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

The motion wasn’t even large. Not dramatic. Not world-changing. The removal of one boot, cupped in Jason’s hands; the revelation of one blue-and-white striped sock, and the thick weave of hotel carpet under Jason’s knees.


The world did change, though. With a hand and an ankle and a tug. Reordered to become someplace in which Colby would wiggle sock-clad toes and Jason would kneel and cradle a boot as if it were made of glass.


Silver, he thought. Or gold. That moonlit fairy-story, or the reverse of it—slipping fitted footwear off, not on—but that was part of the shimmer and gleam of it: the way none of this had been anything he’d expected, tangled up in acting and history and the creak of ship’s wood and the scent of chlorine and the ripple of Colby’s voice. Familiar and not. Simple, and extraordinary.


Chapter 71