Wrong Brother Right Bed

A High-Heat MM Bi-Awakening Romance • by Jace Wilder

📖 Free with Kindle Unlimited

Pairing: MM

Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno

Tropes: Best Friend’s Brother, Bi Awakening, Forbidden Romance, Praise Kink, Roommates to Lovers, Forced Proximity, Age Gap, Coming Out, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort

He moved in to crash. He stayed to figure out who he actually was.

Jamie Sullivan’s six-year engagement just imploded two months before the wedding. He needs a place to crash. His best friend Connor offers up the spare room at his older brother’s apartment — and Jamie, who has known Marc Donovan for ten years without ever looking at him, says yes.

Marc is thirty-two. Confident. Openly gay. The kind of man who pours you whiskey instead of asking what’s wrong, who cooks dinner without making it a thing, who looks at you across his kitchen on the third morning and says I’m sorry about Rachel like an adult, like a person, like someone who actually sees you. Jamie has never been seen this way. By anyone. In his entire life.

Marc has been burned by exactly this before. His last serious ex spent two years “figuring out his sexuality” with Marc as a baseline before going back to women. Marc is not doing that again. Marc is not doing that again. Except Jamie is honest, and terrified, and looking at him like he’s drowning, and the apartment is small, and the kitchen is smaller, and Marc’s little brother once made Jamie swear, drunk, at a bar, to stay away from Marc’s love life forever.

Jamie’s about to break that promise in every possible way.

You’ll love this if you enjoy:

Bi-awakening done with patience and emotional honesty
Best friend’s older brother forbidden tension turned all the way up
Praise kink as a love language — not a gimmick
A 32-year-old architect who writes the rules at 5:30 AM
Forced proximity in a small apartment with thin walls
Slow burn that detonates around chapter 13 and never lets up
A reverse-power scene that earns itself by chapter 26
Found family with an Italian mother who knows before anyone says a word
Guaranteed HEA with on-page wedding and an epilogue that floors you

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⚠️ Content Notes

This is an explicit MM contemporary romance for adult readers (18+). Includes: a hero recovering from a recently broken six-year engagement, bi-awakening and on-page coming-out (treated with care), conservative-leaning father with an authentic but loving repair arc, brief mention of a past emotionally abusive relationship (handled, not depicted in detail), explicit sex throughout with a heavy praise-kink dynamic, light verbal D/s with no pain, dom/sub power exchange traded between both leads over the course of the book. Heat: 5/5 Inferno. Guaranteed happy ending with onpage marriage and a hint of fatherhood.

📖 Read Chapter One Free

Not sure yet? Read the full first chapter right here.

Chapter One: Damaged Goods

The driveway looks the same as it always did. White colonial, two cars parked tight, Pete Donovan’s basketball hoop still bolted above the garage even though Connor hasn’t played since college. The Thanksgiving wreath Eileen puts up in October and forgets to take down until February. Home, more or less. Every-other-Sunday-dinner home. Stay-in-the-guest-room-when-my-family-is-being-assholes home.

Just not my home.

I’ve been sitting in this driveway for fourteen minutes.

I know because the clock on my dash said 3:46 when I pulled in and now it says 4:00 and I haven’t moved. My hands are welded to the steering wheel. The engine’s off. There’s a duffel bag in the passenger seat, a cardboard box behind it labeled KITCHEN SHIT in Connor’s handwriting, and every other thing I own crammed into the trunk and the back seat.

Three weeks ago I had a fiancée. A wedding venue deposit. A life.

Now I’ve got a Honda Civic full of boxes and a spare room at my best friend’s older brother’s apartment, which is not the same thing as my best friend’s parents’ house, and my brain keeps sliding off that distinction like it’s greased.

“Jamie.”

Connor is in front of the car. I didn’t see him come out. He’s got his hands spread, palms up — the what-the-fuck-are-you-doing pose. Sweats. A Flyers shirt that used to be mine. He’s grinning at me like I’m a raccoon he caught in his garbage.

I roll the window down.

“You gonna get out,” he says, “or is the car your new apartment.”

“I’m coming.”

“You said that fifteen minutes ago. I’ve been watching. It’s very sad.”

“Fuck off.”

“Get out of the car, man. Marc’s home. We’ll get your shit upstairs. You can have a beer.”

Marc’s home.

The thing my chest does when he says that — I notice it. I don’t know what to do with it, so I file it with the other weird stuff I’ve been noticing for three weeks. The crying jags. The appetite thing. The way I keep almost-calling Rachel and then putting my phone down. Grief. That’s what this is. That’s what all of this is. Everything feels strange because my life blew up twenty-two days ago and now I’m moving in with — okay, the last part of that sentence also feels strange, but it’s just because I haven’t lived with a roommate since I was twenty-three and —

“Jamie. I swear to God.”

I get out of the car.

Connor yanks me into a hug before I’m fully standing. He smells like cheap coffee and the dude soap his mom keeps in the guest bathroom. His hands thump against my back hard enough to jar something in my ribcage loose.

“I’m fine,” I say into his shoulder.

“You’re not fine.”

“Connor.”

“You’re not fine and it’s okay you’re not fine and you’re gonna be fine, so shut the fuck up and come inside.”

He pulls back and looks at me. Connor, who I’ve known since we were nineteen and drunk in a dorm hallway. Connor, who was supposed to be my best man at an engagement party for a wedding that did not happen. Connor, who flew home from Denver on twelve hours’ notice when Rachel called me at 9 PM on a Tuesday and said, Jamie, I can’t do this.

He grabs the back of my neck, the way his dad grabs the back of his neck, and rests his forehead against mine for exactly one second.

“Six months,” he says. “A year. Whatever. We got you.”

“It’s your brother’s place, Con. He doesn’t —”

“He said yes.”

“Because you asked him to.”

“Because he said yes. Marc doesn’t do things he doesn’t want to do. You’ve known him forever. When’s the last time you saw him do something he didn’t want to do.”

I can’t think of one.

Marc Donovan has been in my peripheral vision for ten years. Thanksgivings. Eileen’s fiftieth. Connor’s graduation. Patrick’s retirement party last spring. He’s always been there — four years older than us, present at the same family things, quietly polite to me, warmer to Connor, fundamentally unbothered in a way that used to make me a little nervous to stand near him. He remembers my name. He asks how work’s going. He tips his beer at me across a crowded room. He does not require anything from me. He probably doesn’t think about me at all when I’m not in the room.

And now I’m living with him.

“Come on,” Connor says. “He made food.”

“He made food?”

“I told him you’d been eating like shit and he said he’d cook. Don’t make a big deal out of it. Just eat it.”

We grab the duffel and the box. Connor hits the front door before I do, because I’m being deliberately slow — kid slow, the way you’re slow when you don’t want to go somewhere — and he stops with his hand on the doorknob and looks back at me.

“Dude.”

“I’m coming.”

“You’re okay.”

“I know.”

I’m not, but I say it anyway.

He opens the door.

The first thing that hits me is garlic. The second thing is —

I’ve been inside this apartment maybe three times. I helped Marc move in two years ago. I was here for a Flyers game once when the Donovans’ TV broke. I came by in April to drop off something of Connor’s. I don’t know this place. I know that the kitchen is just off the entryway, separated by a low half-wall, and I know that if I walk in the front door, the first thing I’m going to see is —

Marc.

In sweats that sit low on his hips. A white t-shirt, soft, washed a thousand times. Sleeves pushed to his elbows. One hand on the edge of a cutting board, the other on a knife, and his forearms are doing something I’ve never in my life registered a man’s forearms doing. His hair’s wet. He’s been running, maybe. He’s barefoot in the kitchen of his own apartment, a dish towel over his left shoulder, and he looks up as I come through the door.

“Jamie.”

He says it the way he’s said it for ten years. Level. Warm. My whole name, never Jim, like he’s been paying attention.

Something in my chest goes sideways.

I don’t have a name for it. I don’t have time for it. It just arrives — a low weird lurch, the kind of feeling you get when you miss a step going downstairs and your whole body remembers it has a stomach. It’s gone in a second. I don’t know what it was. I’m tired. I haven’t eaten real food in three days. My fiancée left me three weeks ago and I’ve been running on gas station coffee and adrenaline and the specific hormone your body produces when you’re pretending to be fine in front of your mother, so of course I’m having weird physical reactions to things. Of course I am. This is what happens when you’re —

“Hey, man.” My voice comes out fine. “Thanks for — yeah. Thanks for letting me crash.”

“Of course.”

He sets the knife down. Wipes his hand on the dish towel. Walks around the island toward us. It’s the most I’ve ever watched somebody walk across a kitchen. He moves like — I don’t know what he moves like. He moves like a person who knows where his feet are. He moves like a person who is not, in this exact moment, having any of the confusing internal experiences I am having.

He stops in front of me. Looks at me for one full beat. And he says:

“I’m sorry about Rachel.”

That’s it. No how are you holding up, no she didn’t deserve you, no you’ll bounce back, buddy. Just — I’m sorry about Rachel. Like an adult. Like a person. Like someone acknowledging a fact.

My throat does a thing.

“Thanks,” I manage.

“Your room’s at the top of the stairs, second door on the left. There’s sheets on the bed. Towels in the hallway closet. Anything you need that isn’t there, tell me, I’ll get it.”

“I’m not — I’m not going to be that much trouble.”

“You’re not trouble.” Flat. Factual. “You’re family.”

And then he picks up my duffel bag like it weighs nothing and heads for the stairs, and I’m still standing in his entryway holding a cardboard box labeled KITCHEN SHIT in my best friend’s handwriting, trying to figure out what the fuck just happened to my sternum.

Connor elbows me. “Move.”

I move.

The guest room is small and clean and smells like the pine cleaner Eileen uses. White walls. Queen bed made up with a grey comforter and two pillows stacked neat. A window looking out over the back alley. A desk. A closet, empty, wooden hangers still in plastic.

Marc sets my duffel on the desk and looks around the room like he’s checking it for me.

“It’s not huge,” he says.

“It’s great.”

“I cleared the closet out last weekend. If you need another dresser, I’ve got one in storage.”

“I’m good.”

“Bathroom’s across the hall. I use the one in my bedroom. It’s yours, basically.”

“I can share a bathroom.”

“You don’t need to.” The corner of his mouth moves. Not quite a smile. “I work from home half the time. You don’t want to schedule around me.”

Connor’s behind me in the doorway, still holding the KITCHEN SHIT box, making a face at the wall that means see, I told you, he’s fine, this is fine. I turn sideways to let him through. Marc steps back at the same time — the room’s tight, the doorway is tighter — and I’m trying to angle around the frame with the box, and Marc is trying to get past me to the hall, and his hand —

His hand lands on my arm.

Just for balance. Just for a second. Just above the elbow, warm through the thin cotton of my sweatshirt, fingers firm enough that I feel every single one of them individually.

I flinch.

Hard.

A full-body twitch, like I stuck a fork in an outlet.

Marc’s hand is gone instantly. He steps all the way back into the hall. His face doesn’t change — that’s the thing about him, his face almost never changes — but his eyes drop to my arm for half a second, then back up to my face, and I have never in my life been looked at like that. Like somebody taking a careful measurement of a thing they weren’t sure was real.

“Sorry,” I say, too fast. “Sorry, I — I don’t know why I — that was —”

“It’s okay.”

“Long day.”

“It’s okay, Jamie.”

The way he says my name.

I can’t —

“I’m gonna —” I gesture at the box. “I’ll just —”

“Get settled,” he says. “Dinner’s in an hour. Come down when you’re ready.”

He looks past me to Connor. Something quick passes between them, the silent sibling thing. Connor sets the KITCHEN SHIT box on the desk and claps my shoulder and says, “Unpack, buddy, I’ll be downstairs.” And then they’re both out of my room and down the hall, and I can hear Marc’s voice low and Connor’s voice lower, and I don’t know what they’re saying but I know it’s about me.

I sit down on the edge of the bed.

The mattress is firmer than I’m used to.

I don’t unpack.

I don’t do anything, for a while. I sit with my hands on my knees and I look at the wall across from me — white, blank, a small nail hole where something used to hang — and I try to count my breath in and my breath out and to locate the exact center of my own body and to understand what my life is, now.

My phone buzzes. Text from Connor, from two rooms away.

you ok?

I stare at it for a minute. Then I type back.

yeah. be down in a sec.

Three dots. Then:

take your time. marc’s cool.

Marc’s cool.

Yeah.

I put my phone face-down on the comforter and I keep sitting there, and somewhere downstairs a man I’ve known for ten years is cooking me dinner, and I do not look too hard at why my skin is still humming where his hand was.

I sit there for a long time.

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🔥 Bonus Chapter — Free

A scene too explicit for Amazon. Marc and Jamie’s eighteen-month milestone — new glassware, no plot, no complication, the longest, slowest, filthiest scene in the entire Wrong Brother Right Bed universe. Plus: a quiet phone call from the agency that’s going to change everything. Free for readers, never on KDP.

Read Bonus Chapter: Eighteen Months →