by
Dollhouses and miniatures are Riley Andreas’s life. Literally. Since 2020, Riley has been unable to leave his house, held captive by agoraphobia. With the help of his housemate Orrie, Riley has created a business building and restoring dollhouses, but he longs for more. For connection. For love.
Caring for his elderly grandmother, Brian Fitzgerald finds what he believes to be Gran’s childhood dollhouse. He brings it to Riley to be restored as a gift for Gran, not anticipating the connection he feels to the dollhouse maker—or that the dollhouse holds the key to a decades-old missing person case.
With the psychic ability to gain information by touching an object, Riley immediately knows the dollhouse isn’t Brian’s grandmother’s. Nightmares tell Riley the full story of a little boy hiding from his abusive father and uncle. As Riley and Brian grow closer, Riley shares the truth of his agoraphobia and powers with Brian. Brian is open to Riley’s psychic gift and his inability to leave the house, but when he shares one of Riley’s visions, it’s more than Brian can accept.
This book has a main character with agoraphobia who has panic attacks, and a secondary character with dementia. The story includes discussions of child abuse and child death, and a flashback to the death.
Cover Artists:
Genres:
Pairings: M-M
Heat Level: 3
Romantic Content: 3
Ending: Click here to reveal
Character Identities: Bisexual, Gay
Word Count: 38145
Languages Available: English
I couldn’t have said why the guy had such a hold on me. He was attractive. Cute, with a little androgyny thrown in. The kind of guy I’d always been into. With other guys, though, I hadn’t caught myself thinking about them during random times at work. I’d sometimes fantasized about guys I was dating when I got myself off, but not as often as I fantasized about Riley.
Which, when I thought about it in the light of day, was ridiculous. I’d hired him to do a job for me. He probably had some rule against fraternizing with customers. Even if he didn’t, it would be a bad idea to get anything going with him while he was working on the dollhouse. After he was finished, I would have to come up with a reason to keep seeing him.
That was assuming he was even interested in guys. I got the sense that he was, but it wouldn’t have been the first time my gay-dar malfunctioned.
READ MORE“Keep working on it.” I’d already given him the go-ahead. I was repeating myself, but I had to make sure he knew I didn’t want to cancel the job. My voice was a little bit hoarse, and I hoped he didn’t notice. “I mean, you’ve already started.”
“If you want, I can buy it off you and restore it to sell.” He tilted his head. The little wrinkles in his forehead were absolutely adorable. “I’ve done that with other customers. Means you’d be putting some money in your pocket instead of spending it on something you don’t even know if your grandmother would want.”
Money in my pocket would be good. I was pretty much supporting Gran single-handedly right now. My parents couldn’t be bothered to help out, and my siblings with their multiple kids apiece were barely scraping by paycheck to paycheck. Gran got Social Security, but it didn’t even cover all of her household bills, never mind groceries and incidentals.
If I told Riley I still planned to give Gran the dollhouse, I would be out two thousand dollars. Coming up with that was doable but would mean cutting back on some things, including the savings account I was building so I wouldn’t wind up like Gran forty or fifty years down the road. Naturally, Riley wouldn’t pay me that much for the dollhouse, but even if he only gave me back my deposit, it would help.
“Keep working,” I said for the third time, before my brain had completely run through the options. Sure, money would have been good, but right now the dollhouse was my excuse to see Riley. I could have just asked him if we could keep seeing each other, but my brain wasn’t big on logic just now. “Maybe it’s hers, maybe it isn’t. She might like it anyway. She’s talked a little about how when she was a kid, she always wished she could have a dollhouse.”
“Why would she have wished she could have one if she had one?” He leaned lightly against the table the dollhouse sat on and pressed his lips together. “Look, this is going to sound wicked weird, but I have to be ethical here. I, um.” Shaking his head, he turned to look at the dollhouse. “I don’t think it is hers. I think it belonged to a kid named David.”
“David?” I ran the name through my mental memory banks. “Doesn’t sound familiar. Gran doesn’t have any brothers.” Now my mind caught up with what he’d said. “Why do you think that?”
“Shit.” He ran his hand through his hair, which immediately flopped right back into place. “Look, remember I said this was going to sound weird? The next part is weirder.”
“I’m good with weird.” Planting my feet slightly apart, I stuck my hands in my pockets. Trying to appear nonthreatening or something. The way he wouldn’t look at me, the visible tension in his back, his hunched shoulders…The guy was afraid of me, or at least of how I would react to whatever he was about to tell me. I didn’t like that. I didn’t want him to be afraid. “Hey, Riley, just tell me, huh?”
“Sometimes when I touch things, I get information.” He mumbled it so rapidly I could barely make out the words. “About the item, about whoever had it last. I call it psychometry, because that’s what I learned it was called when I was a kid, but I guess psychometry actually means something different?” Pushing himself off the table, he strode over to the front window and wrapped his arms around himself. “Whatever it’s called, it’s, like, a psychic thing. When you brought the dollhouse, I started picking up something about a kid named David. And I’ve been dreaming about him. The dollhouse was his. Not your grandmother’s.”
He took a long, loud breath. “If you’re going to tell me I’m crazy, save it. I’ve already been told that by professionals. I can help you load the dollhouse in your car if you want to take it back, or I’ll—”
“Stop.” I said it more loudly than I’d meant to. Instantly silent, Riley spun to face me. Standing straighter, his arms still around his torso, but there was no fear in his expression now. More…curiosity, maybe?
COLLAPSE
