The Sex Coach, page 1
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FOREWORD REVIEWS
THE SEX COACH
GARRETT LEIGH
Copyright © 2020 by Garrett Leigh
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover Art: Garrett Leigh @ Black Jazz Design
Photography: Mel Seser
Editing: Posy Roberts @ BohoEdits
Proofing: Con Riley, Annabelle Jacobs, Jennifer Griffin
CONTENTS
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
NEWSLETTER
PATREON
About the Author
FOREWORD
The Sex Coach is set on Whisper Farm, which was first introduced to readers in the Skins series. You DO NOT have to have read those books to enjoy Toby and Cole’s love story. The Sex Coach stands alone! (That’s my phrase of 2020, hi, Mum!).
1
Toby
Spring was my favourite time of year. When I was little, I’d collected cherry blossoms and hidden them under my pillow. Of course, my dad always found them and called me a nancy boy, but it was worth it for the precious time I got to keep them.
At fourteen, I made the mistake of telling him I loved the smell. The next day, he sent me to work with horses to man up. He died before he ever learned Whisper Farm was the queerest place on earth he could’ve sent me. That I’d spend my teens surrounded by men who loved each other in every way he was so afraid of.
Shame…for him.
And I still loved spring. Even now, when my teenage years were behind me and I’d missed the boat on sexual exploration while I was still young enough to be cute. Cos there was nothing cute about a twenty-four-year-old virgin.
“Toby.”
I blinked. Joe was glaring at me with the expression of a boss who’d called my name more than once. “Sorry. What?”
Joe rolled his eyes. “You’re away with the fucking fairies today. I said, when you’ve brought the old girls in from the field, Harry needs you for something up at the house.”
“What does he need me for?”
“If I knew that, I’d have told you, wouldn’t I?”
“Dunno. You didn’t tell me when he wanted me to do that stupid barre class at the clinic. Let me turn up thinking he needed a hand with the electrics.”
Joe snorted. “True, but that was funny. And I didn’t tell Rhys either.”
“Rhys is Harry’s brother. His older brother. He told him to get fucked and walked out. I’m just the grunt around here, so I had to stay.”
“You’re not anyone’s grunt, Tobes.”
I wasn’t anyone’s anything now my mum was gone and my sisters lived in Reading, but as Joe ruffled my hair and wandered off, I let him because I liked it when he touched me. I liked it when most people—especially Joe—touched me, and it made up for the fact that Harry probably wanted me to do something ridiculous. Something I’d agree to without question because Harry was the nicest guy in the world. Being rude to him was like being rude to your sweet old nanna. I couldn’t do it.
So I spent my entire walk from the stables to the fields and back again—with two elderly mares in tow—ruminating over what he could possibly want from me. As a rule, I worked for Joe, had done since long before he’d hooked up with Harry—if you could call their bona fide love story anything close to a hook-up. But the farm had changed a lot in recent years. These days, my jobs ranged from taking care of the rescue horses to property maintenance, and no two days were ever the same.
With the mares safely tucked up in their stalls, I made my way to the main house. It was the only building on the farm that hadn’t undergone a facelift in the last few years, and I absorbed the easy familiarity of it as I crossed the threshold. The faces had changed, but the stone floors and cosy kitchen were the same as they had been since my first day on the job. I half expected to see Sal, Joe’s ma, at the stove. Instead, I found Harry, which was a rare sight. Cooking for a crowd wasn’t his bag.
I peered inside the pot he was tending. “What’s that?”
“Vegetable curry.”
“What kind of vegetable?”
“Butternut squash, courgettes, spinach.”
I pulled a face. “Why would you do that?”
“Because you can’t survive on white bread and meat forever. It’ll catch up with you eventually.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to remind him that white bread and meat were pretty much what his husband had lived on before he’d come along and ruined it with his obsession with leafy greens and fibre, but what was the point? Harry and his kale were here to stay, and so was I. Besides, it wasn’t lost on me that I was lucky to have a job where I could eat three square meals a day if I wanted to. I’d never got that at home, even when my mum was alive.
I retreated from Harry’s pot of virtue and raided the biscuit jar. Harry watched me cram three custard creams into my mouth with his patented patient frown. I knew he wanted to lecture me on my sugar consumption, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen. Never was. I liked sugar, and as far as I knew, it had never done me any harm. And quite honestly, I’d just watched Joe consume an entire bag of Haribo Starmix as a late afternoon snack, so my biscuit habit was the least of the big man’s worries.
“Joe said you needed me? I’m going surfing in a bit, but I can sack it off if there’s something needs doing right now.”
“Don’t sack anything off. It’s kind of urgent, but nothing you can start today. And I know you’ll want to catch those waves before we lose the light.”
I gave him an indifferent shrug. Surfing was a rite of passage where I came from, but I wasn’t as committed as the die-hard board fiends who chased the waves and mourned every single one they missed. The only passion in my life was the horses I’d been caring for since my dad sent me out here to find some testosterone. “It’s fine, honestly. It’s only three o’clock. I’ve got some time.”
“Well, okay. We can at least go over it then. You remember how we sat down a while ago and planned the renovations for the old cottage?”
“Vaguely. Joe gave me whisky that night.”
Harry shook his head. “Awesome. Anyway, we’d pencilled them in to finish this summer, but we need the cottage habitable before then, so we’re going to have to bring them forward.”
“How far forward?”
“Like, as soon as humanly possible.”
“Why?”
“I’ve got a new Pilates instructor joining my team. He can only take the job if we can provide on-site accommodation. It’s not worth the pay cut to leave London otherwise.”
“But Angelo teaches Pilates?”
Harry winced. “I know, but he’s not recovering from this relapse as fast as we hoped he might. I don’t know when he’ll be back full time.”
I digested that. Angelo was a physical therapist at the wellness clinic Harry ran on the other side of the farm. But he had a chronic illness. Sometimes I didn’t see him for weeks at a time, which was tough for several reasons. First of all, he was a really nice dude and didn’t deserve to be unwell. Second, he was the only one of Harry and Joe’s collection of gorgeous, queer friends that I could look at for any length of time without turning into an awkward weirdo. Even Harry himself could make me blush if he looked at me a beat too long with his kind and gentle eyes.
Idiot. What would you do if a bloke actually said anything sexual to you? Wet yourself?
I had no answer to that question because it had never happened. Every queer bloke I knew was happily paired off and still viewed me as a stroppy teenager. “That sucks,” I said, dragging my thoughts back to Angelo. “You’re not sacking him, are you?”
Harry flinched. “Of course not. I’m just easing the burden so he doesn’t feel guilty about being incapacitated. Getting the Pilates classes covered is the best way to do that because he hates teaching it anyway.”
I nodded and searched my brain for the state the abandoned cottage on the edge of the farm had been in last time I’d seen it. “When do you actually need it by? Give me a date, and I’ll tell you if it’s possible.”
“Next Monday.”
“No chance. I need to rewire the whole downstairs and get a real sparky in to sign it off, and then it needs plastering before I can paint it. Even if I work all weekend, the plaster won’t be dry for a few days.”
“Damn it. That’s why I needed to speak to you. I knew you’d be the only one who remembered all that.”
“It’s my job to remember. At least we got the plumbing done, though. Without it, you’d be looking at a month, at
Harry sighed. “I was afraid of all this, but this guy is the best possible replacement for Angelo. He’s amazing, we’d be so lucky to have him. And he needs the job as much as we need him.”
“Why?”
“Family stuff.”
Harry was the king of discretion to my nosiness. I could usually trick Joe into telling me just about anything, but never Harry. Not that it mattered. What did I care for the personal circumstances of some yuppie Pilates teacher? The only impact it had on my life was the fact that I had to provide him somewhere liveable to lay his head in a miraculous space of time.
“You know, I was wondering,” Harry continued as my mind strayed to the socket installation I needed to plan. “Cole isn’t going to know anyone down here when he arrives, no one local, at least. Do you think you could show him around?”
“Show him around where? The farm?”
“Well, yeah, that too. But I meant the area in general. The town, the beaches, the pubs. Joe doesn’t go out much in case he punches someone, and no one else knows this place better than you.”
“I don’t know if I’ll have time. I’ll probably still be working on the cottage as he’s moving in.”
“Even better. You’ll have no choice but to talk to him.”
I wanted to ask if the bloke was hot because I had no spoons left for more sinfully attractive older men in my life, but as usual, when it came to anything like that, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Maybe I could’ve asked Angelo, but he wasn’t here. “Whatever.” I feigned nonchalance. “I’ll do whatever needs doing.”
Cole
My car wasn’t built for country roads. Though it was shiny enough on the outside, beyond the alloy wheels and lowered suspension, it was a heap of shit, and I cursed as I scraped round another rocky bend.
I couldn’t deny the breath-taking scenery, though. The haunting cliffs and stormy seas nearly made up for the fact that I’d had to leave my entire life behind to be here.
Nearly. The cold reality was, only the tiny pink suitcase in the back of the car kept me driving way into the afternoon. And then I got lost, obviously, because there seemed to be no GPS signal past Devon. By the time the hand-carved wooden sign for Whisper Farm appeared in front of me, I’d about given up.
The turning was another tight bend. I made it with a metallic crunching sound, but I’d given up on my car too. I only needed it to fetch and carry Ella from her mum’s new place in Bude. If it fell apart on me, I’d just have to keep her, and I was more than okay with that. I had to be, or I’d’ve stayed in London where I’d been happy.
Sort of. Maybe.
Had I been happy? At this point, it was hard to tell.
A bumpy lane led me past fields towards the main house where Harry had said I could park my car. I’d have a five-minute tramp to the accommodation he’d included with my employment package and another hike to my actual place of work, but after years on the Tube in London, I could manage that.
I pulled up outside an old stone house. The door was wide open and a goat wandered out to greet me. The sight of it settled me a little. I knew nothing about horses, and in truth, they unnerved me, but my grandad had kept goats. I was familiar with their propensity to stick their noses in my pocket, searching for something—anything, actually—to eat. They weren’t that different to Ella.
Nice. Now you’re comparing your daughter to a goat? Father of the year, man.
Whoever narrated my inner monologue was kind of a prick. And definitely a bloke. I blocked him out and gave the goat a petrol receipt to chomp on. Another goat joined it, and before I could blink, there seemed to be hundreds of them.
My pockets were empty. Alarmed, I contemplated the swarm of goats. Grandad John had kept, like, six. I was out of ideas on how to handle three times more than that.
A deep chuckle sounded behind me. “He’s got that city-boy look.”
I spun around. A tall man with warm skin and flinty eyes stood there. He was devastatingly handsome, in a wild kind of way. Instinct told me he was likely the husband of my old friend and new boss and the owner of Whisper Farm. Beside him was the man himself, and I relaxed a little. I hadn’t seen Harry Foster in more than a year, but he was a man who didn’t change. Since he’d left London to set up his clinic down south, he’d become an even nicer version of one of the nicest people I’d ever met. His smile was easy and kind. And his embrace was as familiar as it had seemed to be when I’d first met him a decade ago. “Ignore Joe.” He jerked his head at the wild man. “He has no manners.”
“Give a shit.” Joe extended his hand and cracked my fingers with a knuckle-breaking squeeze. “Just saying I know that look. Don’t want to get your shoes dirty, eh?”
I glanced down at my tatty old Converse. “You know what, mate? I’m not that bothered.”
Harry snorted. “It’s a wonder he’s even wearing shoes. This idiot walks barefoot around Hackney.”
“Only in the summer,” I retorted.
“You’re still an idiot.”
“I know. I’m here, aren’t I?”
That earned me a smirk from Joe, but he ambled away without further conversation, leaving me with Harry.
I breathed another sigh of relief. “That’s your husband?”
“It is. Don’t mind him. If he didn’t like you, you’d already know it.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“I know, but what can I say? Joe is Joe. How was the drive?”
“Long. The only good thing about it was I’m not planning on making a return journey anytime soon.”
“You don’t look happy about that.”
Great. I was sulking on the job already, but Harry had always had a way of drawing the truth from me, whether I wanted to confide in him or not. “Define happy. I’m glad to be here, but it wasn’t my choice. You know that.”
Harry knocked my shoulder with his fist. “I do. But hopefully, it’ll work out for the best. We’ve got a great practice down here. A varied client list and lots of scope to develop new skills. We even use horses from the farm for balance therapy.”
I knew that already from the literature Harry had sent me six months ago when I’d reached out to him for help, but frankly, despite the endearing images of rescue horses leading CBI patients around a sun-dappled field, I couldn’t see myself participating. In fact, I couldn’t see myself doing much at all outside of the full schedule of classes I’d signed up to teach. With Ella to care for, I wouldn’t have time. “Where’s the clinic from here?”
Harry pointed behind me. “Over there. I’ll show you round in the morning. I figured you’d want to settle into the cottage tonight. Get some dinner and crash.”
I couldn’t think of anything better. I nodded my assent and grabbed one of my bags from the car. The rest could wait until morning.
Harry led me back the way I’d come in the car. Down the lane and across a field. “There’s a path,” he called over his shoulder. “But when the horses are stabled for the night and the ground is dry, it’s quicker to come this way.”
“How many horses are there?”
“Around forty, I think. It varies, depending on how many rescues come in.”
“You get a lot of those?”
“Yes. Even more so since Joe expanded the stable block. When I first came here, it was half the size it is now.”
We reached the other side of the field. Harry hurdled the gate. Lacking any better ideas, I followed and found myself in a small orchard. Apple and cherry trees were beginning to blossom, and the fading sun cast a warm glow over the delicate space. I couldn’t deny its beauty and slowed to a stop, dropping my bag at my feet.
Harry shot me a knowing glance but said nothing as I nudged off my shoes—I wore no socks. Damp grass hit my feet and I curled my toes in it, centring myself for the first time in what felt like months. The sensation was fleeting, and the reality of my new life was a mere heartbeat away, but for the briefest of moments, I was earthed. “This is nice,” I said.
