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

They hadn’t moved; they gaped up at him as he looked down. They reminded him without words that Jason had chosen to care for him, tonight. That he himself had trusted Jason with that: with a touch, a shy gift of music at the bar, a wanting.


Because he did. He wanted. He did not know whether he could ever do anything about it, or whether Jason would even care to know; but the strange shape of it had turned up and refused to go away, lodging itself like gold behind his breastbone, in his stomach, lower.


Some sort of triumph, he thought. Like a dive into water. Like Jason coming out of the tank on set, dripping wet and herculean in stature, glowing with success. Like shared small pieces of his childhood, and Jason deciding to order him breakfast and offering to fly over early for rehearsals and time together.


Jason, with that honest heart, wouldn’t’ve made the offer without meaning it. The hidden seam of gold got a bit less hidden, closer to the surface.


Chapter 79