Stories Between Us Anthology

Derrick is alive. But he didn’t just party too hard.

Jalen finds his best friend in a hospital bed with GHB in his system, a stranger at his bedside, and three dollars left in his bank account. Across town, a man from the same party is found dead behind the wheel of his own car. The police call it an overdose. The only clue is a sealed little brown bottle in Jalen’s bag.

Then the man who bit him in the dark room slides into his DMs, asking for round two.

Somebody at Sanctum is drugging men in the dark. And the man in Jalen’s bed knows exactly who.

🎧 Last Seen in the Dark Room is a Black gay erotic mystery audio drama from Stories Between Us Anthology.

⚠️ For mature audiences, headphones in.

🔔 Follow and subscribe so you don’t miss an episode.

My best friend walked into the dark room at a Black gay lingerie party... and never walked out. Now the whole club swears he was never there.

LAST SEEN IN THE DARK ROOM | Episode 1: My Best Friend Vanished in the Dark Room

Jalen is the friend who holds everybody's purse. For one night at SANCTUM, the city's most notorious Black gay party, he finally lets go. Three friends go into the dark room together. Two walk out. By last call, the promoter says there was never a third guest, the dancer who partied with them all night asks "who?", and Jalen is left holding a coat-check ticket and a warning in his best friend's handwriting.

Then he finds the stranger from the dark room in the background of his own video, with his hand on his missing friend's neck.

A steamy Black gay mystery audio drama about chosen family, desire, and the people who erase us.

Follow so you don't miss Episode 2.

Owen Cole built his life around control around duty, around being the man everyone else could lean on. He became the firefighter others trusted with their lives because he never trusted anyone with his heart. Not after the man he loved died in a kitchen fire.

Then came Griffin Walker.

The younger firefighter who pulled Owen back from a collapsing floor. Who almost died in his arms on a burning dock. Who never asked for more but carried it in his eyes anyway.

Griffin knew the rules. He knew what it meant to want a man who had already buried love once. But surviving fires together changes things. Holding each other in hospital rooms and half-lit garages changes things.

Until the hurricane came. Until the city nearly drowned. Until Owen realized surviving was no longer enough.

A slow-burn romance about grief, duty, and choosing love after loss with rank, history, and an entire city watching.

The Man Next Door Has a Secret DL Life follows a married man hiding a secret life and the emotional complications that come with keeping that part of himself hidden.

This story explores secrecy, desire, betrayal, vulnerability, and the complicated reality of living on the Down Low. 

📖 NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON KINDLE

Want to experience the story in written form? The Man Next Door Has a Secret DL Life is now available as an Amazon Kindle e-book.

https://a.co/d/09E15ioB

Whether you're hearing this story again or discovering it for the first time, settle in for a story filled with tension, secrecy, emotional twists, complicated relationships, and raw vulnerability.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

ABOUT STORIES BETWEEN US ANTHOLOGY:

Stories Between Us Anthology is home to Black Gay romance, intimacy, tension, drama, and emotional storytelling.

Follow serialized gay love stories filled with heat, heart, conflict, complicated relationships, and undeniable chemistry.

From messy hookups and slow-burn crushes to dangerous rescues and unexpected love, these stories explore attraction, secrecy, identity, relationships, and the emotions that happen between people when life gets complicated.

📅 New episodes weekly - Subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss a chapter.

🔗 Find the Kindle e-book and connect with Stories Between Us Anthology:https://linktr.ee/stories.between.us.anthology

Every chapter of For Better or Worse, back to back - the wedding, the baby on the doorstep, the custody fight, the ruling, and the ending that makes it all worth it.

This is the complete short story: Martin and Carl, two Black, Gay, newly married men, thrown into parenthood days after their wedding when a birth mother in recovery hands them her daughter. What follows is a long fight - through a biased home visit, a birth mother's return, a courtroom loss neither of them saw coming, and the phone call that gives them a second chance at the family they almost didn't get to keep.

All six chapters, the full story of what "For Better or Worse" actually costs two men willing to pay it.

They lost the custody case. Weeks later, a phone call changes everything again - and this time, nothing can take it away.

In this final episode of For Better or Worse, Martin and Carl grieve, fight, and find their way back to each other before Denise calls with a newborn boy and a incontestable adoption.

Months later, at the same park bench where this all started, they're not alone - Mariah is there with Amara, and the family none of them planned for finally has room for everybody. This is the ending this whole mini story has been building toward. 

That's the story of Martin and Carl. Follow Stories Between Us for the next mini story.

The custody petition finally has a date set for a courtroom. Two newlywed men. One birth mother.

Mariah takes the stand first, and for the first time in this story, she tells exactly why she gave her daughter away. Martin testifies next, honest in a way that costs him something with his own husband. Then the judge rules, and Martin and Carl learn that loving a child and legally keeping her are not always the same fight. This episode reveals the truth about Mariah, the cost of Martin's honesty, and the ruling that changes everything for two Gay newlyweds who thought "I do" was the hard part.

Mariah stood fifteen feet away with her hands shaking, she had been watching Martin and Carl for weeks.

Six weeks into fatherhood, Martin and Carl finally have a routine - Saturday mornings in the park, coffee, a stroller, a life that's starting to feel normal. Then Amara's birth mother appears out of nowhere, desperate to see her baby, and everything they thought was settled gets thrown wide open again.

What she reveals about how she found them, and what she wants now, forces Martin and Carl into the hardest fight of their marriage yet. 

Subscribe to see what happens when this actually lands in front of a judge.

They still haven't said sorry. That doesn't stop them from reaching for each other with their bodies until the baby, the fight, and a case workers report from the state all land in the same afternoon.

Martin and Carl still haven't talked about the fight that broke their first week of marriage, but silence doesn't mean distance in this house. When Carl's cousin shows up uninvited with a changing table and zero patience for their nonsense, she forces the conversation they've both been avoiding.

What follows is messier, funnier, and more honest than either of them expected  and a piece of county paperwork neither of them saw coming might be the thing that finally fixes the tension between them.

One diaper disaster. One state caseworker with a clipboard and an agenda. One fight neither of them saw coming four days into a marriage.

Martin and Carl are three a.m. deep into their first night with a newborn, and the house has already turned into chaos: bottles, backward onesies, a couch cushion that didn't survive.

Then the state sends someone to evaluate whether two Black gay men are fit to raise her, and every question comes with a homophobic tone and the argument that finally breaks two newlyweds wide open.