One year ago this Halloween, tragedy destroyed life as Chad Timmons knew it. For a year now, he has suppressed the pain and memories. With the anniversary of the incident, everything begins to surface, deepening Chad's despair. He begins to question his sanity as he starts to see things that couldn't possibly be there. How much of it is real? How much merely figments of his fractured heart and mind?

At age 14, Noble Richmond becomes devastatingly aware that he is gay. Being raised in a Christian home and church, Noble believes that being gay is a sin, and desperately seeks God's healing and deliverance - telling no one of his secret. Now, nine years later, Noble is engaged to a Christian girl, Rebecca, who he believes he is genuinely in love with. Convinced that God has answered his prayers and delivered him from the sin of homosexuality, Noble sees his future with Rebecca as bright and promising. But when Rebecca's step-brother, Jonah, shows up at their engagement party - Noble is forced to question his deliverance and finds himself struggling with emotions and desires he insists is not natural for one man to feel for another.

When former youth pastor Dean Mitchell - who once oversaw the ex-gay program sponsored by his church - returns to his home church after being away for 2-years, no one is prepared for what he has to say. His heart is torn when he comes face to face with the young man he had fallen in love with while attempting to help him become healed of his homosexuality - and the young man is now engaged to a woman and, to all intents and appearances, free of his same-sex attraction. Now, Dean must deal with his own wounded heart as he struggles to come to terms with his feelings about the young man and his newfound happiness with a woman. Yet his heart continues to question: is the young man truly straight? Or is there more going on than meets the eye?

NOTE: This is the ORIGINAL version. The revised version, which includes multiple added scenes and extended storylines, will be published on amazon as two separate books (A Thin Line Between Love & Hate / A Short Distance Between Heaven & Hell). The revised versions may or may not be uploaded onto wattpad, I haven't yet decided if I will be doing that. **The extremist group in this story is based on the Westboro Baptist Church located in Topeka, Kansas. ________________________________ Josh Waylon is a prisoner in his own home, his own mind. Part of an extreme religious group who has targeted homosexuals, Josh is forced to live the hate that the leader--his father--has poisoned them with. But Josh has a secret of his own, one which would bring him extreme pain and punishment within the group and alienate him from everyone he knows. When the group moves to a new town, a community which is predominantly LGBTQ, and Josh starts at the new school, he feels like a sheep amidst wolves as the many gay kids within the school know exactly who he is and what his family does. Josh feels no security with his two older brothers, who expect him to suck it up and accept the persecution as a servant of God. Brandon Nichols immediately detects the difference between Josh and his brothers, seeing deeper within the young man and the truth he is hiding, desperate not to be found out. Brandon believes his calling is to help bridge the gap between the gays and Christians in his school, but he has his work cut out for him with Josh Waylon and the extremist group that has him locked down--emotionally, spiritually...and sexually.