An epic motion picture! A gay Napoleonic War love story! Ballrooms and battles at sea! Romantic happy endings on the silver screen! And a film that’ll change everything for its stars ... Jason Mirelli can’t play adrenaline-fueled action heroes forever. He’s getting older, plus the action star parts have grown a little thinner since he came out as bisexual. This role could finally let him be seen as a serious dramatic actor, and he needs it to go well -- for his career, and because he’s fallen in love with the story and the chance to tell it. The first problem? He’ll be playing a ship’s captain ... and he hasn’t exactly mentioned his fear of water. The second problem? His co-star: award-winning, overly talkative, annoyingly adorable -- and openly gay – box office idol Colby Kent. Colby’s always loved the novel this film’s based on, and he leapt at the chance to adapt it, now that he has the money and reputation to make it happen. But scars and secrets from his past make filming a love story difficult ... until Jason takes his hand and wakes up all his buried desires. Jason could be everything Colby’s ever wanted: generous and kind, a fantastic partner on set, not to mention those heroic muscles. But Colby just can’t take that chance ... or can he? As their characters fall in love and fight a war, Colby and Jason find themselves falling, too ... and facing the return of their own past demons. But together they just might win ... and write their own love story.

Seaworthy

He turned on cue when Jason, as Stephen, came up to him. He leaned in toward Jason’s presence. He drank that closeness in like wine: honeyed, rich, intoxicating.


They gazed at each other for a moment, through studio lights; Jason had beautiful eyelashes, long and thick and dark, and oddly intimate in a sweep up and down, a smile for Colby—for Will—alone.


The take was good. The entire afternoon was good. Golden and brown as rolling ship timbers, as the laughter when Tim and Leo ran up to the railing to strike a Titanic-inspired pose. As the charged simmering instant when Jason reached out instead of merely nodding, before going off to that gun drill, and waited.


Colby put his own hand, Will’s hand, into Jason’s; Jason bowed over it, an old-fashioned courtly tribute, and let go.


Colby, breathless, did not remember lines immediately; he and Will watched Jason move away, and trembled with too many emotions.


Chapter 20