Crush — Tia Fielding

When your childhood best friend reappears suddenly in your life, it can mean a second chance -- a second chance for him to be oblivious to you being in love with him.River Lynch’s best friend Lake inherited a horse rescue and moved their little found family to Illinois. While the rescue is amazing and River loves everything about it, finding a job as a nurse is tricky, especially when you don’t want to hide your queerness from anyone and most of the local clinics have more crosses on the walls than average churches.Seeing Lake and his new beau Theo fall in love is great, but it also makes River feel like maybe that sort of thing just isn’t in the books for him. River has been in love once when he was a teenager, and he never quite shook that love, even when they were separated by circumstance.Ben Harries is a professional editor and used to work for Lake’s author aunt Ruth. Now that Ruth is gone, Ben is employed to help Lake finish Ruth’s last manuscript. Finding his best and maybe only friend River at Twin Star Rescue shocks Ben to the core, especially when River’s reaction is less than stellar.At first, Ben doesn’t understand, but then he figures that River might be interested in him romantically. That might be a bit of a problem, because Ben has never really felt attraction to anyone and doesn’t really see what the fuss is about. The last thing either of them wants is to hurt the other.While River is coming to terms with the fact that some secrets of the past might have to come to light, Ben tries to sort out his own feelings. He knows he’s asexual, but how does that fit with the fact that for the first time ever, he suddenly has a crush?