Due West by Declan Rhodes

Max
The first time I saw R.J., his eyes looked twice as wide open as normal, like an anime character. He slipped into the diner booth on the other side of my table and said, “If anybody asks, you’re my…fiancé.”
How would I know a stop for a burger and fries at the Shine and Dine in Scottsbluff, Nebraska would so profoundly change my life? After that first meeting, there was no going back to normal. Everything from that point forward was astoundingly different and new.
I’d set out from Chicago two days earlier on a desperate mission to save my fledgling writing career. I’d secured an assignment to explore life on an epic road trip due west to San Francisco. Those first days were quiet, even boring, and then—R.J.
To save him from armed thugs, I agreed to take him as far as Boulder, Colorado. One of his best friends, a drag performer named Carlotta Geaux, would take it from there. That was the plan—until R.J. blissed out on Miles Davis, sang a perfect “Last Dance,” and made me care.

R.J.
I needed to escape Nebraska. I had to leave my town.
My home.
Most of all—my crooked father.
I had a plan to engineer a ride to Colorado from a stranger—any ordinary schlub with a working vehicle. Then I picked Max, with his blue eyes, black hair, and sweet sense of humor.
I intended the choice to be random, but the gods had other plans. The choice of Max had to be anything but arbitrary. Love at first sight? I was an instant convert.
Now, I had a mission to sway him to my plan, step by step, all the way across the country. He needed to keep me by his side, and, in the end, fall as hard for me as I fell for him.