There are people who enter your life loudly. And then there are people who simply appear — and somehow, by the time you notice them, they are already the most constant thing you have.
He was twenty years old when he realized that blood meant absolutely nothing.
Fresh out of high school and trying to find his footing in the world, he had finally gathered the courage to come out to his parents. They did not take it well. The rejection hadn't been a loud, explosive argument, he would've loved if it was. It had been a cold, suffocating dismissal.
So, Leonard left. He packed his life into a single duffel bag and threw himself entirely into the local indie scene, relying on freelance photography and minor modeling gigs to keep a roof over his head.
Never in his widest dream did he think, his family would actually abandon him.
It was during that lonely, transient period—sitting at a dimly lit bar, nursing a cheap drink and a bruised ego—that he first met Isla Matthews.
