Sunday Snippet!

 

My snippet today is from the first book in the Cutting Cords Series. The entire series is available on AMAZON and a free read with your KU subscription. 

Blurb:

Sloan Driscoll is a talented graphic artist but compared to his father and younger brother—all star athletes—he’s never measured up. A lifetime of insecurity leads him down dark paths.

His childhood friend, Cole Fujiwara, a former major league pitcher, embodies all of Sloan’s hidden aspirations. Cole is physically fit, attractive, intelligent, and successful. Seemingly perfect.

When Sloan shows up on Cole’s NYC doorstep needing a place to stay, their reunion is anything but simple. Sloan has always been drawn to Cole, but now, even though there’s a girlfriend on the periphery, the attraction seems mutual.

One night, inhibitions slip away. But both men are hiding a multitude of secrets. Salvation could be found within each other’s arms. But only if they let it.

Snippet

Cole lay in bed, mulling over the last hour. Things had gone as well as he could hope, considering they hadn’t seen each other in fifteen years, but there had been a few awkward moments.

Despite the initial misgivings, he gave in to his father’s request but had no compunction establishing ground rules early on to make the arrangement more tolerable. He’d purposefully left his contacts in, hoping to catch a glimpse of Sloan when he finally knocked on the door. Cole deluded himself into thinking the lenses would help, when in reality they did nothing to improve his eyesight, which was rapidly diminishing. All he had was his central vision, and it was like looking at the world through a broken camera lens. It drove him crazy in the early days, but now, each sighting was a treasure he embedded into his memory bank. Sloan was much taller than Cole had anticipated and those piercing gray eyes were disconcerting and eerily familiar. Cole had a flash of recognition as soon as he opened the door and Sloan fixed his inquisitive gaze on him for the longest time. It had made him uncomfortable as a young adolescent, and now, it was ten times worse. Fanatical about his privacy, Cole resented anyone who dared to cross his boundaries without permission. When they were younger, Cole had retaliated by teasing Sloan and accusing him of throwing the baseball like a girl, which would make him cry and run away.

Obviously, he couldn’t resort to bullying at this stage, but there had to be some way to get Sloan to mind his own business. Being scrutinized like a lab rat was beyond uncomfortable, and even if his father was telling the truth and hadn’t revealed Cole’s affliction, he was certain Sloan would figure it out eventually. Grown-up Sloan radiated smarts and hyperactive energy. Like he was supercharged or on drugs.

Shortly after he was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, Cole had become intensely aware of people’s body language. One of his many doctors had attributed this heightened sense to his rapidly failing eyesight.

It had started when he was in his teens. Driving at night had become a problem, but he’d blamed his glasses and ordered a new pair with antiglare lenses. It helped for a while, but when his vision continued to deteriorate, he never mentioned it to his parents because he didn’t want to lose his driving privileges. Soon after, his peripheral vision started to go. This was around the time he was coming into his own as a pitcher in the minor leagues. Cole had been groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps. He’d inherited the love of the sport, the arm, and the stamina. But somewhere in his complex gene pool lay a deadly mutation, which carried his disease. No one else in their immediate family had it, but the doctors were united in their opinion. An ancestor in Japan or in Ireland on his mother’s side had passed on the gene and Cole had been the unlucky recipient.

For several months, he continued to struggle with his baseball career, pretending he didn’t have issues with depth perception. He’d laugh it off when he missed a ball because he couldn’t see it coming, until finally, reality had smacked him in the face: he had hit another ball player in the head with his ninety-mile-an-hour fastball. He’d dropped to his knees on the mound and buried his face in his hands so his teammates couldn’t see the tears, and even though the injured player had survived and eventually returned to the sport, Cole decided then and there to quit. He walked off the field and never looked back.

In the present, he kicked off the bedsheets and wondered how long it would take Sloan to figure out his new roommate was as blind as a bat. Cole didn’t want to deal with the solicitous hovering or the forced kindness. He had enough of that from his parents and Juliana. He preferred Sloan’s snarky remarks and defiant attitude. It made him feel normal, and right then, normal was a good thing.