DIFFERENT ROADS by Joyce Sterling Scarbrough
We've all known women like Jaycee--women who make themselves so hard to love when all they really want is someone to love them unconditionally.
After her mother�s death, six-year-old Jaycee Stevens is neglected by her alcoholic father and soon learns that misbehavior gets attention, and she decides she would rather be beaten than ignored. She grows up in rural Alabama a foul-mouthed hellion who takes [censored] off no one, and she lives in fear of anyone finding out she's also a love-starved little girl terrified of the dark. After her heart is broken by her father and her first love, her intrepid spirit carries her forward to her goal of becoming an investigative journalist until she is tripped up in college by a poor little rich boy who turns out to be the male version of herself.
Jaycee and Bud are an emotional paradox: drawn together 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, hurting each other even as they become two halves of a whole. Jaycee�s rollercoaster life with Bud is gritty, touching, and funny, and just when she thinks she�s made it safely to the end of the ride, her childhood comes back to derail her and she must finally face her biggest fear--what happened to her in the dark?
DIFFERENT ROADS is about first loves that get lost, hearts that call to each other, and the roads that lead us to the ones for whom we are meant.