own if I wasn’t so nervous about breaking out of my comfort zone.

So looking at naked men on my laptop? That’s been the model of my dating life for the past seven years.

But when I saw him…he might as well have been the first. I stared. A lot. I didn’t back out or click forward or scroll down or do anything that would erase him from my screen. It was like I had only just discovered how beautiful the male body could be.

He stood in roiling surf, the pinking sky behind him announcing the coming dawn. His sturdy body faced the horizon, arms thrown out in welcome, the smile he threw over his broad shoulder at the photographer radiating joy, but just as compelling as that were the scars that snaked down his right hip and thigh.

Though brown hair furred his legs, arms, and even the robust curve of his ass, the twisting scars were devoid of any texture but the badge of long-healed skin. The right calf was noticeably smaller than its mate, more evidence of whatever tragedy had caused the scars in the first place. I felt like a voyeur, staring at the imperfections, but I dismissed my unease. He obviously knew he was being photographed. He’d even stripped down for it.

This was a man who wanted to be seen.

No text accompanied the picture. It wasn’t a surprise. People shared other people’s pics all the time, and this one in particular hadn’t merited more than a few hundred likes when I stumbled across it. When I scrolled down through the list, however, an anonymous fan added a link with its note.

The dude from the Naked Remedy. He rocks.

The Naked Remedy. I’d never heard of that. A guick Google search brought it up first, though, so I clicked on it to get more information.

I’m not sure if my world changed when I saw the blog or when I first saw his picture. I suppose in the end it doesn’t really matter which was responsible. The important part was that nothing was the same after that.

The picture I’d seen was one of dozens of the Naked Remedy’s owner. According to his Aboutpage, his name was Fisher Almonte, and he lived in Orlando. By day, he worked in PR for one of the theme parks—he refused to name which one—while off-hours, he indulged in his modeling/photography. Contrary to the way it looked, it wasn’t a lark. He had very specific goals in mind by doing it.

I didn’t start out in PR. I come from a family of firefighters, and as soon as I graduated high school, I started doing what was necessary to follow in my dad’s and big brothers’ footsteps. It didn’t take long. I knew what I was doing. I worked hard. It all paid off.

The picture he posted of his firefighting days showed a slimmer version of the Fisher I’d first seen, caught in a headlock by somebody who was obviously an older brother. His grin was wild and carefree, his love of life emanating from every pore. As attractive as he was, I found myself wishing I knew this person in real life. He’d be fun to hang out with, always ready with a joke or a kind word. The kind of person this world needed a lot more of, frankly.

I’d been working full-time when I got caught out in a fire at a warehouse. I wish I could say I was stuck inside because I did something heroic, but that would be a lie. But don’t think I was there because I was an idiot, either. It was just one of those fluke accidents, where the fire decides it needs to remind mankind that it’s a beast not to be taken for granted. I got pinned under a burning wall until one of my buddies could get me out.

I stared at the photo of the skeletal building with rising horror. Hardly anything remained. How had he survived?

I was in the hospital for weeks. At first, there was talk about me losing the leg. That was the last thing I wanted. I still had hopes of getting back to the job, so I busted my ass in physical therapy, doing everything I was told and then some to save it. Winning was a double-edged sword, though. I had surgeries galore over the next year. Whatever it took to keep it and minimize the pain. At the end, I had my leg, but I lost my career, and with it, all sense of purpose that I ever had.