Title: Scarred
Author: Mia Kerick
Genre: M/M Romantic Suspense
Release Date: March 1, 2017
From bestselling author Mia Kerick comes a New Adult novel of Gay Romantic Suspense that will keep you up reading all night!
Matthew North waited ten years to heal from the devastating wounds inflicted by the man who abducted and abused him as a child. Living reclusively on a tropical island—with no company but his four cats—he merely avoids the lingering pain.
Wearing twisted ropes of mutilated skin on his back, Matt struggles with a profound hindrance—the scars that deaden his soul. However, on the night he meets lively Vedie Wilson, a local restaurant busboy who expresses his gender by wearing lipgloss and eyeliner along with his three-day beard, things change.
Gradually, Vedie and Mateo unite in friendship. Through a series of awkward encounters, the pair learns each other’s secrets. Vedie learns that an angelic face can front for a scarred soul. Matthew learns that the line between one’s masculine and feminine sides is blurred. Can they embrace the painful stories behind each other’s scars if they’re to find everlasting love? Or will surrendered love come to be yet another blemish on their souls?
Matt’s journal dated July 2005
I’m supposed to write down my memories to get them off my chest and out of my head. I guess it can’t hurt at this point, so here goes….
Daniel Blankenship took me when I was seven.
The asshole fucking dragged a little boy off his brand new seventh-birthday BMX bike because he wanted a new toy. When he yanked me from my bike, and I saw it resting on the sidewalk, front tire still spinning, my major concern was that if I left it there, some kid would come along and steal it. But when he stuffed me into his van I quickly got the bigger picture. I was being stolen and my bike was the least of my worries.
I do my best not to think about the things he did to me for the next eight years, until, at fifteen, I was too old to do it for him. So at this point, the twisted shit he did is tightly sealed in long-term storage—in a fireproof, waterproof unit at the very back of my brain—where I plan to leave it and forget I ever put it there. God knows I’ve recalled it all—every revolting detail—and I’ve suffered over each memory I fought my ass off to own. But I can’t dwell on that shit anymore, or even talk about it, like everybody in my life seems so bound and determined to make me do.
I’ve reached the conclusion that I can no longer live in the company of other people.
Mia Kerick is the mother of four exceptional children—all named after saints—and five nonpedigreed cats—all named after the next best thing to saints, Boston Red Sox players. Her husband of twenty years has been told by many that he has the patience of Job, but don’t ask Mia about that, as it is a sensitive subject.
Mia focuses her stories on the emotional growth of troubled young men and their relationships, and she believes that sex has a place in a love story, but not until it is firmly established as a love story. As a teen, Mia filled spiral-bound notebooks with romantic tales of tortured heroes (most of whom happened to strongly resemble lead vocalists of 1980s big-hair bands) and stuffed them under her mattress for safekeeping. She is thankful to Dreamspinner Press for providing her with an alternate place to stash her stories.
Mia is proud of her involvement with the Human Rights Campaign and cheers for each and every victory made in the name of marital equality. Her only major regret: never having taken typing or computer class in school, destining her to a life consumed with two-fingered pecking and constant prayer to the Gods of Technology.
