Different Roads

When Jaycee Stevens is six years old, her mother dies and leaves her with an abusive drunk of a father who only remembers she’s there when she gets in trouble. She grows up a foul-mouthed hellion who doesn’t take crap off anyone, and she lives in fear of anyone finding out she's also a love-starved little girl terrified of the dark. By the time she's seventeen, Jaycee has outrageous behavior down to an art. Her intrepid spirit carries her to college on an athletic scholarship, but she's tripped up there by a poor little rich boy on the baseball team named Bud Stanton. Bud hides in a bottle just like Jaycee's old man, and the last thing she wants is to get mixed up with another drunk. He's everything she despises, and she wants him more than she's ever wanted anything. When she finally stops fighting her attraction to him, they fall hard for each other, and God help anyone who gets caught in the crossfire. 

Jaycee and Bud are an emotional paradox: drawn to each other because they're so much alike, and constantly at war for the same reason. They fight as frequently and as physically as they make love, but Bud's arms are the only place Jaycee has ever felt safe from the terror of her recurring nightmares. Their rollercoaster life is gritty, touching, and funny, and just when they think they've made it safely to the end of their wild ride, Jaycee's childhood comes back to derail her when she has to go home and face her biggest fear: What happened to her in the dark?