About The Road Less Traveled
Written by Willa Okati
69 pages / 25000 words
ISBN: 978-1-60370-112-9, 1-60370-112-5
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc
Successful detective novelist Jaden can’t make himself get over his lost love, Andy. When Andy asks him to come visit, Jaden can’t make himself say no, but seeing Andy with his lover, Jonas, just makes Jaden’s heartache worse.
A chance encounter with a prostitute gives Jaden the chance he needs to create a whole new world, one where he and Andy can be together. What he finds out about himself, Andy, and Andy’s lover Jonas surprises him, making him wonder if his perfect existence is really so perfect. Can Jaden make it all right and give them all the life they need?
Review
Kiernan Kelly, popular Torquere Press author, writes:
Jaden is a man who has spent his life wishing for the love of a man who loves someone else; hungering after him, daydreaming about him, trying his best to leave him in the past but unable to stay away.
In THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED and the character of Jaden, Willa Okati holds a mirror up to our greed, to the parts inside all of us that wish for something never destined to be ours. “What would you do to change the world?” is the question asked in the preface to the book – it is a question most of us ask ourselves many times over the course of our lives. What would you do if you could make a different choice, take back a cross word, give an opportunity where none had been offered? What would you do for the chance to do it all again?
Jaden cries the coulda-woulda-shoulda’s, pining for a past that never happened, for a love that was never his, while his own life passes him by. When Jaden picks up a hooker who is more than he seems, he’s given an opportunity most of us would kill for – but will it prove to be the new start he’d hoped for?
Full of the wonderful character development and steamy sex that Willa Okati has brought us time and time again, THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED will not disappoint, and is a must read!
Sample
Jaden had worried about Andy in their teenage years -- reckless road races, stomping on the gas before hitting speed bumps for the sake of a second's freefalling flight, daring the law to come after his hide.
Andy? He'd laughed at Jaden's nerves, slung his arm around Jaden's shoulders, and told Jaden not to fret. Taking on so would make him an old man before his time. They were young, so why not live for all they were worth before they got too stiff in the joints to enjoy themselves?
Jaden always found that Andy's unsquashable good nature was enough to make him smile. Make him return the one-armed hug and trust his friend time and time again. Things had been easy between them back then, no questions or complications to get in the way.
That's a long time gone, isn't it?
He wondered how Andy managed to keep his old Ford running.
Jaden's jaw tightened marginally as he registered the sight of a newer-model Dodge Ram parked to one side. Jonas'. Splattered streaks of mud, probably from an off-road joy ride, didn't hide her beauty. Glossy green from hood to trunk with jacked-up tires. Even with a bed full of battered boxes and crates she still looked like a queen of the back country. Tough as leather and proud as a peacock.
In comparison, Jaden's svelte, black rental felt small and insignificant, unworthy of the land that surrounded him and a sort of betrayal to his past. He could never run hell bent for leather down the roads in this sleek piece of machinery. Next to the spattered mud on Jonas' truck, which spun yarn after yarn about joy and wild rides, his car's pristinely washed exterior seemed stark and plain.
Andy and Jonas' trucks were parked haphazardly, at angles to each other, but their hoods almost touched. The pickups were just as much in love as their owners, weren't they? Whatever Andy and Jonas touched turned into something better than gold. You could spend gold, but you could never buy what they had.
If he hadn't walked away, if he'd only had the courage, it might be his same old teenage-vintage lemon nosing up to Andy's pickup in this very drive.
Might have been him inside, playing with however many mutts Andy had added to his collection now. Stealing good-morning kisses. Tweaking Andy's hair and baiting the man for the fun of watching him wheel around, swearing and cussing. Laughing when Andy swore again, realizing his food was burning, hurrying back to the stove with a dire warning that they would pick this up again later.
Promises to keep.
You can't change the past, Jaden reminded himself. All you can do is face the future and make the best of what you've been given.