Chapter
One
Henry
Rain fell from the sky in
sheets. It’d only been drizzling when I’d boarded my private jet not even a
half hour earlier. Now, I could barely
see the airport outside my window.
“No, babe, it’s not a big
deal. I just would have liked to see you while I was in town. It’s been a
while. That’s all,” I said, shifting the phone to my other hand.
Dipping my finger into the
empty glass that had once been the home of gin and tonic number three, I stared
at the melting ice as I stirred it in a circle.
Her raspy, sleep-filled voice
no longer sounded anything like that of the little girl I’d met when she was
only five. But, after sixteen years, Robin Clark no longer resembled that
child, either.
“I swear I thought the shower was next
weekend. I got my dates mixed up. I’m so sorry,” she lied. She did that a lot.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s
cool,” I said, pretending to believe her.
I did that a lot.
And it killed us both a little
more every time I did.
“I love you, Cookie,” she
whispered.
I wasn’t sure if that was a
lie or not anymore.
But I knew one thing was true.
“I love you too, kid.”
We sat in silence for several
seconds, neither of us willing to hang up. However, neither of us knew what
else to say. A million words hung
between us, but none of them would solve anything. God knows I’d said them all
over the last five years. Still, she’d never heard any of them. Not really.
With my heart physically
aching, I swallowed hard and bit the bullet. “Listen, I’m about to take off. I’ll
be in L.A. for a show next week. Why don’t you come and we’ll hang out for a
few days?” It was an honest invitation.
I didn’t receive an honest
response.
“I’ll be there!”
“I’ll have Carter set it up. I’ll
come by tomorrow afternoon and give you the details. I can’t stay long, but
maybe a quick dinner or something.”
“Perfect.”
We didn’t linger with
drawn-out goodbyes. A few seconds later, my phone was off and I was once again
gazing out at the pouring rain, wishing I were anywhere but on a plane.
Carter, my head of security,
settled in the seat beside me and opened the latest issue of Sports
Illustrated magazine.
My stomach clenched when the
plane jerked as we backed away from the gate.
“Tell Levee I love her, okay?”
I said to Carter without dragging my eyes off the terminal disappearing in the
distance.
“Here we go,” he mumbled,
closing his magazine and turning his attention my way.
“Can you do me a huge favor?
If I don’t survive, make sure it’s open casket and I’m wearing—”
“Blue. It makes your eyes pop,”
he finished for me.
“Right, but—”
“But your eyes will be closed,
so you should wear green instead. It looks better with your complexion.”
“Yes, but—”
“But your complexion will be
ashy since you’re dead and all. So let’s just go with a sleek, black suit. It’s
timeless.” He arched an incredulous eyebrow.
Lifting my glass in the air, I
rattled the ice at Susan, my personal flight attendant. She was busy buckling
herself in for takeoff, but she flashed me a warm, motherly smile in acknowledgement
that she had seen me.
“So maybe we’ve had this
conversation before,” I told Carter.
He rolled his eyes. “Every
time we fly.”
I huffed but didn’t bother
explaining. He knew exactly how terrified of flying I was. He’d been there the
day it’d all begun.
You would have thought that,
after having traveled the globe for years, a simple two-hour flight wouldn’t
have been a problem. My racing heart and sweating palms argued otherwise.
In the eight years since my
career had taken off, I’d gone from a somewhat-popular YouTube personality to
the king of the music industry when Levee and I’d released our self-produced
debut album, Dichotomy. Filled with half of her tracks and half of mine,
it had soared to the top of the charts. There hadn’t been a radio station in
the country not playing our music. In a matter of weeks, our careers had
exploded, which had forced the whole world to take notice.
The following years had been a
whirlwind. Grammys, record deals, fame, fortune, security. I could have
retired six months after I’d started and never wanted for anything again. Well,
that’s not totally true. The one thing I really wanted could never be bought.
I wasn’t even sure it could be
earned.
It was something so rare that
I feared it didn’t actually exist.
Love. Unconditional.
Unwavering. Eternal. Love.
I gave that to exactly two
people in my life.
I only received it in return
from one.
I’d been born a gay man. There
had never been a moment in my life when I’d been remotely sexually attracted to
women. If I had been, I would have married Levee Williams the second I’d laid
eyes on her. Because I’d known, just that fast, that she was going to be the
best thing that ever happened to me.
And she had been.
Riding the state’s dime to
college, I’d branched out on my own at eighteen, armed with nothing more than a
guitar and a headful of mediocre lyrics.
In a lot of ways, alone felt
better.
In most, it felt worse.
Luckily, within weeks of
starting my new adventure, I met Levee at a local bar on amateur night. She wouldn’t admit it, but she’d been
attempting to hit on me when she’d first strutted over after her set. I
understood how she’d misinterpreted my intense stare while she’d performed.
But, when her kind, brown eyes lit as our gazes met, I knew, straight or gay, I
needed to meet that woman. That night, over beers and more laughs than I had
ever experienced, we bonded over music. Less than two weeks later, I moved in
with her. Part of my heart bound to hers in a way I had never felt before. With
no parents, no siblings, not even a foster mother who’d taken a liking to me, I’d
spent most of my life searching for the sense of belonging she gave me only
minutes after we’d met.
I fiercely loved that crazy
woman. And it amplified as the years passed when I realized the feeling was
mutual.
Levee was more than my best
friend. Outside of Robin, she was the only family I’d ever had.
Which really meant she was the
only true family I’d ever had.
I’d heard that God wasn’t
exactly stoked about homosexuality, but come on. What kind of a masochist sends
a gay man his soul mate with boobs and a vagina?
Especially considering she was
now married to Sam Rivers and six months pregnant with his baby girl.
I’d tried dating over the
years, but the few men I’d found interesting had found me temporary. I was good
for a night of fulfilling their secret fantasies. But that’s where it ended. I
guess that’s what I got for having a thing for straight men. I couldn’t stop
myself though. It wasn’t the sex. As a celebrity, I had plenty of men vying for
my attention. Ass was easy to come by. But the high that came from being with a
straight man, knowing he was going against his own genetic coding just for one
night with me, made every minute of the pain worth it.
Those forbidden encounters
were a drug.
And I was a junkie.
The hunt of finding that
perfect blend of brute masculinity and subtle curiosity.
The chase of teasing and
taunting, ramping them up until they were unable to get my clothes off fast
enough.
The victory as they finally
broke, giving in to the one desire they had never considered before they’d
landed in my crosshairs.
That was the high.
But it was always followed by
the crash.
Including the inevitable
spiral down when they realized what they had done.
Some freaked, slinging insults
and threats at me as if I had somehow magically cast a spell and charmed their
dick into my mouth. Some wore their shame on their faces, gathering their
clothes and rushing from the room without a backward glance. Some felt the high
too and came back for seconds, desperate for more.
But they all left, one way or another.
Always.
Once I’d accepted that those
encounters were nothing more than a fix, it’d stopped gutting me when they
walked away.
While I’d had my fair share of
partners, I was far from a whore. I didn’t launch my expert skills of seduction
on any straight man who crossed my path. That would have been a wasted effort.
I was good; don’t doubt that. But men didn’t just fall naked into my bed,
begging for me to take their bodies in ways they would never forget. At least,
not the men I wanted. It took patience and dedication to achieve my high.
I spent two years working my
way into a certain NFL quarterback’s bedroom.
Worth every single second.
Or so I’d told myself as I’d
felt another piece of my soul break away when he’d dismissed me from his life
the very next day.
Maybe I was a whore after all.
But I’d tried the relationship
thing and it just didn’t work.
I’d given my heart to a man
once. He’d given it back a month later.
I was devastated when he left.
I was ruined when, two months later, I watched him marry a woman I knew he didn’t
love.
No. That’s not true. It was me
he didn’t love.
That was a common theme in my
life and exactly why I was so successful as a singer-songwriter. It was hard to
be all “woe is me” with millions of adoring fans acting as if you were a god
who’d returned to Earth.
While Levee struggled with the
weight of her fame, I flourished under the spotlight. I was alive on stage.
And, with no one waiting for me at home, I’d devoted years to touring. The roar
of the crowd fueled my happiness to the point I feared the day when I would
have to settle down.
And, right then, I was
white-knuckle gripping the armrest as the jet accelerated down the runway
before lifting into the sky.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” I mumbled
as my stomach dropped when the landing gear loudly locked into place.
“You’re fine,” Carter said
absently.
I was absolutely not fine.
“I’m gonna puke,” I groaned.
His eyes never lifted from the
pages of his magazine as he shook a vomit bag open and passed it my way.
“Thanks,” I replied,
disingenuous.
“No problem. Now, take a deep
breath and try to relax. We’ll be there in no time.”
As the plane leveled out, so
did my stomach.
Blowing out a loud breath, I
dropped my head back against the headrest. “We should’ve taken the bus.”
“There wasn’t time for the
bus. Your ass is supposed to be on stage in four hours. What we shouldn’t have
done is drive to San Francisco in the first place.”
“We’ve been over this. I wasn’t
missing her baby shower.”
He grumbled, adjusting in his
seat. “I think Levee and Sam would’ve understood.”
I narrowed my eyes and turned
to glare at him. “Don’t even start with me. They would have understood
perfectly. But that doesn’t change the fact that I wanted to be there.”
My tour had been scheduled
over a year in advance. Tickets had sold out in less than five minutes. But
none of that had mattered when I’d found out that Sam’s mom was planning a baby
shower for Levee. I had very few priorities in life. However, being there for
her was always one of them.
Susan approached my seat. “Can
I get you another drink, Mr. Alexander?”
“Thank God. Yes!” I lifted my
glass in her direction.
“No problem.” Her eyes
nervously shifted to Carter. “A word?”
Carter unbuckled his seat belt
and moved past me. They huddled together behind the small bar in the front, but
my focus was on the mini bottle of gin she was emptying in my glass. I was well
aware that I needed to slow down. Drunk on stage wasn’t exactly a novelty in my
business, but slurring my words and stumbling over lyrics was a deal breaker
for me.
Just as I was about to tell
her to hold off on the drink, the plane suddenly jerked and my nerves
skyrocketed all over again. I sucked in a sharp breath, and both sets of their
concerned eyes jumped to mine.
Yep. I can sober up later.
Snapping my fingers, I
ordered, “Drink.”
Susan smiled compassionately
before shooting an impatient glare at Carter. I would have cared what they were
whispering about if I hadn’t been about to pull an Incredible Hulk and peel out
of my own skin.
“I’ll tell him,” Carter
relented with a sigh, tagging the drink from her hand and then moving in my
direction.
With shaking hands, I took the
glass and tipped it back for a sip, relishing in the distracting burn in my
chest.
“Tell me what?” I asked,
settling the glass in a cup holder.
He motioned his chin at my
drink. “Why don’t you finish that first?”
The clear liquid sloshed as
the plane suddenly banked to the left.
“Excellent idea,” I said.
Carter’s gaze once again
lifted to Susan’s in a silent conversation.
Her lips thinned.
Throwing the rest of my drink
back, I bounced my attention back and forth between the two of them. Susan
looked downright nervous, and Carter appeared more than a little annoyed.
“Okay, what the hell is going
on with you two?” I demanded.
“The pilot is having some
chest pains,” he announced.
Suddenly, there wasn’t enough
gin in the world.
Fighting to make my seat belt
tighter, I gasped, “Did he pass out? Are we going down?”
Carter’s expression remained
impassive.
“Of course not!” Susan cut in.
Her reassurance did little to
comfort me, because whatever magical mechanism kept the cabin pressurized
suddenly failed. If the pain in my lungs was any indication, there was
absolutely no oxygen left on that plane. We were all going to die.
Carter’s heavy paw landed on
my back, pushing my torso down so my head was between my knees.
“Calm down and breathe. We
aren’t going down. The copilot is taking us back to San Francisco. We’ll be on
the ground in no time.”
The vise on my lungs didn’t
loosen.
Still hunched over, I nodded,
having heard his words but finding no relief in them.
Susan kneeled beside me. “It’s
okay, Henry. Co-captain Baez is an amazing pilot. You won’t even know the
difference.” She rubbed my back.
Embarrassment mingled with the
worthlessness I felt in that moment. But I was helpless to reel it in. My body
was out of control. I was left as nothing more than a marionette being held
captive by my fear.
Reaching out, I gripped Carter’s
thigh desperately searching for a way to ground myself.
The man was a beast. At
six-five and well over three hundred pounds, with short, black hair and nearly
black eyes, he looked every bit of the scary bodyguard I’d hired him to be.
There wasn’t anything soft or gentle about him. However, he’d been with me for
almost a decade. He knew how I worked, even if he didn’t like it.
He patted my hand, and then I
heard the crinkle of his magazine opening.
“You’ll be fine,” he said.
I wasn’t sure he was right.
Henry
Alexander's story will arrive on May 17th
in The Spiral Down by Aly Martinez!
Add this M/M Romance to your TBR list on Goodreads!
RELEASE
DATE: May 17th
Blurb
I was afraid to fly.
He made me soar.
After years of climbing the ladder of success in
the music industry, I finally had everything I could want.
Yet I still found myself wandering through life
alone.
Captain Evan Roth was the one man I never saw
coming.
Tall, dark, mysterious… Straight.
We were both damaged beyond repair and searching
for something so elusive we weren’t sure it even existed.
But, when two broken souls collide in midair,
falling is a given.
I just never expected to crave the spiral down.
About
the Author:
Aly
Martinez
Born and raised in Savannah,
Georgia, Aly Martinez is a stay-at-home mom to four crazy kids under the age of
five, including a set of twins. Currently living in South Carolina, she passes
what little free time she has reading anything and everything she can get her
hands on, preferably with a glass of wine at her side.
After some encouragement from
her friends, Aly decided to add “Author” to her ever-growing list of job
titles. Five books later, she shows no signs of slowing. So grab a glass of
Chardonnay, or a bottle if you’re hanging out with Aly, and join her aboard the
crazy train she calls life.
THANK
YOU!
