Title: Scars and Secrets

Author: Thomas Grant Bruso

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: 12/17/2024

Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 67685

Genre: Contemporary Thriller, Lit/genre, contemporary, crime/thriller, family-drama, disappearance, murder, cancer, therapist

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Description

Ralph Ashton gets more than he bargained for when police question him about the death of his ex-boyfriend Elijah Ray, whose body is discovered at the edge of the Saranac River. When the local police visit Ralph and ask him about a critical piece of case evidence, Ralph becomes a prime suspect. He sets out to learn what happened to Eli the night he left his apartment and is startled to learn about his former boyfriend’s shady past. As Ralph pursues a dangerous investigation, he discovers things about Eli he did not know while they were together. Ralph’s life starts to unravel when he loses more people close to him as his mother lies in a hospital bed dying of cancer. Is learning about the truth of Eli’s death worth jeopardizing his safety?

Excerpt

The Saranac River empties into the mouth of Lake Champlain and a sliver of late-evening sun shimmies and slices across shavings of broken ice like a school of shiny fish. I straighten the blue-and-white striped silk tie my last boyfriend gifted me and stare out at the early November landscape. The ground is dusted with newly fallen snow, and the river, a swollen malignant serpentine of icy water, snakes through a vista of evergreens and sycamores.

I catch my hard stare in the reflection of the large picture window of my therapist’s office. Dr. James Matheson, basketball tall with peacock-blue eyes and warm brown skin, dressed in a rosy-pink dress shirt and charcoal-gray suit, coaxes me back to the present. His voice is butter soft and attractive, musically inclined and bilingual. Spanish on his mother’s side, I think.

My thoughts unravel like vines on a branch, disoriented, a broken fuse box with faulty wiring. I blow out a loud breath and turn to the long-legged and handsome therapist, my hands packed in the pockets of my khakis so he won’t see them shake. Men make me nervous and weak-kneed.

Dr. Matheson is patient and smiling, waiting for me to speak, to say something, since I’ve been standing in silence for the last fifteen minutes, staring out at the dismal day passing by. I think about my mother who lies in the hospital dying. I’ve just come from visiting her, before my scheduled therapy session. Dr. Matheson wants to discuss it, from his stone silence and sensitive stares.

I glance at my wristwatch. I’ve been in Pretty Boy’s office for almost an hour, and I haven’t said much or given the good old doc enough to judge or dislike me or cancel my next session. I am surprised he has not asked me not to come back. Maybe he’ll call County Hospital and admit me to the psych ward on the fourth floor if I open my mouth and let him into my dark, sad life.

He does not reach for the phone. He sits poised in the high brown leather chair behind his polished cherry wood desk, with many medical certifications on the wall behind him. He stares across the room at me, grins, keeping a professional manner, waiting for me to give him his money and time’s worth. I drag myself toward the overstuffed leather chair across from his desk and collapse into it, as if it is my home base.

I find it hard to hold Dr. Matheson’s gaze. Shyness overcomes me and I wring my hands. My anxiety levels heighten. My stare darts across the room at the sudden arrival of hard balls of sleet beating the glass and the braying wind cutting through the tops of snowcapped trees across the lake. My breath catches, and I hear Dr. Matheson talking, his voice muffled, the tail end of his last words: “…do you want to talk about it?”

I cringe and feel his eyes on me when I turn away to the ice-crusted window on the far wall. My eyes close, and my lips clamp shut in a jagged line as rage seethes under my thin layer of vulnerability. My gut clutches.

“Ralph?” he says.

My name means nothing to me. Foreign, a stranger, someone I left in the past. I lift my head slowly, and it is as if an unseen, supernatural force presses down on my shoulders, forcing me to keep quiet. I am guarded as the walls go up around me. A nerve twitches under my right eye. Maddening!

Dr. Matheson shifts in his chair, and I sense that I have kept him waiting too long; his displeasure is like a bulldozer digging through the tendril of roots and dead zone of my brain, demolishing my thoughts. He’s got to get home to his girlfriend, wife, whoever. Maybe it’s a blind date, I imagine, invoking vulgar and naughty thoughts of Dr. Matheson in a heavy-duty threesome. One of the bottoms is me.

I lift my dreamy gaze to his masculine, model-thin face, chiseled jaw, and rugged handsomeness. I can smell the citrus scent of his cologne ten feet from where I sit. Heat crawls into my face, aroused, my interest and other unmentionable areas proudly piqued. I want a man like James: Built like a Greek God, Zeus or Ares. Tough. Striking. Dominant.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks, curling his small puckish lips. “You seem far away.”

Clingy cobwebs of darkness thicken inside my head, gauzy and wet, sticking to the wall of my brain like silly string.

“Deadness,” I say, uncertain where this conversation is heading. The face of my mother flashes in my mind, and I think about running back to the hospital and staying by her side.

James uncrosses his leg from left to right and changes positions so the side of his face illuminates in a shaft of soft glow from the floor lamp hanging over his shoulder. I want to tell him he looks fucking sexy that way, but I keep quiet. He holds his yellow writing pad, the tips of his fingers turning white, and I dream about what he can do to me with those meaty hands. Touch me in my favorite place, I want to tell him. But I don’t.

I picture him holding my face in his sweaty palms as we lock gazes, staring haughtily into each other’s eyes. The stiffness of my erection knocks against the fabric of my pants. I squirm in my chair.

“What do you mean?” he asks. “Deadness?”

I force myself to blink a few times, snap out of my hazy dream, and look up at Dr. Matheson. His expression is alarming, unblinking. He stares at me, bordering on the threshold of a stalker. I find a way out of my rut, clawing, digging, and rummaging through a labyrinth of unfathomable responses. “All I want to do is listen to Twenty One Pilots or Nickelback and drink beer. Forget about life, people, and work.” Except for my mother. My ex-boyfriend, Eli, too. I want to see him. It’s been a while since he walked out on me and never returned.

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Ornery Owl's Review

Four out of Five Stars

The story's protagonist, Ralph, is a troubled young man. His life is already a mess when his former boyfriend, Eli, arrives at his door. Their relationship tentatively picks up where it left off, but then Eli is murdered, and Ralph becomes the number one suspect.

Overall, this is a five-star read. It is well-written and impeccably edited. It isn't for the faint of heart or for young readers. There are graphic descriptions of violence and scenes depicting homophobic attitudes. This isn't what stops me from giving the book a five-star rating. That would be appearance shaming and ageism. The author could have indicated the protagonist's shock at the sight of the woman's crepey skin and sagging breasts when she steps out of her apartment wearing a bra with no shirt without referring to her as a "Stephen King horror."

I am often startled at the crepey skin and age spots on the backs of my hands. Even though they are my hands, I don't expect them to look like that. Nonetheless, the appearance of my hands isn't horrific. The skin has simply become weathered by the passage of time. I find the disdain with which elderly women are viewed by society horrifying.

Purchase

NineStar Press | Books2Read

Meet the Author

Thomas Grant Bruso knew at an early age he wanted to be a writer. He has been a voracious reader of genre fiction since he was a kid. His literary inspirations are Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Ellen Hart, Jim Grimsley, Karin Fossum, Sam J. Miller, Joyce Carol Oates, and John Connolly. Bruso loves animals, book-reading, writing fiction, prefers Sudoku to crossword puzzles. In another life, he was a freelance writer and wrote for magazines and newspapers. In college, he was a winner for the Hermon H. Doh Sonnet Competition. Now, he writes book reviews for his hometown newspaper, The Press Republican.