Isadoro and Iván have known each other all their lives. They were raised together in La Portera, between the orange trees and water reservoirs, under an endless blue sky. That’s where Iván’s love for Isadoro grew, too. From the earth and water, organic and helpless. Isadoro leaves for the military when they are both eighteen, but a thread remains. Phone calls, Skype sessions, rests between tours…it’s never quite enough. After eight years, Isadoro comes back. An already complicated situation is tangled further as they rekindle the “benefits” part of their friendship. The heat between them has always been undeniable, and now it scorches through them. All seems well in the beginning, but nothing is ever so simple. Iván’s love cannot simply banish the insomniac shadows of the past, but perhaps they can face what the night brings—together. Please note: This story contains themes of affected mental health following the return from military combat. However, the ultimate focus of the story is on hope and recovery. This story also contains explicit scenes of a sexual nature. Nights Without Night can be read as a standalone but contains background characters from the Fox Lake series. PREVIEW My skin knows his hands. It knew them when we were small and we play-fought in the orange-scented earth. It knew them when they pulled me after him or helped me up. It knew them when I was a teenager and wanted him fatally, with hormones and friendship and a coalescing love. It knew them when they turned purposeful and wise to the secrets of my body, to its ripples and its wants and all its warm places. It knew them even when they were gone, imagining them in another landscape but still mine, a phantom limb. And it knows them now, relearning my plains and tides, the depths that are still there for him.