// Best YA Romance in the Romance Fiction Awards 2021//
Thrill Hawthorne, keeping up to his name, lives his life on the edge. Or so people think.
Ignatius Rookwood is the darling son and the sole male heir to a gigantic business corporation. Or so...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Dumb, pretty boys were not Thrill's type. Well, he had slept with plenty of them but they weren't his type, in that, he never got fucking butterflies or whatever for them. So, it was a pure mystery why Thrill was finding himself weirdly attracted to Ignatius fucking Rookwood of all people! A dumb, pretty, straight guy. A dumb, pretty, straight guy with a fiancé!
Maybe, it was his eyes. They held a kind of sincerity one could rarely find on people. And he was overly curious too, evident in the way he was asking Thrill about his past and how he came to be adopted.
No one had ever asked Thrill that; well, no one except his tiny personal dragon-of-a-human Caspian Ra'hor.
"I was five, I think," Thrill said, leaning back on his hands and letting a deep breath out for the night to catch. "I used to work at a... well, I don't think you've seen them – those small road-side stalls that serve tea and very basic meals?" He turned to Ignatius who naturally shot him a look of cluelessness. Why did Thrill find even that adorable? "Anyway, yeah. I used to work there."
"Isn't that..." Ignatius frowned. "Child labour?"
"... yeah."
"Isn't that illegal?"
Wow, that guy really had a lot of catching up to do. "Sure, on paper."
"Seriously?"
"Yes, seriously. Why will I joke about that?"
Ignatius looked down at his hands and nodded. "Sorry."
He seemed to be making a habit of that, saying sorry. Thrill found it commendable. "Anyway," Thrill carried on, "This one day a pair of father and son came in." Having that memory tug his consciousness after so long, Thrill broke into a soft smile. "The kid – who was unbelievably tiny – was playing with a toy airplane, quietly, by himself."
"Drayden?" Ignatius asked.
"Drayden," Thrill nodded. Too quiet for a kid his age, he had stuck to his father like glue, eating whatever was placed in front of him. He was even playingwith the toy plane diligently. "He probably saw me staring or something, because he walked over and... gave me the toy." Thrill chuckled. "I still have it, you know? It has these pretty lights on its wings, and... as someone who's never had toys, an airplane was a big deal to me. I took it and ran around the place playing with it. When I... uh, when I returned, with the aim of giving back the toy, the two people had already left."
Ignatius' eyes widened. "Then?"
"I don't really remember, but David says I ran after them. I apparently saw them climb into a car, and I followed."
"You ran after a car?" Ignatius gaped.
And see, there was also this! The Thrill reflecting in Ignatius' eyes was someone really cool and brave and free – things that Thrill wished he was. He laughed and shook his head at the question. "I'm sure there was a lot of traffic."
