Undefined Terms

Declan Carrick doesn't have the words.

He's twenty-seven, London-built, good with steel and concrete and silence. He moves to Manchester for a two-year contract, walks into a bar in the Northern Quarter, and forgets how to leave.

Seren is at the corner table. Laptop open, one earphone in, dark nails on the keys. Lipstick and stubble and a smile that opens like a door and closes before you can step through.

Writer. Welsh. Completely outside anything Dec knows how to name.

Dec has never wanted a man. Seren isn't what he expected a man to be. Or a woman. Or anything he's got a box for.

So he keeps showing up. Keeps sitting at the next table. Keeps telling himself it's the beer.

It's not the beer.

When the world outside the bar starts pressing in - the building site, the family back in Lewisham, the father who won't say the right thing - Dec has to decide what he's willing to lose for someone he can't even describe. And Seren, who's been watching longer than Dec knows, has to decide whether being someone's first is worth the risk of being someone's experiment.

Slow burn. Blue collar x writer. Opposites attract. Sexual awakening. First time.

Undefined Terms is a full-length MM romance featuring:

• a blue collar main character with no words for what he feels
• a nonbinary love interest (they/them) who has plenty
• late sexual awakening
• a love story built without a blueprint

Second in the Carrick Brothers duet. Can be read as a standalone.

Open door. First person POV. HEA.

Content note: open door romance, nonbinary main character, on-page exploration of gender and identity, brief instances of misgendering.