Damaged: A Tattered Club Story

Behind a face scarred from a million shards of memories never buried, Ben LaCroix hides among the thousand heartbeats in the city where he escapes the same nightmare of phantoms crawling out of the deep waters in the murky bayou. With steady hands, one laced with healed skin grafts and the other smooth, he creates elaborate artwork for the customers at the Tattered Social Club. The concerns of his Tattered brothers lingers in the untouchable corners of his mind, but he can’t stop drowning hope at the bottom of a bottle. Never able to make up for his sins, he utilizes the gifts he learned during those sweltering teenage summers building houses with his father. With secrets of his own, Luke Dupree, moved to build a new life for himself and his son. Running from a destructive past, he vows to keep his son safe and never let another man control his life. Never once regretting saving Ben’s life, he doesn’t forget the hateful words spoken from the hospital bed of his once best friend. The soul-wrenching sight of the raw scars lacing that beautiful face didn’t change the love in his heart until Ben destroyed any chance for a future between them. That devotion is dead now. As dead as the lungs he’d breathed life into that horrible night. A damaged, crushingly beautiful life he’d been forced to walk away from. Ben has to make a choice. Ignoring the annoying passion they still share makes his scars ache, and this isn’t a damn fairytale after all. The nice guy doesn’t get the prince because the prince died on a blood-soaked lawn. Hollow thoughts are all that’s left. He’s going to stay the course. Fight the craving for the only man who kept his heart in a cage. He’d keep busy to forget. He’d take his granddad’s advice. Idle hands make for…yeah, Grandad was wrong. The devil’s work has already been done.