A Righteous Man

by Crownover, Jay

  The ride was wild, and I was far from ready to get off of it.

  When he came back into the bedroom, I had almost everything back in its place. I was sitting on the edge of the bed playing on my phone. I checked in on my dad, and sent a quick text to Lennon, letting her know there was some drama between the brothers. My dad didn’t text back, which wasn’t so surprising since it was kind of late, but Lennon wanted all the details of what was going down. Part of it was professional curiosity, but more than that, I knew she was worried about me getting in the middle of something ugly since I’d been wavering between cutting Salinger loose and tying him to me. She didn’t want me to be collateral damage, and she didn’t want the movie to crash and burn since we’d all invested so much in it. I promised to fill her in as Salinger flopped on the bed next to me, falling onto his back and staring up at the ceiling with a concerned expression on his handsome face.

  “That bruise is pretty nasty. The makeup artists are going to have their work cut out for them trying to cover it up the next few days.” I dropped my phone on the mattress and reached out to touch the angry spot on his face. He was going to have a wicked looking black eye by the morning.

  He caught my wrist in his fingers, and gently rubbed his thumb across my pulse. “I think we’re shooting a few of the scenes where my character is starting the downward spiral into addiction. The black eye might work in my favor. Sorry you walked in on that. It isn’t the first time we’ve come to blows, but it was the first time it really wasn’t my fault.”

  I laid down on my side, facing him, and propped my head in my hand as I looked down at him. “Jeno loves you and admires you so much. I understand why he reacted as strongly as he did. You guys will get past this.”

  He closed his eyes and sighed deeply. “Jeno’s still a kid. I did exactly what got me into trouble when I was younger. I treated him like an adult. I put too much responsibility on him and expected him to know how to navigate it all. I forgot that deep down, all any normal child wants is love and approval. I figured out early on that my parents liked the money and fame more than they liked me, and that’s why I got in over my head so fast and deep. I didn’t really get my act together until I understood the only person I had to please regularly was myself. That’s a lesson Jeno still has to learn. He’s going to hate me and worry about his mother until he realizes he doesn’t need either one of us to make his life worthwhile. We need him way more than he needs us.” I sucked in a breath when he suddenly shifted, sliding his arm around me and rolling. I was on my back, and he was hovering over me, caging me in with his arms. “Thank you for cleaning up the mess today, but I hope you know I can clean up after myself now.”

  I reached up so I could loop my arms around his neck as we stared at each other with a look that spoke volumes. “I know you can. But I wanted to help. I wanted to take care of you a little bit. That’s one thing that hasn’t changed since we first met. There’s something about you that makes me want to make sure you’re all right. I’ve never liked to see you hurting.”

  He made a soft sound, gaze searching mine like he was looking for an answer to the world’s most difficult question. “I’m glad that you want to take care of me, but it’s more important to me that you know that no matter what happens between us, or to us, that I am fully capable of taking care of you as well. That’s what I want more than anything. I know you’re independent and strong on your own. I know you don’t need me any more than Jeno does, but I want to be someone you can rely on without question. I need to know if you see that happening anytime in the near future. Because if not, then I have to figure out how to let you go. I can’t keep going in the direction we’re headed if you don’t want me the same way I want you. It seems so easy for you to push me away the closer I get, and that distance is dangerous for me.”

  I pulled him down until our foreheads touched and I let my legs part, so he was mostly lying on top of me. Our hearts beat against each other in a silent declaration. All my life, I’d felt out of step and either ahead or behind everyone else. We shared the same rise and fall in our careers. We had the same goal when it came to making the best movie possible. We looked at risk and rewards through the same lens. Even if he tended to be more daring than I was, we still put everything we had on the line when it was something that mattered deeply to us. We stepped up for our loved ones, even when it was difficult. And we’d both loved someone who refused to love us back. Salinger was the only one I’d been in sync with for a long time. I felt understood by him and deeply connected to who he was now. He got me, and didn’t ask for more than I could give when I barely had a grasp on my actions and emotions myself.

  “I do want you. It’s scary how much. That’s why I constantly keep a distance between us. I don’t want to rely on anyone for anything after what happened with my ex, but you made me realize that it isn’t possible. This movie never would’ve had a chance without you. And I never would’ve realized how much I was missing by being so ridiculously careful and closed off because I was hurt in the past. Not just by you, but by him as well. Holding onto so much hate was destroying me, and I couldn’t see it. You helped me let it go. You helped me heal. So, don’t think I don’t need you, Salinger. You turned my world upside down more than once, and every single time it’s made me a stronger person. I don’t know where this thing between us is going, but I do know I feel empty and alone when you aren’t by my side. I’ve gotten used to having you save me.”

  He dropped a kiss on my lips. It was hard and fast. His eyes shone with something that looked a lot like love as he told me, “I wouldn’t be able to save you now if you hadn’t saved me first.”

  I wondered if he could see how I felt about him as clearly as I could see his devotion and infatuation each time he looked at me. I hoped so, because I wasn’t quite ready to say the words yet. That was a big step, and while I could admit my life was better with him in it, I wasn’t in a rush to hand over my heart. I wanted to take the time to make sure he would be careful with it if I gave it to him.

  If I couldn’t tell him how close I was to falling for him, I could at least give him a hint with my body. There was more than one way to surrender to a man who wanted you more than his next breath.

  I kissed him back, putting everything I felt into it.

  It was a kiss that was laced with passion and desire.

  It was a kiss touched with appreciation and gratitude.

  It was a kiss flavored with hope and expectation.

  There was even a hint of regret because it had taken a long time to get things right between the two of us.

  Salinger lifted his head, eyes looking a little glazed over by lust as he asked, “Do you want to go back to your townhouse? We don’t have to stay in a place that’s turned inside out.”

  I shook my head and moved a hand so I could smooth out the furrow between his eyebrows. “No. You always come to me. You always follow my rules. It isn’t fair. I can be where you are. I can be in the middle of your mess. It doesn’t scare me. It doesn’t bother me. I’ll help you clean it up and set everything right. I want us to try our best to be on equal footing from here on out.”

  He nodded briefly, then lowered his head to drop a sweet kiss on the end of my nose. “Equals. I like that.” He moved to devour my mouth again, smiling against my lips as I struggled to breathe through the sexy onslaught. “And I like you.”

  I laughed a bit breathlessly and shifted my hands so I could trail one across his muscular back and down the length of his spine. I caught the hem of his shirt in my fingers and started to pull it upward, exposing his colorful skin and toned physique.

  “I like you too, Salinger. More than I ever thought I could.”

  The words were like throwing gasoline on an already smoldering fire. One second, he was grinning down at me and playfully placing biting kisses wherever his lips happened to land; the next, it was a race to get all our clothes off so every inch of bare skin was touching. He got a predatory look in his dark eyes that I
was now familiar with, and in no time, his hands were everywhere, touching me in a way that was both possessive and reverent. There was more confidence in how he held me and more certainty in the way he moved over me.

  All those unanswered questions about what we meant to one another didn’t seem as pressing, and all that mattered at the moment was how good we could make each other feel, and how much we could express without words.

  Our bodies moved together instinctively. Hands glided over slick skin and held on tight. My nipples pulled tight as they dragged across his chest, and my legs parted without protest as he moved his knee between them. The rough brush of his skin against mine had goosebumps lifting all over as my breath caught. He kissed his way up and down my neck, stopping to nip the curve where it met my shoulder. I rubbed my palm up and down his broad back, pulling him closer and arching my back to get as close to him as possible.

  He braced himself with a hand above my head on the bed and used the other to grab my leg by the back of my thigh, hoisting it around his waist as he shifted his weight where his hardness was pressed against my rapidly fluttering center. My damp opening was pressed against his unyielding length, and the contact made me shiver all over. He was so warm and hard, the sensation quickly had a greedy want for more slipping through my blood. I lifted my hips eagerly and felt the sting of his teeth on my flesh almost instantly. He pushed forward, rubbing along the silky, wet folds that were ready to welcome his cock inside, and he made me slowly lose my mind in the process.

  He kept up the rocking motion until I was on the brink of coming undone underneath him. I was clutching at his shoulders and drowning in the fervent kisses he was assaulting on my mouth. Salinger had the ability to make everything else slip away, so all my senses were filled with nothing but him. It could be overwhelming, but I liked getting lost in him. It was rare I allowed myself to let go of the order and control that defined my life. I felt safe enough with him that I could drop the rigid hold I kept over myself so I didn’t fall apart in the public eye.

  I dug my heel into the sexy little dimple that rested at the base of his spine. I shifted my hips impatiently and was immediately rewarded by the press of his tapered tip against my eager entrance. My body clenched and quivered, trying to pull his length all the way inside and fill that empty ache that screamed his name.

  I moved forward as Salinger moved back. His head lifted, and his eyes burned into mine with a heated warning. “Be careful. You’re about to push me past the point of no return, and we already discussed how dangerous it could be.”

  My mind was in a bit of a sex stupor, so it took me a second to understand what he was talking about.

  We’d moved so quickly from kissing to grinding against one another, it didn’t filter through the desire that was hounding at me that we’d skipped one of the usual steps that Salinger was meticulous about.

  Protection.

  It hadn’t even occurred to me. I was too caught up in the moment, and too invested in moving our relationship forward. To me, being with him with nothing between us wasn’t nearly as scary and dangerous as he made it sound. When I told him I trusted him, I meant it with every fiber of my being. I trusted him to take care of me, no matter what happened in the future, which might have made me more daring than I normally would’ve been.

  Fate seemed like it had plans for the two of us that were bigger than either one of us might’ve ever imagined. I was willing to roll the dice and see what else it might have in store.

  Instead of telling him I wanted to feel him inside of me with nothing between us, I wrapped my other leg around his waist and pressed my heels into the top curve of his sculpted ass to pull him down—the glide of his body against mine felt twice as good as it normally did. Salinger’s eyes rolled back in his head, and his jaw clenched as he remained perfectly still, even as I rocked against him. I could tell he was trying to maintain a modicum of control, which made me even more determined to push him over the edge of sanity along with me.

  My body clamped down on his as I kissed the vein that was throbbing with obvious strain on the side of his neck. I curled an arm around his neck and used the other to stroke his tense side, almost like I was trying to tame a wild animal.

  I moved on the hard, pulsing length filling me up, and put my lips to his ear. I felt him shudder when my teeth nipped at his lobe, but he remained stubbornly still as I determinedly fucked myself against him. It felt so good, but I needed him to move.

  I flicked the tip of my tongue against the sensitive shell of his ear and whispered in a voice that was a bit broken, “It’s okay, Salinger. Whatever happens, it will be okay.”

  When I really, really thought about what I wanted more than anything else, it was him and another chance to start a family. And starting a family with him… well, the thought didn’t scare me nearly as much as it probably should. He was still so young, but I felt safer and more loved when I was with him than I ever had with anyone else. I trusted him to know his own limits. If he wasn’t ready, if he was worried about what might happen if we didn’t stop now, I knew he would tell me. He was a hundred times better at expressing himself than I was.

  I had a lot to learn from him, and I hoped he could say the same about me.

  As long as we took care of one another, protected each other, supported one another, forgave each other, and ourselves—as long as we loved—it would all be okay. I had zero doubts.

  Once Salinger heard my words, it was like something broke loose inside of him. All the weeks of minding his p’s and q’s, all the hours of behaving and abiding by my rules and regulations, that proper and polite behavior went out the window, and my rebellious, unruly, wild child was back with a vengeance.

  He started to move with intent. Suddenly, gruff, dirty words started to flow out of his mouth, and I found myself blushing from the soles of my feet to the roots of my hair. He took me in a way that gave every indication he planned on keeping me for a very, very long time, and I felt every flex and kick of his cock as if he was branding my insides and marking his territory.

  It was hot.

  It was noisy and messy.

  It was rough and completely reckless.

  It was quite honestly the best sex I’d ever had.

  Salinger

  IT WAS A hard couple of months of shooting on location.

  Jeno was gone, and I had to focus on my sobriety and career by myself for the first time since getting clean. The security blanket which had been wrapped comfortingly around my shoulders was ruthlessly ripped away, showing me it was harder to stand on my own than I thought it would be. I missed my brother and his steady presence. I missed having him around, but knew the time apart was good for both of us and would ultimately bring us closer together. I’d only heard from him a couple of times since he went back to LA, but he assured me he was all right and that he was doing what I told him to do—figuring out what would make him happy. He told me he’d had a knockdown, drag-out fight with his mother that hadn’t been pretty. She refused to admit any fault, even when confronted with the video, and accused me of trying to set her up to further drive a wedge between the two of them.

  Jeno had had enough and wasn’t speaking to her until she apologized to me. He also talked it all out with our grandmother, who immediately defended me and told him she would no longer help Toren financially if she was determined to keep making trouble for me. Having both Maren and my grandmother believe in my innocence without question settled something inside me that had been raw and wounded for a long time.

  That forgiveness for myself that remained so elusive finally felt like it was within my grasp. I wasn’t exactly there yet, but I could feel myself inching closer to absolution.

  To ease Jeno’s mind while he was away so he really could focus on himself, and to keep me accountable, I found a local NA group and a regular sponsor to confide in throughout the filming of the rest of the movie. She was a lovely older woman who had been sober for fifteen years. I felt like I could learn a lot f
rom her, and since she didn’t have a personal stake in my sobriety the way Jeno had, it was a little bit easier to be brutally honest with her on the difficult days. The days when I was tired and emotionally drained. The days when reality and fiction were a bit too similar and I had to face the fact that while I’d been the addict, everyone around me had suffered from my addiction.

  Heinrich was right. The guy in the script didn’t deserve a nice and neat happy ending. No one would buy it. His sins were too great, and his suffering wasn’t nearly enough. Even though it was mostly my story, I kind of hated myself when I watched the scenes back.

  The weather had also shifted in Vancouver. It was cold and wet more often than not, but the dreary atmosphere fit the heavy tone of the scenes we were filming as of late. Off set, I went home with Maren as we settled into the early stages of our relationship. We were getting to know one another better, figuring each other out. I was doing my best to get her to fall in love with me, and felt like I was succeeding. On set, she was in love with the recovered version of my character who forced his way into her life once again. The two of us were happy, carefree, living life to the fullest, but we’d just started shooting the sequence where Maren’s character was diagnosed with cancer. Even though I knew none of it was real, the thought of losing her and watching her act her way through decline and illness was devastating. The makeup department might’ve done too good of a job making her look sick and frail. It was gut-wrenching, and knowing we were getting close to the ending where she died fucked with my head in unexpected ways.

  Heinrich swore Maren and I were giving him some of the best performances he’d seen in his career. It was high praise, so I didn’t tell him that for a lot of scenes, I wasn’t acting. I was actually devastated by the thought of losing Maren, and wasn’t sure how I could move forward if something actually happened to her. In the movie, my character slipped back into addiction, which was honestly the saddest part of the movie. In real life, I wanted to believe I was stronger than that, but I had my doubts.