The Year We Stopped Pretending: A Friends-to-Lovers Bisexual Awakening MM Romance

Colin Ward has spent most of his life being good at the life everyone expected him to want.

Good husband. Good father. Good history teacher. Good best friend to Mateo Silva—the man across the street who's been beside him since eighth grade and whom Colin has absolutely, definitely never spent too much time looking at.

Now they're both divorced, their teenage sons have hijacked their separate summer plans, and one last family trip to the Outer Banks has put Colin and Mateo in the same car, the same beach house, and far too often, the same bed.

Mateo has loved Colin for longer than he's willing to admit. He learned years ago how to survive on stolen looks, accidental touches, and whatever pieces of Colin he was allowed to have.

He's done surviving that way.

One storm. One kiss. One brutally honest rule: sober, daylight, out loud.

Once Colin finally stops pretending, twenty-five years of wanting catches fire fast. But wanting Mateo in a beach house is one thing. Choosing him where their sons, ex-wives, families, and hometown can see is another.

And if Colin retreats into the safe life he's always known, this time Mateo might finally walk away.

THE YEAR WE STOPPED PRETENDING is a high-heat contemporary MM romance featuring lifelong best friends, divorced dads, bisexual awakening, forced proximity, only one bed, decades of pining, family drama, explicit spice, and a hard-earned HEA.