Excerpt
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.
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