Chapter 1: The Kiss That Broke Everything
The lamp on the side table was losing its fight with the dark. It cast a dim, honeyed glow over the chaos of Tommy’s apartment, leaving the corners to the shadows. Script pages were spread across the couch like fallen leaves, half-empty whiskey bottles standing sentinel among them. The air was still, thick with the ghost of cigarette smoke and something else—the charged, silent hum of a decision hovering in the space between two people.
Tommy watched Chanse pick up one of the scripts, his fingers tracing a line of dialogue. He was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the couch, the position stretching the cotton of his t-shirt across his shoulders. The soft light caught the warm brown of his skin, the loose curl that fell over his forehead.
“This bit is still weak,” Chanse said, his voice a low murmur that seemed to absorb the quiet of the room. He didn’t look up.
“You say that about all my bits.”
“Only the ones that are weak.” A smile played on his lips. Innocent. That smile was a weapon Tommy had no defense against.
Tommy took a sip from his glass, the whiskey burning a familiar, comforting path down his throat. He was too aware of the distance between them—three feet of worn carpet that felt like a canyon he’d been trying to cross for a year. He’d mapped every detail of Chanse in that time. The specific way his hazel eyes picked up gold in this light. The faint scar through his left eyebrow. The cadence of his laugh, which was never full, always held back, like he was letting you in on a secret.
“Your ex texted me,” Chanse said, casually, as if commenting on the weather.
The glass halted halfway to Tommy’s mouth. “What?”
“Megan. She asked if we were filming tomorrow. Polite. Curious.” Chanse finally looked up, and his gaze was a physical touch. “The subtext was less polite. It was, ‘are you fucking my recently acquired ex-boyfriend?’”
Tommy set his glass down on the table with a soft click. The end of his relationship with Megan was a raw, ugly thing, a wound he’d picked at for weeks. It ended in her kitchen, her voice cracking as she said, It’s him, isn’t it? It’s always been him. He hadn’t denied it. He couldn’t.
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her the schedule.” Chanse shrugged. “I didn’t answer the subtext.”
“But you’re telling me.” It wasn’t a question.
Chanse put the script down and shifted, turning to face him. He drew his knees up, resting his arms on them. The movement was fluid, unhurried. “I’m telling you because she’s not wrong to ask. Is she?”
The hum in the air became a buzz, a vibration Tommy felt in his teeth. He’d built a career on knowing the right words, the perfect timing. Here, now, his mind was blank static. All he had was the truth, a stupid, simple truth that had become the axis his world spun on. “No,” he said, the word rough. “She’s not wrong.”
Chanse just looked at him. The quiet stretched, filled with the memory of a hundred almost-moments: a hand brushed in the van, a gaze held a beat too long after a scene, a joke whispered in the dark of an editing bay that was meant for his ears only.
Tommy’s silver bracelets clinked softly as he ran a hand through his bleached hair. “This is a bad idea, Chanse. We work together. This thing we’ve built… it’s good. It’s the best thing I’ve ever had. I can’t screw it up for a…”
“For a what?” Chanse prompted, his voice dangerously soft.
“For a maybe. For a feeling.”
Chanse moved then. He uncoiled from the floor with that easy grace and closed the canyon in two steps, settling on the couch beside him. Not touching, but so close Tommy could feel the heat from his body, could smell his shampoo—something clean, like mint and cedar.
“It’s not a maybe,” Chanse said, his eyes searching Tommy’s face. “And it’s more than a feeling. You know it is. You’ve known for months.”
He was right. Tommy had known. He’d known when he started rewriting scenes to give them more time together. He’d known when he’d catch himself watching the playback just to see Chanse’s smile, not the joke. He knew now, with a certainty that was terrifying.
Chanse reached out, his fingers hovering just above Tommy’s wrist, over the silver bracelet. “You think I’d risk it either? This is everything to me, too.”
“Then why?” Tommy’s question was a whisper.
“Because I’m tired of pretending it’s not.” Chanse’s fingertip finally made contact, a brush of skin against the cool metal. “I’m tired of watching you walk away at the end of the day. I’m tired of the script.”
The touch was a spark on dry tinder. Tommy’s analytical mind, the part that constantly assessed risk and consequence, shut off. All that was left was a year of want, compressed into a single, unbearable point of pressure.
He moved.
His hand came up, fingers sliding into those soft brown curls, cupping the back of Chanse’s head. He saw the hitch in Chanse’s breath, the dilation of his pupils, the parting of his lips. There was no hesitation, no slow pull. It was a collapse.
He kissed him.
It was not gentle. It was a convergence, a release of kinetic energy that had been building in the smallest of increments for three hundred and sixty-five days. It tasted like expensive whiskey and cheap desperation, like the betrayal of Megan’s trust and the selfish, glorious claim of something he’d wanted for so long. Chanse made a sound against his mouth, a low gasp that turned into a surrender, and his hands came up to grip Tommy’s shoulders, fingers digging in through the fabric of his shirt.
The world narrowed to the points of contact: the slide of lips, the scrape of stubble, the firm press of Chanse’s body leaning into him. It was better and worse than Tommy had imagined. It was real. It was here. And it would change everything.
When they broke apart, breath ragged, they didn’t go far. Their foreheads rested together. The room was silent except for their breathing.
“See?” Chanse whispered, his voice unsteady. “Not a maybe.”
Tommy was about to answer, to say something, anything, when a violent buzz shattered the silence. It vibrated against the wooden table, loud and insistent.
Both of them flinched.
Tommy’s phone. The screen lit up, casting a blue-white wedge of light across the scripts. The caller ID flashed, clear and bright and cruel.
MEGAN.
The name was a bucket of ice water. The spell broke. The real world, with its consequences and complications, came crashing back in.
Tommy stared at it, his blood going cold. Chanse slowly pulled back, his gaze dropping to the screaming phone, then lifting to meet Tommy’s. In his hazel eyes, the gold was gone, replaced by a sudden, wary understanding. The kiss still burned on Tommy’s lips, but the taste had shifted. It was no longer just desperation.
It was the sharp, metallic flavor of everything he’d just broken.