Unconditionally (Brown County #4)
Read Unconditionally (Brown County #4) Online
Authors: Amber Nation
Unconditionally
Copyright 2014 Amber Nation
First Edition
All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of these publications may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the Author. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Cover and Formatting by
ShoutLines Design
D
EDICATION
To all of the brave men and women who aren’t afraid to unapologetically be themselves each and every single day.
Be brave.
Be different.
Be unique.
Be YOU.
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost the three people who mean the most to me in life: My husband Jarrod and my girls, Alexis and Olivia: Thank you for being my constant support system and encouraging me every single step of the way. I would’ve never ever started this journey if it weren’t for the three of you. I love you to the moon and back!
Annalisa Nicole, Savannah Stewart, and Delisa Lynn: Thank you for always being there for me whether to bounce an idea off of or just for a break and lots of laughs. I love you ladies hardcore and I’m so thankful that our lives have crossed paths. Melanie Brock: For being the best friend and cousin I could ever ask for! I know each of our lives are crazy busy, but I know we will always be there for one another if needed! I love ya!
Nation Fixation: You ladies are a fabulous group of supporters and I greatly appreciate all of your constant help and support with trying to get my name and my books out into the world of reading! I love you all!
My betas: Mary Anne Bailey, Ashley Volk, Delisa Lynn, Tracy Brewer, Marnie Warren, Jessika Harper, Mayas Sanders, Kristen Cecil, Ashley Hampton, Evette Ashby, and Crissy Sutcliffe: Thank you so much for taking the time out to read and review
Unconditionally,
even if you were unsure of the whole M/M genre, and for all of the suggestions on how to make Toby’s story great! I cannot say enough how much I appreciate your time and your support!
My cover designer and formatter Rachel Mizer with Shoutlines Design: Your work continues to amaze me. You have an incredible talent and I am always fascinated to watch my cover come to life! And my editor Anna Coy: You are an absolute rock star at what you do! It is always a joy to work with you!
Enticing Journey Book Promotions - Ena and Jennifer: Thank you for creating and organizing my blog tour! I greatly appreciate all of the hard work you do for us authors!
My PA, Giana Racine: Thank you! Thank you! You are amazing to us authors and I greatly appreciate everything you do for me!
And last BUT certainly not least - The Readers, Reviewers, and Bloggers: THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to read my books as well as the constant outpouring of support and encouragement! I appreciate it more than you will ever know! I love each and every single one of you!!!
T
ABLE OF
C
ONTENTS
O
THER
B
OOKS BY
A
MBER
N
ATION
The Brown County Series
Not Alone
– Grady and Emmalynne’s Story
Runaway Love
– Charlie and Maggie’s Story
How to Save a Life
– Mike and Sheridan’s Story
Unconditionally– Toby's Story
Toby
I knew from a very young age that I was different than the other members of my family. My mother and father were elite socialites and members of the country club who had to constantly compete with the Joneses. My older brother, Bryce, was the captain of the football team and one of the most popular guys in school.
Being a freshman while Bryce was a senior, teachers were always so excited to have another Morgan in class thinking that I would be just like Bryce and good at everything. But that wasn’t the case once they got to know me.
I wasn’t a jock or someone who constantly cared what other people thought of me. I was Toby Morgan, the boy who would rather solve math problems than worry about what was the final score on the scoreboard of last Friday’s game. I wasn’t into what was considered ‘in’ the latest fashion, I came up with my own, and rocked it. It didn’t matter to me how off the wall my outfit could’ve been, if I felt comfortable in it and thought it looked good, I went with it.
Often labeled a freak or some other lame haphazard attempt to get me down, they never faltered my stride. Nope, my parents took the cake on that all on their own. See, I’m a gay man and I’m one hundred and ten percent proud of that. I never once tried to be something that I wasn’t. I’d known for quite a long time that I was attracted to men, so it was never something that I tried to keep under wraps. I didn’t want them, my parents, to understand me, I just wanted them to love me unconditionally like a parent should to their children.
But that would’ve been putting them up to a higher standard then what they deserved to be. They hated my guts apparently and even after my brother Bryce was killed in a car accident almost eight years ago, they acted as if they had absolutely no children at all. They were the victims of
everything.
Me
coming home in the eighth grade with a black eye and bloody lip and being called a faggot,
their
reputation was tarnished. Never mind the fact that I was bullied, teased, and often beaten on a weekly basis for being true to myself,
they
were always the victims, it was always about them.
Why did their oldest son have to die so young and leave a wife and child behind? Never mind the fact that Bryce turned out to be a world class asshole. Why did their youngest son have to commit the biggest sin and become gay? That’s right, according to them I
became
gay, I
chose
it. I embrace my sexuality wholeheartedly, but I didn’t ask for the abundance of cold shoulders and people who thought that being gay also meant that I came with a contagious disease that they would catch if they got too close to me.
It was on the rare occasion when I heard from Constance and Martin Morgan. And normally I would think that hell must have frozen over when I did.
On the eve of my twenty-sixth birthday, I wondered if tomorrow would be one of those occasions, but wasn’t going to hold my breath.
Toby
Waking up like any other normal workday, I didn’t feel the least bit older. I supposed that was a good thing since they say that you are only as old as you feel, well I still felt twenty-five. I peeled back my thousand thread count Egyptian cotton bed sheets and my bronze and cream bedspread that laid wrinkle-free on my king-sized four poster bed and careened my back as I stretched my arms towards the ceiling.
A boy had to indulge in himself every once in a while.
Just then Elizabeth Taylor came strutting into my bedroom and began rubbing herself against my feet that were now placed on my dark stained hardwood floor. I knew any moment… Yup and in sashayed Sasha Fierce. They were Persian cats who were both divas rivaling after their names. I couldn’t tell you where they got their diva status… Oh hell, who was I kidding, I was a diva myself.
“Good morning, my beauties,” I sang as I bent over to give a little scratch to each pussy behind their ears. The only type of pussy I would ever get caught petting.
I padded down the hallway towards my kitchen so I could feed these insatiable felines. If they didn’t get their breakfast before I started getting myself ready they would give me the proverbial cold shoulder for the rest of the day. They were just like women, bitchy when they didn’t receive attention or get their food.
Stepping out of my glass enclosed shower, I quickly ran a towel over my head halting the trek of tiny droplets of water before they pelted against my skin. I then stood in front of the sink and wiped away the condensation on the mirror from the billowing steam of my shower, revealing my solemn face with large dark purple circles underneath my eyes.
I took a deep breath, sucking in air through my nose and then releasing it the same way. The tension of the day was already unsurmountable and it had barely began. At least the tax day cutoff was weeks ago, if I had that to deal with that chaos on top of my ‘birthday celebration’ I might actually break.
Breaking was something that I never did, never really could. I was the glue that held my friends together. If they had a problem, Toby was there in an instant.
Besides the one night when Maggie, a dear friend, came to get me at Big Pete’s last year after Gio and I broke up, I always kept it together. One of these days, everything that I had bottled up was going to come exploding out. And I wouldn’t want anyone to be within a five mile radius when that occurred.