Author: Rick R. Reed
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: January 13, 2020
Length: 68300
Genre: Contemporary, LGBT, deep closet, coming out, men with children, virgin, #ownvoices, humorous, EMT
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Synopsis
Randy Kay has the perfect life with his beautiful wife and adorable son. But Randy’s living a lie, untrue to himself and everyone who knows him. He’s gay.
Marriage and fatherhood, which he thought could change him, have failed. He doubts if anyone can love him for who he really is—especially himself.
With his wife’s blessing, he sets out to explore the gay world he’s hidden from all his life.
John Walsh, a paramedic with the Chicago Fire Department, is comfortable in his own skin as a gay man, yet he can never find someone who shares his desire to create a real relationship, a true family.
When Randy and John first spy each other in Chicago’s Boystown, all kinds of alarms go off—some of joy, others of deep-seated fear.
Randy and John must surmount multiple hurdles on the journey to a lasting, meaningful love. Will they succeed or will their chance at love go up in flames, destroyed by missed connections and a lack of self-acceptance?
UNRAVELING
(c) 2020 By Rick R. Reed
Exclusive Excerpt
I begin to climb up the stairs. Henry is lighter than air.
As we approach, Violet opens the door. Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes, which are red, the area around them puffy.
And I have to fight once more to not feel the shame, the guilt, the wish that I was someone else. She didn’t ask for any of this. She only wanted to love me.
I brush by Violet and move down the hallway to Henry’s room at one end. Inside, Violet has left the small lamp on his dresser illuminated and the yellow room has a warm glow. Safe.
I reach over the edge of the barred headboard of his maple twin bed and place Henry gently down on the mattress, on his back. I glance up at the mobile above his head, a little stuffed VW bugs in pastel shades. When it’s on, it plays “King of the Road.” The music always makes Henry smile, even though he now protests he’s too old for “that thing.”
I keep it because it always makes me smile, too.
I sometimes wonder if it will still be looking down upon him when he’s in high school.
I’m grateful that my son is such a sound sleeper.
I turn off the light and close the door as I exit the room.
It’s time to talk.***Violet and I huddle close on the couch, wrapped in a white and yellow afghan my late grandmother made. It binds the two of us together in a cocoon. On the coffee table before us, an empty red wine bottle and two glasses with dark dredges in the bottom bear testimony to our long talk.
I wonder for a moment how simply talking can be so exhausting. I feel as if any energy I had in reserve has been ripped right out of me.
The sky outside our window is that indescribable gray that’s more a quality of light than a color. We’ve passed the whole night on a magic carpet of words.
Words that made us cry. That wounded. That opened doors. Words that made us collapse into one another’s arms, holding tight, pining for a dream we now know will never come true. Words that hurt. Words that angered. Truth.They say our thoughts become words, our words become actions, and our actions become our reality.
Tonight’s conversation was one of those landmark ones that will surely shape our reality going forward.
Violet is the soul of kindness, the heart of giving.
“I want you to be yourself,” she tells me. “And whoever that self is, Randy, it’s still you. And I’ll always love you.”
She doesn’t know it and, until I hear her say them, I didn’t know either that I’d been waiting all my life for someone to tell me that. See, when you hide as I have, you have to question—do the people who say they love me really love me? Or do they love an ideal? A ghost image of a person that doesn’t really exist?
The pain of wondering if anyone really loves you for you is real and cuts deep.
Violet has said more than she knows and I will always be grateful for the words—words I know that come at great personal risk and sacrifice.
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Real Men. True Love.
Rick R. Reed draws inspiration from the lives of gay men to craft stories that quicken the heartbeat, engage emotions, and keep the pages turning. Although he dabbles in horror, dark suspense, and comedy, his attention always returns to the power of love. He’s the award-winning and bestselling author of more than fifty works of published fiction and is forever at work on yet another book. Lambda Literary has called him: “A writer that doesn’t disappoint…” Rick lives in Palm Springs, CA with his beloved husband and their fierce Chihuahua/Shiba Inu mix.
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