A Touch of Tenderness

He came to New York to win back the wrong man. He found the right one instead.

Beckett Smith didn't plan to fall in love at the bar of The Slippery Slope. He planned to drink away his feelings for Graham Ravenswood — The Slope's co-owner, the most infuriating man in the Bowery, and the only person who has ever looked straight through him and then walked away.

Noah Cheevers crossed an ocean for Marcus Albright. He arrived to find Marcus thoroughly, happily moved on.

Two men, two bruised hearts, and nowhere else to be. What begins as commiseration becomes friendship. What becomes friendship becomes something neither of them planned for.

Beckett falls first. He falls hard. And he falls knowing that Noah is struggling with something that has no easy name — something that swings between brilliance and darkness, that the doctors call madness and Beckett calls Noah.

Everyone warns him away. He doesn't listen.

When Noah's illness pulls him under, Beckett refuses to let go. But love alone may not be enough — not against the brutal realities of what treatment means in 1890s New York, and not against Noah's own conviction that he is too broken to deserve what Beckett is offering.

A Touch of Tenderness is a friends-to-lovers MM historical romance about grief, mental illness, and the stubborn, radical act of loving someone exactly as they are.

Please note: This book contains depictions of mental illness and period-accurate psychiatric treatment for manic-depressive disorder. It is intended for readers who want emotionally honest, sensitively handled rep alongside their HEA.