Undefined Terms

by Alex W. Wells

Ronan Carrick is twenty-seven, broad-shouldered, and built for work. His plan is clean: two years in Manchester on a good construction job, close to his brother. He's planned for less.

Then he meets Celyn at a corner table in a bar. Red nails on a keyboard. A mouth that keeps talking about a bloke who sent back his steak at a steakhouse. Hands that move fast, precise, completely indifferent to the fact that Ron's stopped tracking words.

Celyn Biggs is twenty-five, Welsh, and exists on their own terms. They wear what works that day: skirt and Dr Martens, or stubble and eyeliner, or both. They don't fit the files Ron's been building his whole life. They make peace with the people who can't hold that. They're working on a novel and serving weekends and they don't know the tall man at the bar is trying to sort them into a space that doesn't exist.

For weeks, Ron watches. For months, he sits at the corner table and learns that the thing between them has no name in his head. Celyn doesn't ask him to name it. They just ask: stay.

Office hours become flats. Manchester becomes London. And the space between two people who were shaped for different lives becomes the only space that fits.

What readers will find:


First person narrated, single POV: Ronan's concrete, body-forward voice from page one
An opposites-attract slow burn with a Welsh main character who exists without explanation
British setting: Manchester Northern Quarter, Bermondsey, Peckham — named places, lived spaces
Construction worker meets writer: blue-collar and literary, worlds that shouldn't touch but do
Contemporary literary love story with explicit on-page intimacy, vers dynamics, full consent, no fade-to-black
HEA guaranteed

A non-binary opposites-attract MM romance with a Welsh main character, slow-burn intimacy, vers dynamics, and a guaranteed HEA. Book 2 of the Carrick Brothers Duet. Can be read independently of Book 1.

Kindle Edition

Expected publication July 6, 2026

About the author

Alex W. Wells (they/them) writes contemporary MM romance: slow burn, open door, and men who are much better at observing than asking for what they want.

Their books follow characters figuring things out late, badly, and with more precision than necessary: academics, bricklayers, commuters, exes, fathers, teachers, artists. Very specific food. Tea that means something it shouldn’t.

They write queer romance with sharp dialogue, emotional restraint, and heat that arrives after far too much thinking.

They say very little about the rest.