A Home in You

Contents A Home in You Playlist An Important Message from the Author Triggers Prologue - Dillon 1. Dillon 2. Cade 3. Cade 4. Dillon 5. Dillon 6. Cade 7. Dillon 8. Cade 9. Dillon 10. Cade 11. Dillon 12. Dillon 13. Cade 14. Dillon 15. Cade 16. Dillon 17. Dillon 18. Cade 19. Cade 20. Dillon 21. Cade 22. Dillon 23. Cade 24. Dillon 25. Dillon 26. Cade 27. Dillon 28. Cade 29. Dillon 30. Cade 31. Dillon 32. Cade 33. Dillon 34. Dillon 35. Cade 36. Cade 37. Dillon 38. Dillon FREE EPILOGUE Acknowledgments About the Author This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Copyright © 2023 by Courtney W. Dixon All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission of the writer, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Published by Courtney W. Dixon - www.courtneywdixon.com Cover Design: Courtney W. Dixon Character Sketch by: Fae Quinn 𝐹𝒶𝑒 𝒬𝓊𝒾𝓃 (@fae.loves.art) • Instagram photos and videos Alpha Readers: Nicole Arbuckle and Chanel Johson Beta Readers: Joelle Lynne, Kalie Gerwig, Mary Ellen Dejmek, Nikki Johnson, Rosa Donahue Proofreader: Anna Potter Formatting: Aubree Valentine - Beyond the Bookshelf Publishing Services | Facebook A Home in You Playlist https://tinyurl.com/AHomeInYouPlaylist An Important Message from the Author I hope you take a moment to read my message to my lovely readers. When I started writing this, I wanted to do something different. To challenge myself with a different sort of story. I also wanted to put a little bit of myself in it. Much of the beginning of this book has a lot of childhood in between the words. The farm here is a real place for me. The horses are real. The towns are real. The ponds and fishing are real. Exploring the Blue Ridge Mountains is real. It’s been a long time since I’ve been back, but the first sixteen years of my life were spent on my grandmother’s farm learning to ride horses and fish. I tried to put a little piece of this into Dillon and Cade’s world. There are also some important things I would like to address and talk about regarding this book. Namely sex. Teen sex. Like my previous book, Double Up, there were sexual scenes of teens under the age of eighteen. This book will be no different. My intention isn’t for arousal purposes but for realism. Teens have sex. While I wrote about sexual exploration in this story between teens Triggers Listed below are the trigger warnings for this book. Reading them may cause spoilers: CW: Underage drinking and drug use, stepbrother taboo, homophobia, religious homophobia, bullying, parent hitting a child, explicit language, sexual exploration of teens, and sex of two teen boys in a loving and consensual relationship. Sex is explicit when they attend college. Due to the nature of these triggers, this book is not suitable for those under 18. I was here at the University of Virginia. I thought this day would never fucking come. This was where I’d find him. Finally! My heart beat a little faster and the raptors in my stomach ate away at my insides, knowing we’d soon be reunited. He was here. He had to be. We promised each other. But it was as if I could feel him in my soul, calling me, and telling me he was near, and that we’d soon find each other. My eyes watered with hope, fear, and all that pent-up pain from being separated from him for a year and a half, which might as well have been a hundred. That was how long it had been since we saw each other last. Would he look the same? Different? He’d look older, that