One year after a traumatic accident sends Robin Doyle into a tailspin of drunken depression and isolation, well-meaning Annalise decides it's high time she forces her best friend to confront these crippling emotions, and locks the pair alone in her house for one life-altering weekend.
From challenges of sobriety, grief, depression, and guilt to expressions of joy, hope, and love, this coming-of-age and coming-to-terms story is both brutally honest and heart-warming. Armed with nothing but devout friendship and the naive desire to do whatever it takes to drag her best friend out of the darkness, Annalise has no idea what awaits them.
LGBTQ+, Literary Fiction, Romance
Trigger Warning:
substance abuse, tragedy, grief, suicidal thoughts, alcoholism, mature language.
Gatlin Arlington has been keeping a dark secret about his best friend Taylor. It weighs heavy on him, even after Taylor took his own life. The Arlington family took Taylor in after his parents were killed in a boating accident, but as Taylor settled into the Arlington family and began to face his grief, he began to find outlets to relieve that grief.
Now, Gatlin is left behind and has to learn to live with the trauma he has survived while carrying the secret no one alive knows. And as people keep pressuring Gatlin to get back on the straight and narrow, he begins to feel like his world is spiraling out of control. Plagued by suicidal thoughts and depression, Gatlin has to fight if he wants to live.
But sometimes...the darkness is too thick to cut through.
**Trigger warning: alcohol, drugs, sex, suicide, abuse, and rape.