If only Fletcher hadn’t had to be so goddamn, fucking—
“Because you owe me,” Jackson breathed out in a heady exhalation.
Fletcher returned his gaze, chewing on his bottom lip, staring him out for a while. On second glance, he didn’t have Kris’s eyes. Kris was all dark, whereas this bloke’s were a radioactive emerald green.
So Fletcher was poison after all.
Inhaling a sharp breath, Fletcher…shrugged. “For what?”
The audacity, the arrogance, the complete and utter disregard for any of his involvement in what had happened. The arsehole oozed an ignorance that Jackson couldn’t abide. He fought to bite back his initial response. Because he needed this. Needed him.
He had no one else.
Not anymore.
“For that night,” he said.
Fletcher stumbled back and gripped his bag strap crossed over his chest. He’d deny it. He’d downplay it. He wouldn’t admit that this could all have started with him. Jackson knew men like Fletcher Doherty.
“How do I owe you?” Fletcher shook his head. “You took a swing at me.”
Bowing his head, Jackson focused on the cracks in the pavement to give him a moment to just breathe. If this bloke didn’t believe there was any fault, any blame, any part of his in this whole, horrible scenario then maybe Jackson was wasting his time. All media, all journalists, all online keyboard warriors were the same. None of them realised how their words could sting…how a few simple lines could have such a disruptive effect…how they had been the trigger for such catastrophic events.
“Listen, Jackson, don’t be giving out at me. I can’t help. I’m sorry for your loss. I genuinely am. If I knew anything, of course I’d let the police know. But I don’t. I gave my statement. And I’m a little confused right now as to why you’re here.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“Okay…”
That one word was said in mockery and Jackson could feel it all the way through his frozen veins. But he had to continue. He’d come all this way. So he said, “And I want you to help prove it.”
Fletcher’s astounded, “What?” was followed by a nervous chuckle. “How on earth do you think I can do that?”
“You do you. Write something. About me.” Taking a step forward, Jackson dodged the pedestrians clomping on pavement as they passed by. He kept his hair shielding most of his face.
“I think you’ve been upgraded from celebrity gossip to the headline news. I’m not really in a position to write your version of events.”
“But you can write about me. About the person I actually am. Change people’s perception about the person you painted me as.”
The arse had the audacity to laugh at that point, albeit a nervous chuckle, a scared-shitless titter that grated right on Jackson’s resolve.
“I’m not sure if you recall, but I wasn’t particularly a major fan of yours before all this.”
Didn’t he know it? Fletcher Doherty had been the first one to brave a differing opinion of him.
He could do it again.
He had to.
Jackson needed to make him if there was any chance of absolution.
“That’s why you’re perfect.” Stepping closer, he lowered his voice to a threatening level. “If the man whose poison pen can change his opinion, then so can hundreds of thousands of people.”
Silence, the distant sounds of sirens and tourists the only thing between them other than a metaphorical tumbleweed. Jackson waited. He had time. He had an abundance of it. He couldn’t remember the last time he wasn’t being pushed and pulled in different directions.
When Fletcher didn’t say anything, Jackson knew he needed to try harder. He hadn’t given enough of a convincing argument. He was too bitter. Too messed-up. Too entangled in the rawness of her death and the nation’s response to his arrest. How the British public could turn so rapidly on him, a once-treasured icon, had given him whiplash.
Hanging his head, Jackson stumbled back to lean against the Kawasaki.
Fletcher drew troubled eyebrows in. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Okay? Okay?” Jackson breathed out a laugh that was more a release of pent up anguish. He’d always been taught to laugh in the face of adversity. He hadn’t been able to do much of that lately. Any flicker of amusement seeping out when in Flaymore would only have been captured by an inmate wanting to make a name for himself and used it against him in the media. He rubbed his stinging eyes. “My girlfriend is dead. Someone strangled her whilst I was passed out in the other room. The world thinks I did it. I’ve spent six months inside because I wasn’t granted bail. This morning I wasn’t told that I was free because they believed I didn’t do it. They just couldn’t prove that I did. I can’t quite see how I would be okay after all that. Do you?”
Perhaps that was too blunt. Too much, too soon? Perhaps all this seeking the truth was coming across more selfish than he’d anticipated. It was. But the world was pointing at him. So he needed to prove his innocence to force people to look at who might have killed her, instead of allowing them to tie the noose around his neck too.
And on that thought, his heart almost stopped. So the desperation kicked in. “I need you. Your help.”
Fletcher softened before him. “Okay,” he said. “Go on. Why would I, the fella you tried to knock out due to one bad review, want to write another article about you?”
“I want more than an article. And you’ll have a ready and waiting readership for this. It’ll rocket you to a fortune you never knew existed.”
“Wind your neck in, lad, that’s a touch arrogant there.”
“Arrogance doesn’t equal guilt.” Jackson leapt up from leaning against his bike, new found energy resumed. “Nor does it equal untalented.”
Fletcher glanced away, flicking his gaze back just as quick. “What are you talking here, then? A featured piece?”
Jackson forced a smile. “A full exposé of Jackson Young and why he isn’t the man he’s been depicted as in the media of late.”
“So this is all about you? Not… Tallulah?”
Jackson sucked in a breath at her name. It still stabbed at his heart, strangled his chest, erupted bile into his throat. He wondered if it would ever stop.
Scrubbing fingers across his perspiring forehead, Jackson had to find the right way to explain what he needed. What he had to do before it was too late and this was all hidden under the carpet as so many of the lies and manipulations already had been. He wasn’t sure how far he should go. How much he should admit he knew. There was the whole story. And there was his story.
So he said, “I was arrested for something I didn’t do. I’ve been painted in the media as a monster. As a murderer. Pretty much all my friends and family have abandoned me because they believe people like you.”
“People like me?”
“People with the ability to write words and print them for the public to read, to believe and to act upon.”
“I never wrote about what happened to her. I’ve avoided talking about you, or her, since.”
“I know. Now I want you to.”
Jackson waited for the faint glimmer of understanding to work its way across Fletcher’s face. He had to know this would be the ultimate scoop for him. A writer, a journalist, a gossip columnist…whatever the man claimed to be, if he took this opportunity he could retire.