Page 38 of Kiss Me, Darling

“Yes!” Lucy clutched at my shoulders, asking for more. “I love it when you’re like this.”

“Controlling?” I grunted between thrusts.

“Wild.” Her eyes sparkled. “Uninhibited. You think too much.”

I wasn’t thinking now. I let instinct take over, driving me—and hopefully us—straight into another dose of oblivion.

* * *

“Are you talking to yourself?”Chris teased me.

I put him in a headlock.

“Ow! What the hell?” He squirmed his way out, so I knocked him down. He might be a professional athlete, but I had training in all kinds of martial arts, combat fighting, and stunt work.

He punched me in the side and it actually hurt, so I released him. “Fine. You’re free.”

He rubbed his neck while I pulled up my shirt to find a nice red spot where his knuckles dug into my ribs.

“So were you? Talking to yourself again?” His eyes glinted with brotherly teasing. I was on the back deck minding my own business, pacing at the edge where I was clear of the table and chairs.

I almost wanted to take him down again. If it had been a few days ago I absolutely would have taken up the opportunity to release some frustration on my brother, but things had changed. I had no frustrations and plenty of reason to conserve my energy. For Lucy.

“I was dictating a story, ass.” I held up my phone.

“What kind of story?” He threw himself into the Adirondack chair and looked up at me expectantly.

After talking to Lucy, I couldn’t stop thinking about the paranormal and had thrown myself completely into it. Every spare chance I had, I snuck off to describe everything I saw in my head. I was near what felt like the halfway point of the story. This is where the story typically began to consume me as all the pieces began to come together.

“Vampires.” I shrugged, really unsure of what Chris would think of it.

He squinted and cocked his head to the side. “That’s different for you. Everything’s been family saga, epic journey, historical for the last few years.”

He paid a lot more attention to my work than I gave him credit for. I took a chair and set my phone aside. “New me, new stories. I’ve decided to let my creativity run wild.”

“And it ran to vampires?”

“I’ve had this story rolling around for years. I think I took myself too seriously. I had to concentrate on the darker stuff. The struggles. Theart.”

“The awards.” Chris pointed out. “All those movies are awards favorites. The critics fall all over themselves. Not that they aren’t entertaining. I don’t think you’ve made a movie I haven’t enjoyed, but I’d love it if you made something interesting.”

I laughed. He was right. There was a time and place for deep stories about life and survival. And there was a time and a place for fun movies that got the imagination going into overdrive.

“I think I had it in my head that fun movies don’t have messages. They don’t mean anything. They’re just fun. And that simply isn’t true. Or at least it doesn’t have to be. I’ve been rewatchingThe Expanse.It’s a sci-fi series full of space adventures and special effects, but underneath it all it’s about humanity, redemption, good versus evil, all that good stuff. Hell, evenSchitt’s Creekis deep as hell. It’s funny but damn if it isn’t about love and acceptance and family. That’s where I’m going with all my projects from now on. I want to entertain with meaning.”

I felt like I’d just dumped my guts on the beach. It was surprisingly vulnerable to confess my thoughts to my little brother even though I thought we were as close as brothers could get.

Chris grinned. Like...grinned.The kind a cartoon character has at a ridiculous point that defies reason. “You’ve found your why.”

“My why?” What did that even mean?

He got even more comfortable in his chair and laid his head back. “My why is strategy. I fucking love outthinking a batter. I feed off the possibilities. If I wasn’t a pitcher I’d have to be in forensics or something like that. Getting a batter to swing at the absolutely wrong pitch is everything. I don’t care if the stadium is full or empty. It’s not about the crowd or the fame. It’s me and the batter locked in a brain duel. That’s my why. You’ve just figured out yours.”

I still didn’t quite follow. “You think my why is that I like to have fun?”

“No. I mean, recognizing what is fun is part of the process. Why do you act? You could quit and do anything, but you’re not. You’re still thinking about it. You’ve even expanded what you’re doing. Taking control of the stories you tell. Why?”

“Because they’re telling the wrong stories,” I blurted out, then thought back over what I said. “The people in control, the people with all the money, they dictate what stories get told, and that means that big budget movies are contrived money grabs, and awards movies are overly existential, overly artsy and don’t connect with audiences. The whole point of storytelling is to connect people. That’s how it all started at the beginning of humanity. Storytelling is how we passed wisdom down from one generation to the next, how we formed community, how we fostered imagination. We need to tell stories that matterandcaptivate or else what the hell are we doing?”

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