Release Blitz, Excerpt & Giveaway:
Worth the Fight
By C F White

Worth It, Book 2

It was never going to be just one night. Not when it burned this hot.

Firefighter Reece Morgan is the station flirt. Tattooed, reckless, and always up for a laugh or a hook-up. He’s made a name for himself across Worthbridge, and he’s fine with that. No strings. No drama. No need for more.

Until one heated night in a sauna changes everything.

Trent Lawson thought it would be just sex. One night to forget, to shut off the noise inside his head. But the fire Reece ignites won’t stop burning. Not in his skin. Not in his chest. Not when every emergency throws them back together, stoking something far deeper, and far more dangerous.

Reece isn’t used to caring. Not really. But Trent isn’t just another fling. Behind his sharp tongue and cool control, Reece sees the exhaustion, the cracks, the way Trent’s numbing himself with all the wrong things. And for once, Reece doesn’t want to walk away. He wants to fight. For Trent. For every kiss denied and every glance that means too much.

But when the flames turn deadly and the danger hits close to home, Trent must face the past he’s been running from and decide if Reece is the one thing worth stepping into the fire for.

Because in Worthbridge, sparks are flying.

And some flames are worth the fight.

Worth the Fight is the second book in the Worth It series, a gritty MM romance series set in a small coastal town featuring first responders entangled in a criminal case that threatens the community they serve and the people they love.

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Excerpt:

The stairwell was a tunnel of smoke where visibility dropped to a hand in front of the face. Heat licked Reece’s gear. Not enough to be dangerous but promising it would get there soon. So he and Miller climbed fast, avoiding the clutter on the landings. A collapsed clothes horse. A child’s plastic ride-on car. Some idiot had left rubbish bags in the corner again. They’d dealt with this block before.

“Flat sixteen,” Miller called through the comms.

Reece found the door and tensed. Smoke bled from the seams.

He braced himself, then drove his shoulder into the wood. Once. Twice. The second hit splintered it, the frame groaning as it gave and smoke rolled out in greasy curls, swallowing his boots. As his mask hissed with each breath, the regulator rhythm sharp in his ears, he flung up his torch, the beam cutting through the murk, and stepped inside. Heat pressed in and Reece swept right, eyes focused as he tracked movement through the shifting black.

Then Miller said, “Paramedics on scene.”

And Reece’s pulse spiked for a whole different reason.

“Tell them to hold at the cordon,” he called back, knowing full well one of them might attempt to break that safe zone.

So he turned back to the smoke. To what he could handle.

Heat rose fast as he crawled through the flat and found the tenant collapsed in the hallway, semi-conscious. Miller radioed for assistance, and they extracted her together, Reece cradling her head, easing her out over debris, while smoke curled tighter, hotter, pressing in like fingers around a throat. So they moved fast, down through the haze, feet thudding the stairwell.

Then there, at the base of the stairs, behind the safety tape, high-vis jacket half-zipped, was the very paramedic in question. Trent. In full greens, backlit by the rig’s blue lights. Reece’s mouth went dry. Not from the heat. But from him. Because in that look he gave, there was something unreadable at first. Recognition, maybe. Then softer. As if he’d hoped it might be Reece coming down those stairs. But it vanished. Replaced by the cold professionalism he wore like armour.

“Elderly female. Semi-conscious. Smoke inhalation.” Reece eased the woman into Trent’s waiting arms, careful, efficient, but the moment their hands met, the contact sparked hotter than the flames behind them.

Too long. Always too long.

And Reece felt it. Like he always did. Every damn time.

But Trent gave nothing away. Not a sliver of recognition. Or a glance lingering after it should. Only a maddening calm as he helped the woman onto the gurney. And right there, in the middle of smoke and sirens, Reece remembered exactly why playing the part of the cocky playboy was easier. Safer.

Better than this slow-burn purgatory Trent kept him locked in.

The woman groaned, coughing, and Trent kicked into action.

“We’ve got her.” Then to his crew, “Let’s go. Airway, O2, BP. I’ll ride in.”

Reece watched him a beat too long, caught in the quiet intensity of him. His steady hands. Careful touch. And that familiar furrow between his brows. And his hair. Unruly blond curls caught the light as if they held their own private blaze. Trent Lawson was a soft, golden fire, burning as bright as the one Reece had never quite put out.

Same as it always is.

Trent turned back to his patient, and reality yanked Reece back into line. Do the job. Put out fires, don’t start them. Especially not the ones roaring to life in his chest, and lower, every damn time he caught sight of a certain paramedic poured into figure-hugging greens. Sometimes he swore Trent did it on purpose. Moved just right, looked just wrong. Utterly off-limits and completely irresistible in the same breath. He didn’t even realise he was the walking definition of Reece’s worst idea… and his favourite temptation.

When the last of the flames died to steam and the thermal imaging confirmed nothing but smouldering heat signatures, Reece peeled off his BA set with a grunt. His shoulders were stiff and lungs raw from the heavy air. He should’ve headed for a bottle of water and a quiet corner to cool off, but his feet took him where they always did.

Towards him.

Despite Miller yelling at him. “Morgan! You’ve still got debrief and hose rolls. Stop eye fucking the greens!”

Reece flipped him off.

Trent was inside the ambulance, his greens stained and clinging in all the right places, sleeves shoved up to his elbows as he worked. His gloved hands moved steadily over the elderly woman’s fragile frame, checking vitals, adjusting the oxygen mask cradled to her face. For a man who’d spent the last half hour knee-deep in chaos, he still looked annoyingly perfect.

And fuckable.

Really fucking fuckable.

Enter the Giveaway:

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Check out Book 1: Worth the Wait

Worth It, Book 1

It was never over. It was just waiting.

Nathan Carter didn’t return to Worthbridge looking for a second chance. He came back for a roof over his head, a job that pays, and maybe, if he’s lucky, a way to connect with the teenage son he’s barely known. Life in the army taught him how to survive, but not how to be a father… and definitely not how to live with the choices he made the day he walked away from everything. Including Freddie Webb.

PC Freddie Webb never left Worthbridge. Not the town. Not the ghosts. Steady, dependable, the man everyone trusts to hold the line when things fall apart, he’s spent years keeping his head down and his heart locked up tight. But all that control shatters the moment a routine arrest throws him face to face with the boy he once loved… and the son that boy now has.

What started between them as teenagers was messy, intense, and unforgettable. Sixteen years later, it’s no less complicated. Eespecially with Alfie, Nathan’s angry, guarded son, caught between them and already spiralling toward trouble.

As old desires resurface and old wounds reopen, Nathan and Freddie are pulled back into each other’s orbit. But with the whole town watching, tensions rising, and the past refusing to stay buried, they’ll have to decide: play it safe… or risk everything for the love they never got to finish.

Because in Worthbridge, the past never stays buried.

And some loves are worth every second of the wait.