Fletcher glanced away. “Not likely,” he said and met Jackson’s gaze again, more composed. “So you went to the awards, saw me, took a swing, and landed in the gutter. Then what?”
“Then it goes hazy. What happened to you after that?”
“I was dragged away. Hurtled around the corner away from the cameras. Two bouncers told me to go home. I did.”
“Right.” Jackson frowned. “Bouncers?”
“From the club, I assume.”
“Maybe.” Jackson inhaled sharply. “All I remember is being lifted from the gutter, shoved into a taxi then I was at home, in my bed.”
“Your bed?”
“Yes.”
“The one you shared with your girlfriend?”
Jackson paused, holding Fletcher’s gaze. “Ours wasn’t a traditional relationship in that sense,” he admitted. “We had separate rooms.”
“Many would say that can save a relationship.”
“So I hear. Just not in my case, right? Maybe if I had gone to bed with her…”
“You can spend a lifetime wondering what if.”
Fletcher seemed to be saying that to himself, and Jackson almost asked what experience he had of what ifs, but he couldn’t deflect this time. This was his time. This was his interview. This was him being put under the spotlight, in front of the camera like a guest on one of his old TV shows. Except it wasn’t. Except here, he was able to say so much more.
“Was she already home, in her room, when you got there?” Fletcher asked, keeping to the questions that would no doubt make Jackson finally tell someone what had happened.
“Maybe. I don’t know,” Jackson said, voice strangled. “I assume she was as I didn’t see her at the awards after-party. She often went home without me.”
“Alone?”
Jackson narrowed his eyes. There was something in those incessant questions that didn’t feel right. He’d been fighting his natural instincts and answering them directly, not floating around them as he’d so often done to journalists. He’d promised Fletcher something. The scoop. The truth. The man he was.
But could he admit it all to someone he’d just met? Giving Fletcher the story was going to cause repercussions. And he wasn’t sure he wanted that fallout.
It had been easier when he’d convinced himself that Fletcher was a bastard.
“Sometimes she did,” Jackson finally admitted and knew that wasn’t enough.
“Sometimes she didn’t?” Fletcher shuffled on the pavement, his open stance enough to keep Jackson at ease.
“Sometimes she didn’t.” Jackson shrugged. “Like I said, nontraditional.”
“As in you both slept with other people?”
“Yes. Sometimes.” Jackson faked a laugh, pushing away from the wall and clamping his arms around himself. “How about you tell me something now, Fletcher Doherty.”
“This book isn’t about me.”
“This isn’t for the book, though, is it? This is you trying to figure out if you even want to write it. If you want to spend time with me to do it. So, back at ya buddy. Let’s get to know each other. Find out if we even want to trust each other.”
Fletcher hesitated. Then, with a brief sniff, he said, “Go on.”
“Did you jack off to me?”
“No.” Fletcher was stoic, nothing trickling out behind that direct statement. Not even a flicker. “Did you ever sleep with your girlfriend?”
“As in fall asleep? Or sex?”
“Sex.”
“No. Was Kris your favourite?”
Fletcher shook his head. “No. I didn’t like either of you. So you were aware that Tallulah was sleeping with multiple people in the house you shared. In both her room and, possibly, yours?”
“She didn’t sleep with anyone in my room. That was off limits.”
“So only you did?”
“Yes. Who was your first crush?”
“A boy called Declan. From the next farm along. Do you sleep with men?”
Jackson hadn’t expected it to come out so blunt, so outright. It stabbed him, swirling his insides and tensing his muscles. He’d been asked the question before, of course. A few reporters here and there had been bold enough to go off the vetted questions and he’d managed to answer with the habitual response of laughter. No outright denial but a definite deflection. Which had been easy to do to intrusive reporters who wanted to slander him in the press.
Fletcher, though, Fletcher was different.
Wasn’t he?
So he tested the water by saying, “Right little Sherlock, aren’t you? And what would even lead you down that path?”
“Maybe it was when you kissed me.”
Jackson widened his eyes. Had he? “What?” That wasn’t something he could deny quite so easily. Especially if he had. Drink had often given him the inability to judge a situation. But he’d had management to clear up any leaks.
They were gone now.
“You kissed me last night. Drunk off your fecking nuts. I thought at first it was you being an arsehole. But something else came to light. Are you gay? Or do you just fuck around?”
There was a bitterness in the way Fletcher asked that last question. A tartness of something that cut him deep and had left an open wound, raw and oozing.
“Did you mean to say bisexual? Don’t erase a whole sexuality, it’s not fair.”
“Fucking about and bisexual aren’t the same thing. Are you bisexual?”
Jackson didn’t reply.
“So I’ll take that to mean that you do—did—fuck around. Did you sleep with anyone the night of Tallulah’s death?”
“No. Not that I recall. But I wouldn’t rule it out. I just wasn’t that conscious that you could call it consensual.”
“Did you have regular partners? Or were they all random pickups?”
Jackson laughed. “Not quite. I don’t trust people easily, Fletcher. For good reason. Someone like you might understand why.” He held the man’s gaze, deciding how far he should go with this. How deep he should let Fletcher in. Trust. The people he’d trusted before had let him down. But there was something about this man, though, that told Jackson he could say something. So he did. “This is what I want to keep out of the book.”
Fletcher flinched. “What? Why?”
“Because none of that is relevant.”
“Of course it’s relevant! You were hiding something. Yourself. From the whole public. Something that fundamentally defines who you are. You can’t keep that out of your own biography. It makes the whole thing a farce.”
“Who I choose to sleep with doesn’t define me. It might do you. But it never defined who Jax was and what happened to him. I kept that part of me private. I was told to, made to, so I did. I drowned it with drugs and booze.”
Fletcher scraped a hand through his hair. He was angry. Frustrated. Jackson couldn’t blame him. “I just don’t get it,” he said, scrubbing his forehead. “I don’t get why you would keep any of this a secret.”
“Of course you wouldn’t.” Jackson placed a finger under Fletcher’s chin to lift his head, and held his gaze. “Lucky for you, you’ve not been made to hide who you are. It’s not an issue for you. Easy coming out story, was it? Parents supportive? Friends already knew?”