Daybreak by Ruthie Luhnow

“I can’t keep pretending I don’t want you.” “You never did a very good job of that.”

Bennett Marlowe is doing just fine. Sure, he’s divorced with no romantic prospects, and yeah, he can’t sleep without being woken up by nightmares, but he’s an award-winning journalist about to get tenure at a prestigious university—he must be doing something right. But then Jamie comes careening into Bennett’s life and nothing is the same. Handsome, energetic, and almost half Bennett’s age, Bennett can’t deny the spark between them. The only problem? Jamie is Bennett’s teaching assistant.

“Jamie Larsson: charming and lovely and completely off limits.”

Hopelessly romantic and relentlessly optimistic, Jamie Larsson is thrilled when he meets a new man at a bar who’s hot, enigmatic, and most improbably, into Jamie. It’s just his luck, then, when Jamie discovers Bennett is the professor he’s supposed to be working with all semester. Jamie can’t resist trying to unravel the mysteries of Bennett, who’s brilliant and damaged and sending Jamie very mixed signals. Bennett claims he’s not interested—but then what was that kiss in his office all about?

“Why can’t you just let yourself have something good?”

When a freak snowstorm traps Bennett and Jamie together, they can’t deny their feelings any longer. Bennett wants Jamie more than he’s wanted anyone, but he fears Jamie will be scared off by the scars and trauma of Bennett’s past. Jamie finds it hard to trust that someone as successful and cultured as Bennett will ever see him as an equal. Is one night of passion enough make them risk a relationship that could ruin Bennett’s career if it’s discovered? They say it’s always darkest before the dawn. Can Bennett and Jamie find light in the darkness… together?

Daybreak is an m/m contemporary romance with May/December and hurt/comfort themes, plenty of heat, and a happy ending.