Thrive: A Friends-to-Lovers Standalone Romance (Stonewood Billionaire Brothers Series)
Thrive: Chapter 26

Therapist: Stress of a job is a trigger for a lot of people.

Jay: I’m always going to struggle, aren’t I?

Therapist: It’s what makes addicts some of the strongest people you’ll ever meet.

Jay

We were days from the film crew getting here and my body wanted an outlet. I scrolled my phone’s contacts and knew I was searching out the people I’d got my drugs from before. I would have used. I would have partied.

The reality was I’d always done it at this point in the film. They took my mind off of the script, off the pressure, off the depth. Swimming in someone else’s emotions, encompassing their whole self for days on end, fatigued a person, even a person like me who loved doing it.

I was about to give in to the exhaustion, and I needed a lifesaver. Mikka provided that.

“Jay!” Mikka snapped her fingers.

She was standing in my room holding my script and glaring at me as she played Lela’s part. “Focus.”

I nodded.

Her eyebrows slammed down as she looked over her lines. She threw her hair over her shoulder and tensed to play the part. She vibrated with anger, her hand shaking at me as she screamed, “I don’t want my love to be our ruin. I want to love someone that doesn’t have to risk their life to be with me.”

“That’s not the way love works.” I murmured the words and knew how truthful they were. This story was one of racial injustice, of interracial marriage and the systemic racism that plagued our nation.

It would leave audiences raw, hurting, wondering, I hoped, about their complicity in the discrimination.

“In this town,” she whispered, tears springing to her eyes, “our love doesn’t work at all.”

I grabbed her wrist and pulled her close. I ran a thumb right under her ear and leaned in to whisper, “It’ll work anywhere because love overpowers hate.”

“Promise me you’ll remember that.”

I nodded and leaned my forehead to hers as I bled the next words. “I promise.”

They would flash back to this scene when two men beat me to death. My body would be the sacrifice that a small town needed—a white man dying for the love of his black girlfriend while she wept beside him.

It was a racial Romeo and Juliet of sorts.

Those two words had to carry impact, had to show he’d die without fighting back, had to show every sliver of love a man had for his woman.

Embodying all that and speaking those words to Mikka was easy.

She whooped beside me. “You do it better every time.”

“I do everything better every time.”

She laughed so hard her cheeks turned red. This was Mikka in the film industry, though. She had the eye for a good script and knew how to make it even better. Like me, she loved how powerful a movie could be. “You’re so arrogant.”

“Confident.”

She rolled her eyes. “Confident enough to get all these lines in one take within two days?”

“A challenge?” I lifted an eyebrow at her. “What do I get if I win?”

She shrugged. “I don’t care. I want my planner back and a promise that you’ll do every meeting on the calendar for the next two months with no fight. We need you out there for this movie.”

I narrowed my eyes and leaned back on the dresser as I stared down at her. “Fine. I want you to move in with me.”

She giggled like I wasn’t serious. She even waved her hand at me like she was shooing away the idea. When I crossed my arms and didn’t say another word, her eyes widened. Then she plopped onto the bed as her jaw dropped. “You’re not serious?”

“I am. I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted no boundaries.”

“When did you say that?” She rubbed her forehead.

“The other night.”

“When we were screwing?” she asked, voice so high it probably echoed the wheels screeching into overdrive in her head. “That wasn’t real!”

“What do you mean?” I schooled my expression. “We’re as real as ever, woman. Why do you keep pushing the idea of us away whenever we aren’t tangled in each other?”

“Because we do tangled together well. Outside of that, outside of this small room, we can’t work.”

“Oh, we can, we do, and we will,” I said, my voice low and final. “You can’t stop it now, Wrecking Ball. We probably committed the day we kissed each other. It all started there. We just didn’t know it then.”

She shook her head. “You’re a movie star, Jay, and you grew up in this quaint little town where everyone loves you. Those are the places you belong. I don’t belong beside you in either of them. I’m just your PA.”

I pointed toward the doorway. “You think Lorraine’s going to tell just anyone about her dentures and that Delilah’s going to let anyone cook in her kitchen? Ray carried a drink halfway across the village for you, just because you beat me in a contest. They love you here, and they love you in LA too. Probably more than they love me.”

“You’re crazy,” she whispered. “You’ve never even been in a real relationship.”

“You’re right. I was waiting for you, Wrecking Ball. I needed you to come in and destroy my lack of commitment. You did a damn good job. I’m committed and I’m not going anywhere.” The words rang true, so true I realized this is how my life would be. I might need an outlet but I’d replace one with her.

“I’m not moving in with you,” she proclaimed and shot off the bed.

“Wanna bet?” I followed her out of my room.

“Fine. Get every shot in the first take, Jay. I’m excited to get my scheduler back.”