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✨ WORTH THE RISK IS NOW LIVE ✨

It’s here. It’s real. And it’s finally in your hands.

This book survived stress, tears, panic, and more than a few “I can’t believe this is happening” moments. But maybe that makes it fitting, because Worth the Risk is about fighting through fear, choosing love anyway, and refusing to walk away even when it hurts.

🔥 If you love:

• Hurt/comfort that hurts
• Slow-burn tension that snaps
• Men who protect, break, heal, and choose each other
• Found family, danger, and love under pressure
• Emotional intimacy that lingers long after the last page

…then this book is for you.

🖤 Worth the Risk is live now
📚 Book Three in the Worth It series
🔥 Jude & Warren’s story
💥 High stakes. Deep emotion. Everything on the line.

Thank you for your patience, your kindness, and your unwavering support, even when things went wrong. I can’t wait for you to meet these men and see why some loves really are worth risking everything for.

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Author’s Note & Content Warnings

Worth the Risk is about survival, second chances, and the courage to rebuild a life after abuse. Jude Ellison is haunted by the control and violence of a former relationship, and Warren Beckford is the undercover officer whose mission, and heart, become entangled in Jude’s.

While this book explores hope, love, and recovery, it also delves into the lasting scars of coercive control and trauma. Whilst written with care and authenticity, reflecting real patterns of abuse and their psychological impact, they may be difficult to read for some.

If you’ve experienced or are currently experiencing domestic or sexual abuse, you are not alone. Help and support are available. (In the UK, you can reach Refuge at 0808 2000 247 or Men’s Advice Line at 0808 801 0327. For international readers, please seek local helplines or resources in your region.)

This book believes in healing and love after harm but the path there is messy, complex, and real. Thank you for trusting me with your time and your heart.

So please be aware that this novel contains scenes, references, or themes related to:

• Coercive control, psychological abuse, and domestic violence
• Trauma, PTSD, and panic responses
• References to sexual coercion (non-explicit)
• Threats and stalking behaviour
• Past self-blame and emotional manipulation
• Criminal activity and organised crime themes

Because of the intensity of these themes, I made the decision to remove a small number of particularly hard-hitting flashbacks from the final book. While they were written to honour Jude’s journey and growth, they disrupted the pacing and emotional balance of the story.

However, for readers who would like a deeper understanding of Jude, and the resilience that shaped him, I’ve chosen to share these deleted flashbacks below.

Please read only if and when you feel comfortable.

They are not essential to the story but they are part of the man Jude became.

Thirteen years ago…

Jude lingered in the shadows of the club, too young to be inside, too old to be wide-eyed. The bass throbbed through the floor like a second heartbeat and the smoke machines and sweat masked the stench of cheap booze. And somewhere beneath the garish strobe lights, men touched in ways that made his stomach twist.

Not with disgust, but envy.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Seventeen. Homeless. No fallback plan. Only the cheap hostel down by the ring road and a dwindling packet of crisps in his hoodie pocket. The night shelter only allowed three nights at a time. He’d stretched it to four. But they’d clocked his age in the end. Said he’d be safer back home.

Safer.

He’d laughed. Then cried. Then walked out.

Now he was here. The only gay club in Leeds that didn’t ID him if he looked desperate enough. And Jude had perfected that look, along with his blending into corners, back pressed to cracked tiles near the men’s room, sipping tap water from a warm glass and trying not to flinch when hands got too close.

“You alright, sweetheart?” A man approached him, smelling of sour vodka and breath mints. Mid-forties maybe. Red-cheeked and swaying.

Jude nodded, eyes down, trying not to show how hungry he was.

For food. Safety. Anything.

The man leaned in closer. “You look like you could use a drink. Or a favour.”

Jude forced a smile. “Just waiting for someone.”

“That’s a stroke of luck. I’m someone.” He laughed at his own joke, then gripped Jude’s hip with a meaty hand before he could move. “Twenty quid, yeah? Quick suck out back. No strings.”

Jude’s body locked. He didn’t answer. Just stared. Not at the man—through him.

Because he’d been here before. Not in clubs, not exactly. But on park benches. In stairwells. With men who saw hunger as consent. He opened his mouth. Maybe to say no. Maybe to say yes. He didn’t know anymore.

Then a voice cut through the noise behind him. “Hey. Let’s not, yeah?”

The older man turned, scowling. “Fuck off. This ain’t your—”

“I said,” the voice repeated, calm as ice over broken glass, “let’s not.”

A taller man stepped between them. Late twenties maybe. Clean jacket, dark shirt. Mixed race. Sharp jaw and sharper eyes. Handsome enough to make Jude’s stomach tighten for all the wrong reasons. And he wasn’t from here. He could tell by the London accent.

“Go on. ” The bloke jutted his chin at the older one. “Try your luck elsewhere.”

A pause. Then the man backed off, muttering something foul and slurred. The smell stayed behind. Jude didn’t move. Didn’t breathe, either.

The stranger turned to him. “You alright?”

Jude nodded. Too fast.

The man looked him over. Not in a sexual way. Not like the older man had. But with the cold efficiency of someone taking inventory. He noted the way Jude’s jeans hung loose. The way his trainers were split at the sides. The tremble in his fingers. All of it.

“You got somewhere to stay tonight?”

Jude hesitated. That was the game, wasn’t it? Say no, risk being used. Say yes, risk freezing to death. “Hostel.” He shrugged. “Sort of.”

“Sort of don’t sound convincing.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not.”

Silence thickened between them.

“Name’s Callum.” The man extended his hand. “You?”

“…Jude.”

“Hey, Jude.” Callum sung as if tasting it. “Alright, Jude. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re gonna come outside with me. I’m gonna buy you food. And if, after that, you still wanna go back to your ‘sort of’ hostel, I’ll walk you there.”

Suspicion gnawed at him. But hunger always spoke louder.

Callum raised his brows. “Or you can stay here and let that prick find you again.”

Jude pushed off the wall.

Callum held out his hand. And Jude took it.

Outside, the cold bit hard. Callum led him to a black car. Sleek and too clean for the street. He opened the passenger door.

“I don’t—” Jude faltered. “I’m not—”

“I’m not asking you to do anything.” Callum stroked Jude’s chin. “Not tonight. Not ever, unless you want to. I’m not like them.”

The lie slid so smoothly from his mouth it sounded like kindness.

So Jude got in.

Callum asked what kind of takeaway he liked. Jude said anything warm. Callum said he knew a place. Then he parked a few streets away from a quiet flat. Clean. White walls. Warm. Quiet. The food came. Thai. Jude inhaled it as if someone might take it away. Callum didn’t eat any, though. He sat back, sipping beer from a bottle, watching him with penetrating eyes.

“You been out here long?” Callum asked.

“Few weeks.”

“Family?”

Jude flinched. “No.”

Callum nodded as though he understood.

When the food was gone, Callum spoke again. “Stay here tonight. Couch is yours. Shower’s clean. Door locks from the inside. No expectations.”

Jude looked at him. Waiting for the catch.

“There’s nothing else?” he asked.

“No strings.” Callum held his gaze. “I hate seeing people used. Especially kids.”

Jude wasn’t a kid.

But he didn’t argue.

That night, he lay curled on a too-soft sofa, full for the first time in days. Clean. Warm. Safe?

Maybe.

But when the lights went out and the silence crept in, he heard footsteps in the hallway. Then the front door opened. Voices drifted through. Deep. Male. Unfamiliar. Men came and went. Jude stayed curled beneath the blanket, still as breath. Pretending to sleep. Pretending not to hear the zip of bags or the soft thud of cash on the table. The way he did for days after that.

Callum came to him sometimes. Crouched beside the sofa. Threading his fingers through Jude’s hair as if petting a dog. Soft. Affectionate. Wordless.

Then he’d leave.

And it went on like that. For weeks.

Jude was fed. He slept. But he was touched, never asked. Sometimes Callum would put a hand at his throat, feeling the beat of him. Sometimes he stroked behind Jude’s ear like praise. Jude never asked what was happening. The fear of being back on the street kept him there. So he didn’t ask what was in the little bags wrapped in plastic. Nor why the men never stayed long. Or query the envelopes of cash or the burner phones that rang and rang and rang.

He already knew the answers. But if he didn’t ask, he couldn’t be told. And if he wasn’t told, he wouldn’t be complicit. That was the logic. His own, flawed, seventeen-year-old logic. Naïve. Desperate. Surviving.

He didn’t realise he was being tested.

But he was.

And he passed.

He knew it the first time Callum stopped crouching.

When he stood instead. Silent. Towering. Expectant. When he undid his flies, and it was Jude who dropped to his knees.

Sometimes not just for Callum.

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Eight years ago…

The noise from the kitchen was a low, constant thrum, making his skin tighten without him realising. Callum’s voice carried through the thin wall, smooth and laughing, the clink of bottles marking the steady climb towards that dangerous place between charm and cruelty. The calm before the storm. Only it wasn’t always a storm. Sometimes it was quieter. More deliberate. Those nights when Callum came to him drunk… and sometimes brought others in too.

They were all there tonight. Men Jude barely knew and didn’t need to. Loud voices with the same brash tone. Cocky. Careless. Untouchable. Men who thought rules belonged to other people. And Jude sat on the edge of the unmade bed in the back room, knees pulled up to his chest, the cold pressing into his bare feet through the thin carpet. The duvet reeked faintly of sweat and weed. He’d been here for hours, pretending to read, eyes moving over the same page until the words blurred. Pretending not to hear the laughter or the scrape of chairs.

Pretending he was anywhere else.

He’d been in Elephant and Castle for two years now. Before that, it was Leeds, then back here, then somewhere else. Callum always had a place. A string of half-furnished flats. None of them nice, all of them paid for in cash. Someone else’s cash. When Callum said they were moving, Jude moved. Because what other choice did he have?

Callum treated him okay most of the time. That was how Jude told it to himself. No, he didn’t have a job. Wasn’t allowed one. But he’d been permitted a library card, and he filled his days with books. Mostly historical, taking him on journeys other people had been on. It was something.

There were worse places he could be.

At least, that was what he told himself on nights like this.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt sunlight on his face. The last time he’d been outside without permission was weeks ago, when Callum had taken him to dinner. A group of older men at the bar had thrown a slur their way. Callum had flattened one of them with a single punch, then brought the rest of his temper home and left it on Jude’s body.

Because it was fine for Callum to choke on his own internalised homophobia. But no one else was allowed to spit it at him.

Since then, Jude only went out for errands. Always alone, but never free. Callum had left him mostly to himself. Which was almost worse, because the silence could mean anything. And he’d been planning an escape for months in the quiet, private corners of his mind. Not just the leaving, but the landing. Places to run if he got the chance. But the truth was, his own thoughts kept him here. He knew the statistics. Knew how few places took men in. Men were the danger, after all.

So here he was, still waiting for the noise to die down so he could sleep. Watching the door as if it might burst open. Telling himself there were worse places.

Even if he couldn’t name one.

Then a loud bang rattled the house. 

It hadn’t come from the kitchen. But from the front door. Heavy. Metallic. Followed by a voice spearing through the air. “Police! Stay where you are!”

Everything snapped into fast motion. Chairs scraped. Boots pounded across the floor. Callum shouted fiercely and inaudibly. Barking orders to his subordinates. Then another loud bang, the front door was hit once, twice, then cracked open. The shouts multiplied.

Instinct moved before thought and Jude grabbed the keys left on the dresser, lunging for the window. He shoved it open, cold air knifing into the room. It only gave the smallest of slits but it was enough. Jude had no weight on him. But he paused. Listened.

Feet stomped in the kitchen, along with muffled orders. Swearing. Callum.

He’d always know Callum’s voice.

So Jude swung his leg over the sill, slipping through the tiny gap onto the ledge. The drop wasn’t far. Two storeys into the narrow alley beside the flats, but he landed hard, knees jolting and he had to bite his lip to keep quiet.

Shouts spilled out from the kitchen along with the heady thud of boots on lino, someone yelling “Down! Down!”

Jude ran for the car parked crooked at the end of the alley. The old Astra with a dented bonnet. Callum’s car. Though he had no doubt it was stolen. The plates had been changed. None of that mattered right then, and with a ragged breath, each inhale tearing at his chest, he opened the car, jammed the key in the ignition, turned it, and the engine coughed to life.

In the wing mirror, two uniforms dragged Callum’s mates out in cuffs.

No sign of Callum though.

Jude didn’t wait to find out where he was.

He slammed the gearstick forward and stamped his bare foot onto the accelerator. The car lurched, tyres shrieking. He refused to look back as Elephant and Castle blurred past in a haze of adrenaline. Sagging grey towers, fried chicken shops with their grease-fogged windows, streets that had been his cage left behind in haste. Then the city thinned, the sodium-orange streetlights stretching apart until London spilled into the black curves of the motorway.

He had no plan. No map. Only the single thought forcing him farther: Get away.

By the time the adrenaline bled out, the horizon paled, and he swung into a lay-by outside a nameless town, killed the engine, and crawled into the back seat where the stale stink of cigarettes and petrol clung to the upholstery. It was still better than the flat he’d left behind.

But when morning came, so did the realisation that he needed somewhere to go.

Somewhere with a lock Callum couldn’t open.

Where he couldn’t find him.

Jude had a list.

Months back, during those rare, rationed hours Callum had let him to the library, he’d used the public computers to search for refuges. Places he could run to if he ever found the courage to bolt. He’d memorised them. He’d always had a good memory for names, places, dates. And each address folded into the back of his mind was now a lifeline.

He drove to one.

The squat brick building with its net curtains looked exactly as it had in the street-view image he’d studied late one night. Heart hammering, gravel biting at his bare feet, he forced himself up the short path and knocked on the door.

The woman who answered had a kind face but an unreadable expression.

“Hi.” He pushed his glasses up his nose. “I’m sorry to just show up like this, but…” A breath. A swallow. He pushed it out. “I’m fleeing an abusive partner. I… I need somewhere to go. I’ve left with nothing.” He glanced down at his bare feet, at the jeans and T-shirt that were all he owned, apart from the car he never wanted to get into again.

She listened without interruption, even nodded in places. There was sympathy in the soft pull of her mouth, but when she spoke, her voice was gentle regret, “I’m so sorry, love. But we can’t take men.”

He’d known that already. But knowing didn’t make it hurt less.

He turned back towards the car. He understood. He did. The last thing he wanted was to be the reason a woman inside those walls felt unsafe. Gravel dug into his toes; the metal of his keys bit into his palm, something sharp to keep the sting in his eyes from spilling.

“Wait!” A different woman darted out of the doorway. “There’s somewhere else. Not here, but they’ll take you. No questions.” She pressed a piece of paper into his hand, then rummaged in a carrier bag and pulled out a pair of flip-flops. “Good luck, love. Stay safe.” She gave him an arm squeeze.

Jude had never known gratitude like it. It poured over him in waves so strong he almost couldn’t move. But he did. He slid on the flip-flops despite them being too small that the straps cut into his skin, then left the car where it was and walked.

Two hours later, blistered and aching, he reached Harbour House. The low, weather-beaten building sat back from the road, its windows glowing in the early light. A sign out front read Harbour House – Community Refuge in fading blue paint.

When he knocked on that door, he was welcomed inside.

They didn’t ask for his story. Didn’t ask for proof. Someone took his name, handed him a mug of tea, and showed him to a bed in a small, clean room that locked from the inside. And the only knock that came was from an elderly woman called Irene. Who, slowly but surely, became his only friend in the whole world.

Harbour House became the first safe space he’d had in years. Four walls. A lock only he could turn. Time to breathe without listening for Callum’s tread outside the door. And it was there he learned Callum Reid had been arrested. Refused bail. Likely facing eight years on a string of charges. Irene gave him all the information she could find. And told him that if he came forward, if he told his story, Callum might face more counts. More years inside.

But Jude couldn’t.

He couldn’t drag the memories out into the light. He didn’t want strangers pawing through the pieces of him Callum had already broken. He’d escaped once. That would have to be enough.

Irene understood.

She’d been where he was once.

And so from there, she helped him patch himself together. She secured him shifts in a café with other DV victims. He made a few friends. Became a pretty decent barista for a while, too. He read. Extensively. Joined the library. Renewed his love for history. Irene encouraged him to explore that. So he enrolled on an Access to Higher Education course. Found he had a knack for it. One course led to another. Teacher training, on-the-job placements. And by the time he qualified, Irene showed him that Worthbridge Academy, a small coastal town where she had been brought up, had a vacancy for a history teacher.

“Seaside town. Quiet. Out of the way,” she said, shoving the forms his way.

So he applied. Got an interview. And as he was offered the job. Irene helped find the cottage for him, becoming his guarantor to be able to rent and loaning him the downpayment. Which he paid back the moment he could.

She sadly passed not long after.

He’d thought he’d buried the past with her.

Thought he’d built something Callum could never reach.

Now here he was, staring at the same sea, wondering if he’d been wrong all along.

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