Determination (39 page)

“It’s true. I am succeeding, and I’m happy—for the most part.

You were the only thing missing. Without you, I could never really be happy. It’s like missing part of my soul, and I’d never be whole again until I found it. Does that make sense?” I asked, even as I cherished each of his soft breaths on my damp skin. I let my fingers dance lightly over his bare arm and felt tiny bumps rise beneath them. Brian tilted his Determination

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head up and kissed my neck before settling back with his cheek on my chest as he rested in his tiny bed with me.

“Yes, because I felt like part of me had been ripped away, and the hole left in its place was jagged and torn. When you burst into the room that night, I could finally breathe again because you were there… you know? It scared me so badly, how much I needed you. It made me angry that I’d let my guard down, and I took it out on you. I’m so sorry.” Brian pulled me tighter against him.

“I forgive you,” I whispered, and he crushed me to him before whispering gently that he forgave me too. It was a new beginning with which to start the rest of our lives.

His hand drifted over the light dusting of hair on my chest, causing my body to stir though we’d had sex just minutes before.

Squeezing him closer to me, I kissed his hair for what seemed like the hundredth time. I couldn’t stop myself from touching him, kissing him, holding him closer. I was terrified he would disappear from me again.

We lay like that, talking, kissing, and touching, until late into the night when finally, after so many long, lonely months, I fell asleep with the man I loved in my arms.

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Jamie Mayfield

Twenty-One

THE disorientation hit me as soon as I woke. The room spun and lurched around me as the seizure took over. A gurgling, choking sound forced its way through my rigid lips, giving Brian his only warning as my muscles jerked and seized. His frightened but determined face swam in front of my eyes.

“It’s okay, Jamie,” he said over and over as he stroked my hair, almost cradling my head in his arms. I wanted to tell him I knew, that his being there helped, but I couldn’t get anything to work. I couldn’t do anything but wait for it to be over. The room faded quickly from my vision, and I couldn’t even close my eyes.

“Honey, can you hear me…? Jamie?”

I noticed the subtle shaking of Brian’s hands first, and then the way his shoulders trembled as he cried silently and kissed my cheek.

Then the wet sheets and blankets caught my attention. At least I hadn’t thrown up; that would have capped off our reunion perfectly.

“Are you okay?” I asked and tried to lift my arm to touch his face, but everything felt so heavy. It fell back onto the bed with a dull thud.

The smell of piss and sweat assaulted my senses, completely overpowering the sweet smell of Brian and sex I remembered before I fell asleep.

“Yeah, I’m just… it’s scary. Even in the hospital, it was scary,”

Brian whispered against my hair as I tried to sit up. He put his arms around my shoulders, and finally, I sat up and let the soaked sheets fall away.

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“This is not how I wanted us to start the morning,” I told him with a sigh as I gingerly pushed the sheets away from us. After I swung my legs over the side of the bed, Brian stopped my momentum by wrapping his arms around my shoulders and pulling me against his chest. His lips pressed light butterfly kisses over my neck and shoulder.

“Is this better?” he asked, and I heard the smile in his voice.

Despite the circumstances, I couldn’t help but smile back. My hands rested over his as they lay on my chest, and I turned my head to the side to capture his lips in a closed-mouth, we-haven’t-brushed-yet kind of kiss.

“Uh-huh,” I murmured against his lips.

“Let’s go take a shower. I’ll deal with the sheets after.” Brian kissed my bare shoulder and then heaved himself off the bed. Turning, he held a hand out to me, and I took it. For a moment, I couldn’t believe it was real, being here with him, being accepted back into his life. Doubt tried to creep in, whispering that getting a second chance couldn’t be that easy. Deep down, I wondered if he just felt sorry for me. I was just the poor degenerate junkie. It took a concentrated effort to push that thought aside. Brian loved me. Brian had always loved me.

Our second chance had everything to do with that love and nothing to do with pity.

I grabbed the only two clean towels I saw from a shelf in the closet while Brian stripped the soiled sheets and blankets from the bed and threw them onto the floor. Thankfully, the mattress was dry. I made an awful mental note to pick up a mattress pad for his bed. It was the very last thing I wanted to think about, but we had to be practical rather than tap-dancing around things. With this second chance, we needed to be open and honest with each other. I didn’t want any more unspoken things between us—no lies, no deceptions. If we were going to make it work, we had to be a team.

Still naked, he led me down the hall to a common shower area with stalls along two of the walls. The walls were a deep gray, but someone had painted each of the stalls a different color so the overall effect was that of a rainbow. Brian pulled me into the red stall and threw our towels over the door. He hung a mesh bag from the hook on 256

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the wall. Through gauzy material, I could see the coconut bodywash we’d used at the apartment.

“You still have that stuff?” I asked with amusement. “God, for a while there, any kind of coconut smell was enough to make me hard as a rock.” Brian laughed as he turned on the water. We stood back as far as we could in the small stall as the water warmed.

“It reminded me of being with you, so I just kept buying it,” he admitted before stepping under the spray and pulling me with him. His mouth was on mine before I could say another word, and I moaned as the water cascaded across our joined lips. The cold metal wall of the shower stall made me jump as my back hit it, but we didn’t break our kiss. I needed it, needed him as I needed the air around me. It didn’t matter that we’d made love just hours before. In that moment, it felt like no amount of lovemaking would ever be enough. We’d never get back those months we’d lost. I clung to him as he ran his hands over my wet skin.

“I missed this,” I whispered as I lamented all the mornings I’d spent showering alone lately. His fingers slid slowly down my spine, gently pausing over each bump until they reached my ass, which he grabbed with both hands and squeezed. The lust rippled across my skin, and I pushed my hips hard against his. God, words would never adequately describe how I felt when we were together like that.

“I missed you.” Brian rested his forehead against mine under the spray, and water filled my eyes, so I closed them and just enjoyed the feeling of him.

It took nearly an hour for us to shower, but eventually we made it back to his room. The bundled bedclothes in the corner reminded me of that morning’s seizure, though I didn’t feel as horribly tired as I usually did after one. I didn’t know if it was Brian’s presence or if the medication helped, but I was thankful. He grabbed the sheets and threw them into a hamper in the closet on top of a few other pieces.

“Hey, hand me your clothes from last night and we’ll go ahead and throw them in. I have some sweats and a T-shirt you can use.” He stopped packing up the hamper and turned to look at me. “I mean, if you want to stick around for a while.” My heart clenched at the sweet, vulnerable expression on his face.

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“Yeah, if you want me to stay, I want to stay,” I assured him. It was Sunday. I had a bit of homework, but I could always do that the next morning. I think Dad said something about….

“Oh crap, where’s my phone?” I asked in a panic as I searched around the bed. My dad would be freaking out because I didn’t come home last night.

“What? Why?” Brian asked, but helped me look. I ripped my jeans out of the hamper and searched the pockets, but it had fallen out.

“It’s not there,” I said as I dropped to my knees to look under the bed.

“Why don’t you just use mine?” Brian touched my shoulder just as I spotted my phone sitting on a lost T-shirt under his bed. I grabbed it and checked the display.

There were no calls or texts.

While I still felt somewhat panicked, I couldn’t help the surge of disappointment that my dad hadn’t even bothered to look for me when I’d been missing since last night. Opening the text app, I fired him off a short message about being at Brian’s.

“Hey,” Brian said quietly as I threw my phone onto the bed. It bounced twice and almost flew off the other side, but a pillow broke its momentum. I sat down on the mattress, which looked lonely and forlorn without its coverings, and stared at his threadbare carpeting.

Years of use had bleached out most of the color, but it may have been blue at one time.

“I didn’t come home last night, and my dad didn’t even call,” I told him with a depressed sigh. Brian sat next to me on the bed and put an arm around my shoulders. He pulled me closer, and I leaned forward to kiss him lightly on the lips. By the time my phone chirped a few minutes later, we were rolling on the bed, kissing and laughing.

Alex called last night to tell me you were staying at Brian’s. I’m
glad you guys are working things out. Call me later.

Brian got up to lock the door. We didn’t make it to the laundry room for some time.

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Jamie Mayfield

“MIKE said you bought into Hartley,” I said quietly as I watched him buttoning his jeans. Even though we’d made love twice already that day, my body appreciated the long, muscled lines of his abs as they disappeared behind denim. Disappointment surged as Brian’s bare chest, tanned, chiseled, and tempting, vanished behind his hot red Tshirt. It seemed like such a sacrilege to cover something so beautiful.

“Oh! Yeah, I used the money from the settlement. He said I have a real eye for catching things that guys want to see. I just have them do stuff I’d want to see, but our numbers have gone up since I started directing for them. Next week, Nick is going to have me start scheduling and putting different combinations of guys together. In just a couple of months, at the start of the new year, I’ll be taking over production. It’s exciting.” Brian’s whole face lit up as he spoke, and the resentment in my heart fizzled out. I knew how he felt. College had changed my life just as buying into Hartley Entertainment had changed his. We were both on the tracks we were supposed to be on. I couldn’t fault him for that, and in time, I knew I would accept it. I’d make that compromise to be with Brian. Losing him again and again made me realize there were things so much more important than what we did for a living.

“So, do you film much anymore?” I climbed off the bed and grabbed my freshly laundered jeans. Neither Brian nor I had eaten since the day before, and with all the exercise we’d gotten in the last twelve hours, we really needed to head out for food. The question sounded casual when it left my mouth, but it took an effort for me to unclench my hands to button my pants.

“Sometimes when a guy flakes I have to shoot a scene. That makes me crazy too. I mean, seriously, either they don’t show up at all or they come in drunk or high. One kid that drove in from LA forgot his ID. They can remember it to go out and get messed up but not to show up for work. Then we get the ones that demand we put them with certain other guys. Christ, it isn’t a dating service. Just get naked and screw.” Brian rolled his eyes, and I reached past him to grab a shirt out of the closet. We’d washed my shirt, but I just wanted something of his.

Watching as I put the shirt on, he took a small step forward and put his Determination

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hand on the back of my neck. Pulling me forward, he met me in a heated kiss, and I melted against his body.

“I’m not going anywhere. Not without you. Never again,” he whispered against my cheek. “But you do look sexy in my shirt.” I wrapped him in a tight hug, unsurprised he had guessed my fears. Even after all the time we’d spent apart over the last two years, he knew me better than anyone, maybe even better than I knew myself. Inhaling the scent of the coconut bodywash that still clung to his skin made me stir in my jeans, and I moaned against his flesh.

“What?” he whispered against my neck, and he kissed it gently.

“I love the way you smell,” I murmured against his lips as I kissed him again. His lean body pressed against mine, and I nearly pulled him back toward the bed, but he pulled away gently.

“I am starving, and as much as I want to go back to bed, I’m not going to be able to walk pretty soon,” he said with a quiet chuckle.

When I pulled back, I saw the most beautiful smile on his face, and it literally took my breath away.

“Love you,” I said as I stroked his cheek with my fingers.

“Love you too,” he replied and kissed me lightly. “But we’re still going for food.”

AS I stood back in my father’s living room with Brian at the door, my heart raced and I closed my eyes against the pounding in my temples.

His forehead pressed against mine and his hand gripped the back of my neck.
Please, God, let him come back. Please.
My hands shook violently, and I balled them into fists against his back. Even my breaths trembled as they blew out against his face.