HOMETOWN FLING - PATREON EXCLUSIVE [PREVIEW]

HOMETOWN FLING

Man Feminized by a Woman

A Harborview Story

Clover Cox

CHAPTER 1

Wayne Leclerc was now living in his hometown after a stint in the city right out of college. He was driven by his dreams of becoming a journalist, which he achieved, but it wasn’t a dream he wished to continue living. It felt as though the city had chewed him up and spit him out after all the years of reporting the tragedies of the world. Positive news stories were few and far between, and Wayne was tired of it, so he was leaving New York to head to Pinecrest, a small city in the forests only thirty miles from the coastal city of Seahaven. They were both popular tourist spots for people in the Northeast, but they were home to Wayne. Places to which he swore he would never return, but where else could he find a cheap house to write his novels?

When Wayne first arrived in Pinecrest, he was full of energy. He wrote chapter after chapter of a thriller novel only to remind himself that he was supposed to become a real writer. He hadn’t given up his career in journalism to write five-dollar-bin thrillers. He wanted to write serious novels. The ones that people would talk about for generations, so he scraped his thriller idea and began working on the story of a lost man. One who didn’t know which way he was going in life. One who lost everything after having it all. A story that would touch the hearts of men across the country, except Wayne couldn’t find the words. He had an outline of a story but nothing serious. Nothing worthy of his time, but he couldn’t stall forever. His savings wouldn’t last. He would have to find some other job, which he was thinking about doing anyway as he struggled against writer’s block.

Wayne gathered his things to get out of his house and try something new. He bought a small house on a big plot of land on the edge of town, thinking that the rustic scenery would inspire him to write more, but it only made him more conscious of his lot in life. He had a decent job in the city and was working his way up the corporate ladder, but he had no type of social life. No girlfriend. Few hobbies. All he thought about were the words he wasn’t writing and needed that to change.

Once he was in town, he went to the Pinecrest Public Library, which was part of the Harborview County system. He stepped inside and went to the back of the library where there was a small cafe and tables to work on his laptop. It was much busier than he expected at the library, but he found it comforting to be around so many people.

He was deep in his work with a steaming cup of coffee by his side when he heard a familiar voice. Wayne looked around the room, wondering if he was in some type of dream, his eyes widening when he saw her. Alma Lewis. She was his girlfriend during his freshman and sophomore year of college, when he was nineteen and twenty. She was eighteen and nineteen at the time. They were so young. So naive. They met over the winter break of his freshman year of university at the house party of a mutual friend. They danced and hit it off and enjoyed a whirlwind romance that ended when Alma learned Wayne had been fooling around with a girl on campus. He tried his best to stay faithful while they were dating, but he was stupid and lonely. It was no excuse for what he did and hearing her now brought back the pains of his past.

Alma was reading a story to a group of children, animated and joyous, but she nearly broke character when her eyes finally met Wayne’s. She paused for the briefest of seconds to fix her face before continuing with the story. She read a story to the kids every Saturday, but the last person she ever expected to see at her library was Wayne Leclerc. She hadn’t heard from him since he ran away to New York City to work for a local news station. She wondered if he ever moved on from writing evening reports as she tried her best to focus on the words, cursing herself for giving him even a second of her attention. She sucked in a sharp breath before using an explosive voice to read the climax of the story. The kids shrieked and cheered, and she managed to keep her attention focused through the end of the book, but she couldn’t avoid Wayne once she finished.

He came up to the counter where she was working, smiling like he hadn’t broken her heart. “You’re back in town, huh? What happened to New York?”

“It’s too big for me.”

“You could always try Boston or Buffalo or anywhere else but here,” Alma said as she worked on reducing her return pile. There was one other librarian working, Cindy, who was taking care of everyone while Alma scanned returned books back into their system, but Wayne had distracted her from her work. “Why did you come back, Wayne?”

“Aren’t I allowed to come back to my hometown?”

“Pinecrest doesn’t want you. Not after what you did,” Alma said sharply, gathering the attention of her coworker Cindy. She felt guilty for showing this side of herself at her job, but Wayne could bring out the worst in her. To say that she harbored some resentments was an understatement. “Follow me,” she hissed at him quietly.

Wayne followed Alma outside. They walked around to the side of the building. “Look, Alma. I wasn’t trying to cause a scene. We both know what I did in college was wrong, and I was just trying to say hello.”

“What if I don’t want to hear from you?”

“I didn’t even know you were a librarian! Shoot me!”

Alma felt a touch offended that Wayne hadn’t kept up with her enough to know that she was a librarian in town. For some reason, that made her even angrier than she’d been feeling when she was sitting at the counter thinking about how Wayne had wronged her in the past. “Why don’t you just go?”

“What if I was meant to run into you?”

“You have to be kidding,” Alma said smugly. “Why in the world would you be meant to run into me?”

“To apologize.”

“And how would you do that?”

“Take you to dinner? I heard The Evergreen Bistro is still open,” Wayne said with a disarming smile. Alma hated it when he looked at her like that, but how could she say no to dinner at the Bistro? “You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s the least I could do to apologize,” he said.

Alma wanted to deny Wayne this chance to weasel his way back into her life, but she was a changed woman. She wasn’t the same nineteen-year-old who cried into her pillow for a week straight when she found out that her boyfriend was cheating. She’d been through a lot since then and was much stronger than before. Wayne wouldn’t be able to walk all over her heart this time around. He didn’t yet know it, but Alma had developed a taste for dominance since they were last together, and if he wanted any chance of being with her, he was going to play by her rules and learn a thing or two about obedience.

“Sure, we can go to the Bistro.”

“You mean it?” asked Wayne. “It would be great to catch up with someone from town. I’ve been here over a month and have only seen Samuel a couple times,” Wayne said, referring to the friend who’d hosted the party where they met all those years ago.

“Samuel has a couple kids now, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, he’s super busy. Everyone seems to be busy now.”

“We are in our thirties,” Alma said with a laugh.

“Don’t remind me,” Wayne said. “So, should I make a reservation for us tonight?”

“I’ll meet you there at seven.”

“See you then,” he said and gave her a hug. He pulled away slowly when she didn’t really hug him back, realizing he was moving far too fast. “Sorry,” he said and darted off to his car. Alma watched him go with a smirk on her face.

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