Healing in the Hills
August Blaze
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· Steam/Spice level: 3 of 5
Open door [?]
· 0 ratings · 137 pages · Published: 16 Aug 2025
AURELIAN JAMIE
The longer Aurelian Jamie lives, the more he has to regret. From not spending just a bit more time with his late, loving parents, through not advising his children to stand their ground just a bit more often than he had, to almost having cheated on his wife merely a year after she cut her own affair short and gave him a chance to make things work. The fifty-five years old engineering professor has many things he cannot be proud of.
Alas, there is no way to turn back time. No way to go back and set boundaries when he should have set them. No way to go back and try to listen instead of telling others to just lie there and take it. No way to go back and ask her to skip that one shift. No way to go back to try and make her not fall for that man at all. No way to reclaim the life he had been working towards since his mid-twenties. And no way to go back and try to seize the life he got a chance at in his early forties.
Both his wife and his shameful, male, non-physical fling are gone from his life. Or so Aurelian thinks. Until, one day, he gets an email. An email telling him he’d been chosen for a government project. A classified project, in a quiet valley, under the supervision of… the man he’d trained his own mind to forget.
Aurelian doesn’t ask why. Or how. Or what for. He packs up, he wakes up before the sunrise, and he makes the trip. He heads straight for the facility… But not before he buys a small bouquet of pansies. He hopes they will be enough. Enough to at least let him see if he could have been enough, too.
LUCAS EDMUND DARCY
Early thirties. Blonde hair. Blue eyes, shining like the edge of a diamond blade. Pale skin, and no desire to spend time in the sun. A salary well into the six digits. A financial advisor hired to manage the stocks. His own apartment. His own car… And a ridiculously expensive vacation home in the middle of nowhere. Maybe that last investment wasn’t so smart, after all.
Lucas Edmund Darcy has no use for this house in the middle of nowhere. No matter how beautiful said nowhere is. But, just like with most tools, you may not find a use for some things until you have them. When the blonde man is to manage yet another government research project, located conveniently close to his piece of real estate, and he has the chance to offer an opportunity to get away and earn a bit more to his former crush… Lucas doesn’t think twice.
Despite the lingering sentiment, however, Lucas doesn’t want to reconnect. He doesn't want to risk finding out the most beautiful feelings in his life weren’t mutual, even in the heat of the moment. He wishes his former professor well. But he still remembers who this man is. This man who first made assumptions about his past, and then blamed Lucas for having been hurt by him due to these assumptions. What’s done is done, they both made mistakes, and now, Lucas plans to just avoid and ignore him.
Until the older man shows up at his door. With a slightly squished bouquet of pansies in one hand.
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Tagged as:
- workplace/office 1
- gay romance 1
- queer romance 1
- contemporary 1
- angst 1
- older/mature 1
- childfree 1
- hurt/comfort 1
- second chances 1
- boss & employee 1
- small town 1
- rich hero 1
- age gap 1
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- content warnings
- past abuse 1
- past child abuse 1
- past child neglect 1
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- male pov 1
- dual pov 1
- third person pov 1
