The Woodsman by Steven O'Connor

Sixty-three. Twenty-three. Forty years apart—and two lives that were never supposed to cross.

Hank Miller has spent nearly his entire life in the Montana wilderness. At sixty-three, he is still a powerful, imposing man, hardened by decades of physical labor. He lives alone in a log cabin surrounded by forest and has never needed anyone.

Or at least, that's what he keeps telling himself.

When the years finally begin to make the work harder, Hank decides it's time to hire some help. The man who answers his ad is Sid Parker, twenty-three, nearly broke, completely inexperienced in logging, and desperately in need of both a job and a place to stay.

Sid is everything Hank is not: young, lean, completely hairless, with a softer, almost delicate kind of beauty. Hank is convinced he won't last a week.

He's wrong.

Sid learns quickly, earning Hank's respect one day at a time. But as the young man finds his place in the woods, something begins to change inside the cabin as well. Dinners are no longer silent. Evenings no longer feel quite so long. And Hank discovers just how easy it is to get used to having someone around.

Then come the lingering glances.

Sid finds himself fascinated by Hank's mature, powerful body, marked by age and a lifetime of hard work. Hank, meanwhile, becomes increasingly drawn to Sid's smooth skin, his youth, and a kind of sensuality unlike anything he has ever known.

For Hank, none of this is supposed to happen.

He has always wanted women. He has always known what he likes.

At least until Sid came along.

Sid, however, isn't afraid of what he feels, nor does he hide his softer, more provocative side. Through quiet confidences, playful seduction, and a growing closeness that becomes harder to ignore with every passing day, the line between employer and hired hand slowly begins to disappear.

Soon Hank will have to face something far more difficult than any tree he has ever brought down: accepting that he wants someone he never imagined he could love.

Because the real problem isn't the forty years between them.

It's that after a lifetime spent alone, Hank is finally building something he could lose.

The Woodsman is an LGBTQ+ MM age-gap romance set deep in the forests of Montana—a story of unexpected attraction, living under the same roof, sensuality, and self-discovery.

Because sometimes the person who was missing from your life is the one you never would have thought to look for.