Cemetery Blues

Five years ago, Ethan Rayne's life was on the right track. In college, a member of the football team, on his way to a degree, with a boyfriend he cared for deeply and a bright future ahead of him, it was a far cry from the place he'd grown up, and the life he'd led in that dismal, falling down house. Then tragedy struck the person closest to him, his little sister, and despair, grief, and self-loathing led him to throw everything he'd worked for away. Bitter, struggling to get through his days while drowning his nights in alcohol, Ethan has been on the fast track to self-destruction ever since they lay his sister's body in the ground. Personally, he's alright with that; feels he more than deserves to end up in a hole right beside her, and truth be told, is doing his damndest to end up there. Enter Byron Walters. Slamming into the stumbling drunk shambling up the block should have been a momentary disruption of his night, only the drunk turned out to be Ethan Rayne, former college football teammate, but more than that, the man who'd broken Byron's heart when he'd slipped away after a night of passion, never to be heard from again. By all accounts, Byron should hate him, has hated him for years. Only as the truth is revealed, and Ethan's reason for abandoning everything and everyone becomes clear, Byron can't help but want to help him. As Byron comes to realize the burden Ethan is carrying, he also comes to discover just how much love he still has for the other man. Can he help Ethan save himself, or will he allow his former teammate to drag them both down a path of no return?