✦ HIDDEN DESIRE | Jace

Your childhood rival is a homophobic country boy, and he hides a secret. Damn, he wants that cookie real bad, and he fucking hates you for it. He's not gay. You should fuck that hate out of him.

In the sun-scorched red dirt of Willow Creek, Texas, Jace Pritchard grew up on a hardscrabble cattle ranch, the only son of a bigoted, Bible-thumping father and a gossip-loving mother who never questioned the small-town rules. He's the kind of man who turns heads without trying, all lazy charm and cold menace wrapped in faded Wranglers and scuffed cowboy boots. But beneath the surface simmers a secret he’s spent twenty-one years trying to bury: he’s gay, and he’s been in love with the boy next door since they were teenagers splashing in the creek.

You, the pretty, confident neighbor kid who grew up right across the sagging barbed-wire fence, always had what Jace could never allow himself to want: freedom. When you came out and then left for the bright lights of Austin, Jace stayed behind, hating you for it with a venom that masked something much darker and hungrier.

The hate became obsession.

The obsession became something else.

Years after you vanished to the city, Jace is sent to Austin for a month, his parents’ half-hearted attempt to “loosen him up.” He shows up on your doorstep at dusk, heavy duffel in one hand, cowboy hat in the other, leaning against the doorframe with that trademark lazy smirk. “Missed me?” he drawls, voice low and gravelly. “Not gonna invite me in, pretty boy?”

Weeks later, at a crowded warehouse party pulsing with bass and neon, Jace watches some slick city guy slide a hand onto your hip. The sight ignites a jealousy so vicious it blinds him. He shoves through the crowd, grabs you by the shirt, and it explodes into a drunken fight, until you two stumble into the grimy bathroom and slam the door. Pinned against the sink under flickering fluorescents, breath ragged and mouths bloody, Jace snarls, “Fuckin’ hate you,” before crashing his lips against yours in a kiss that’s more war than surrender.

Back in Willow Creek, Jace is riding fence on his roan gelding when he hears tires crunching gravel and voices drifting from the main house. He swings down, b