Shifting Gears

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What starts as an annoying favor turns into eleven days of motels, deserts, and a love neither of them can outrun.

Theo Callahan is a wreck. Fired after a panic attack during a product demo. Dumped by text. His entire life — the job, the boyfriend, the five-year plan pinned to his fridge — collapsed in one catastrophic week. When his older brother Nolan arranges a ride to California with his best friend, Theo has no money to say no and no pride left to argue.

Gage Maddox should have refused. He’s a thirty-two-year-old mechanic with a custom motorcycle, a dead mentor’s auto shop waiting in Sacramento, and a secret he’s been carrying for six years: he’s been in love with his best friend’s little brother since the night Theo showed up to a birthday party drunk and talking about binary search trees.

The ride was supposed to be four days. Theo on the back of Gage’s bike, arms around his waist, thighs against his hips, three thousand miles of enforced proximity with a man whose voice makes his brain short-circuit and whose hands he can’t stop staring at.

One motel room changes everything. One bed. One confession that cracks six years of careful discipline wide open. And suddenly the road trip that was supposed to clear Theo’s head becomes a cross-country education in what happens when a man who’s never been touched with tenderness meets a man who’s been rehearsing it for years.

But Gage’s oldest friendship — his only family — is the price of admission. And the closer they get to California, the harder it becomes to pretend that what happens in cheap motels and desert rest stops and storm-soaked cabins can survive the daylight.

You’ll love this if you enjoy:

✓ Best friend’s brother with a six-year secret pining
✓ Forced proximity on a motorcycle — nowhere to hide
✓ Touch-starved hero discovering what real intimacy feels like
✓ Grumpy mechanic x anxious overthinker
✓ One bed (repeatedly)
✓ A man who says “I’ve got you” and means it with his whole body
✓ Desert sex, rest stop sex, biker bar possessive sex
✓ The three-chapter no-sex drought that makes the reunion devastating
✓ A grovel that involves a six-hour motorcycle ride and a laptop charger
✓ Heat that escalates from desperate to transcendent
✓ A guaranteed HEA earned the hard way