Where Nerves End

Tucker Springs and it's citizens ... just what the doctor ordered.

What a breath of fresh air to read about ordinary people, dealing with the everyday issues we all cope with in some form or other: economic woes, faithless lovers, chronic pain, and maybe a little sexual awakening. LIFE.

Jason Davis is drowning. His boyfriend has left him and saddled him with a mortgage too rich for his pockets. His business partner has left him committed suicide to run what was ‘their' bar, Lights Out, on his own. To add salt to the wound he suffers from chronic and excruciating pain in one shoulder, due to a biking accident. After one too many sleepless nights, due to pain, he takes his friend Seth's advice and goes to see an acupuncturist, Michael Whitman.

What proceeds is a slow-burn, but never boring, or magic cock story of two men coming together and possibly falling love.

Jason is attracted to Michael from day one, but he believes him to be straight so he tries to go about his life living one day at a time like we all do: running his business, trying to manage his pain, going out to get laid, and ogling shirtless Michael. Like you do.

Meanwhile Michael has been going through some soul searching or rather honesty searching of his own about his sexuality and when he ends up not only being Jason's doctor, but also living in Jason's house along with his young son, whose custody he has on a biweekly basis, things get interesting.

SLIGHTLY SPOILERISH

I liked the honesty that L.A. Witt brought to this story. There are no super villains present. Jason's ex is long gone, Michael is old enough that his conservative parents no longer hold sway over his decisions, and though he's nervous about ‘coming out' to Daina, his ex-wife, she turns out to be the best ex one can hope for. No misogyny here. JOY! (As an aside it still gnaws at me that people should have to fear ‘coming out' or that they even have to do that. Sadly that is reality and in this case it made sense being Daina only knew Michael as her straight ex.)

Because I'm a contrarian, perhaps my favorite thing about this story was that it ended with no grand declaration of love. In fact I don't think the MCs ever trot out the three magic words and yet I'm confident of their right-over-the-horizon HEA. Their decision to come together doesn't isn't whim. They're fully functioning adults.

I did the audio by Iggy Toma and he is perfect. As usual