The Bench Beside Mine

He keeps buying a second coffee for the wife who left. The dad on the bench beside him drinks it. Peter Lyle brings the spare water bottle, the signed forms, Band-Aids in three sizes, and a second coffee he keeps buying for a wife who divorced him fourteen months ago. Then Dev Malhotra drops onto the bench beside him, drinks it, and saves him a seat every Saturday after. Dev is everything Peter isn't. Loud. Easy. Built like he hauls goalposts for fun. A devoted dad so scared of becoming the optional parent that he plans every weekend like a cruise director. When the coach's knee gives out and they're both drafted as assistants, Peter gets three practices a week of Dev's hands, Dev's laugh, and Dev's soaked T-shirt in a very small equipment shed. Peter has known he's bisexual since he was nineteen. He has never done anything about it. So he makes a list. It's ranked. They have two kid-free nights a week, one king bed at an overnight coaching clinic, and a buttoned-up accountant who turns out to give very precise orders. The sex is the easy part. The hard part is that two fathers falling in love doesn't make four people a family. The Bench Beside Mine is a high-heat contemporary MM romance with divorced dads, friends to lovers, bisexual leads, a first time with a man at thirty-eight, co-coaches, one bed, a ranked list, real kids, decent exes, no cheating, and a guaranteed happily ever after. Explicit content. For readers 18+.