Going home had never felt so wrong. When Derrick received the phone call informing him of his mother’s death, it felt like the bottom had dropped out of his entire world. Gone was every hope and ideal he’d left home with, replaced with the bitter realization that he’d run out of time, run out of plans, and was desperately close to running out of give-a-damn. It doesn’t help to come face to face with his older brother, Ray, who’d spent much of his childhood either ignoring him, ditching him, or complaining about his very existence. It’s enough to send him right back on the road again, or at least, it would have been, were it not for a house, a cat named Slash, and Mason, his best friend-with-benefits, now the head librarian in town and hot as sin. It was hard enough leaving Mace in the first place, but a second time? He didn’t think he had it in him to be so heartless. Twelve years ago he’d slipped away under the cover of darkness, without even a single goodbye. Now, standing on the edge of night, looking down at the tiny town he’d fled, Derrick is left with one burning question: Can the door to the past ever be closed enough to allow space for the future?