Nathan Hartley is a barrister. He wins cases for a living, which requires a particular talent for constructing airtight arguments and an absolute refusal to admit defeat, and he's very good at both. What he is considerably less good at is admitting that his best friend of thirty years, Nick Edwards -- quiet, beautiful, catastrophically patient Nick -- might be the most important person in his life in ways that go beyond friendship.

They've been best friends since they were seven, and friends with benefits for the last ten years. It suits them both. Or so Nathan has always thought.

Then Nick begins dating a dentist named Harrison, because why not? Nathan can think of several reasons why not, actually, starting and very nearly ending with the fact that the man is a dentist named Harrison. That alone should send any reasonable person running. But there is also the matter of their arrangement. Their thing. Their weekends. What exactly happens to those?



Zillah de Rigaud writes M/M romance and crime fiction, sometimes at the same time, because why choose? She has a weakness for messy, complicated people who make questionable decisions and mean well anyway -- the kind of characters who feel like someone you actually know, for better or worse.



Zillah believes the best stories live in the uncomfortable spaces between people: the things left unsaid, the wrong choices made for understandable reasons, and the moments where two completely different humans somehow find each other anyway.



When she's not writing, Zillah can usually be found down a science rabbit hole, behind a camera, or on a plane to somewhere new. She builds mood boards for her stories using her own photography, which she tells herself is research and not just a very enjoyable excuse to take pictures of beautiful places and brooding strangers.



She lives for the grumpy/sunshine dynamic, found family, and characters who are one bad day away from doing something they'll deeply regret. If a story doesn't make her feel something, she's probably not interested in writing it.