Maggie Blackbird

Book Hooks is a weekly meme hosted by Marketing for Romance Writers as part of the MFRW Authors Blog. Readers have the chance to jump from one author to another who share hooks from their current WIP (work in progress) or any previously published book.

For this week’s edition of Book Hooks, I give you a teaser from Two Princes, book one in the When We Were Young series.

To win over the chief’s haughty son, a drug-dealing punk from a dysfunctional family must risk the only two things he has:  his reputation and freedom.

Blurb:  Billy Redsky, a rebellious punk who loves art and nature, is saddled with a welfare-leeching, alcoholic mother and criminal older brother who are the joke of their Ojibway community.  Sick and tired of being perceived as a loser, Billy deals drugs for his older brother to earn quick money.  He hopes if he buys a dirt bike, he’ll finally impress the chief’s popular and aloof son, René Oshawee.

When the two are forced to serve detention together, a friendship begins to bloom, but much to Billy’s frustration, René keeps putting him on ice. To make his biggest dream come true if he finally wants to call René his own, Billy must make a huge decision that could cost him everything.

Genre(s):  Multicultural, m/m contemporary romance, LGBT, young adult.
Heat Rating: Level 1
Publication Date:  June 12, 2020
Publisher:  Devine Destinies

Purchase at Devine Destinies

“What’s up?” René stared off at a poster. For once he wasn’t styled to kill. Sweatpants, a t-shirt, and white boring socks.

“What were you doing?” Billy pointed at the closed laptop.

“Was checking out the ‘net.”

“I went to see you at work. They said you called in sick.”

“Yeah…” René reached for a pen on the desk and ran his thumb over the cap. “I needed a day to veg. I was pushing it. Rehearsal, studying, and stuff.”

“I guess so. Last night… look…” Fuck it, Billy would spit out what he had to say. “What’s going on? You blew me off.”

René kept his feet planted in the carpet and swiveled the chair side to side. He glanced down at the pen he capped and recapped. “I’ve been… I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”

Great, when René thought too much, bad news happened for Billy. “Thinking about what?”

“I… I don’t…” René stared at another poster. He kept uncapping and recapping the pen and swiveling the chair continuously. “I don’t think it’s gonna work, y’know? I’d rather we be friends. Nothing more.”

A huge smack of disbelief whacked Billy’s face, and a mighty fist of shock punched his gut deep into his back. A crackle of pain seeped from his heart. The crackle became an enormous crevice, splitting him in half. He scrambled from the loveseat and dashed for the chair where René still kept doing his stupid swiveling.

“Wh-what?” Billy managed to eke out. “No… no… no…” He grasped the arm of the chair to stop René. “You can’t be serious? What the… what’d I do? What’d I do?”

A horrific lump climbed up his throat. His insides pinched bad enough to hurt, as if needles were being shoved into him.

“I… I just think we should be friends, okay?” Being forced to sit still, René kept uncapping and recapping the pen, but at least he gazed up instead of away.

“Wh-why? You owe me an answer.” Billy’s throat kept constricting. A fragment of heat erupted beneath his skin.

“I thought good and hard about it. You’re… you’re making new friends. Great friends. You guys have some awesome chicks wanting to hang. Don’t you know how bad I wanted that for myself?” René directed the pen cap at his chest. “You can be normal. You can be—”

“Normal?” Billy gasped. His hands shook, and he set them on René’s shoulders. “What the hell is normal? I don’t wanna be normal. I’ve never been normal. Nothing’s been normal about my life. I don’t want anybody but you. All I have is you.”

Be on the lookout for book three, Knight Moves, in the When We Were Young series, releasing April 16, 2021.

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