"Something to remember me by, little painter."

Elliot Meyer draws the people he's too scared to talk to.

At twenty-three, he's a late-blooming art student in Hoboken with a sketchbook full of strangers he's never once said hello to. Then his roommates drag him across the river to Vesper, a Lower East Side nightclub built inside an old funeral parlor, and Elliot makes the mistake of sketching the man holding court on the marble staircase.

Donovan Black wears leather, kohl, and silver on every finger. He hosts the city's most notorious goth night, treats flirting like a blood sport, and lives by exactly one rule: gone before sunrise. By morning, Elliot has a bite on his neck, a black card in his pocket, and a question he can't stop asking.

What's your real name?

Because Donovan Black is a performance. By day, the man underneath keeps his curtains shut, his phone face down, and his past locked away. He has spent years making sure no one ever sees him in the light. Especially not someone who paints.

But Elliot is braver in daylight than he's ever been at night. And the closer he gets to the truth, the closer he comes to the one person Donovan has been running from.

Across the River is a moody, funny, aching MM romance about two men learning to stand in each other's light, and what it costs to finally be seen.

- Dual POV
- Night-owl goth x shy sunshine artist
- Opposites attract, hurt/comfort, found family
- Standalone with a guaranteed HEA

Content note: references to past emotional and sexual abuse, grief, and family estrangement. None of the abuse is depicted explicitly.