Cam stepped back, folding his arms, the vein in his neck popping out as he swallowed with what Fletcher could tell was unease. “Fletch—”
Fletcher stood, cutting Cam off from yet another one of his insincere apologies. He’d kinda had enough of all these men using him. Cam had used him. Heston had used him. He had a long line of men who’d walked all over him.
But Jackson? Jackson needed him.
And that fuelled what he was doing right then. Not love.
“If you want to keep up that load of bollocks to fulfil your duties as a boyfriend and father,” Fletcher said, voice eerily low as he dipped forward across the table. “Then I suggest you give me your driver’s license and a place for us to kip for the night.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No. I’m asking you. As my friend.”
“And as your friend it’s my duty to have your best interests at heart and that means telling you that I think you’re making a mistake. If Jax was your teen idol crush, leave him there in your teenage spank bank. You should never meet your heroes. You’ll always be disappointed.”
“Funny. I was always disappointed by my best fecking friend. You got my best interests, have ye? Did you have them each time you asked me to suck you off then told me it meant nothing to you afterwards? Did you think of my best interests when I told ye I was in love with you and you moved her in?”
“Shhh, keep your fucking voice down.”
Fletcher glanced away, rage surging through him to grip hold of every muscle in his body and squeeze to the point he might implode. “I’ll never mention any of it again,” he finally said, searing his glare right into the man he’d once loved from afar. “If you do this one thing.”
After what felt like an eternity of oppressive silence dragging through the air, crushing down on them both and snapping the threads that had tied Fletcher to this man for so long, Cam rifled in his back pocket. He produced a wallet and slipped out his driver’s license then held it up and slapped it onto the table.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said.
“So do I.” Fletcher dragged the card across and pocketed it.
“You can use the pull-out bed in the living room. I trust you can figure out some top and tail arrangement.”
Fletcher bowed his head, then, glancing back up to his old friend, he breathed out a grateful, “Thank you.”
“I leave for work at six a.m., I trust you’ll be up and out by then.” Cam raised his chin. “Better go let him back in.”
Doing just that, Fletcher vacated the kitchen into the hallway. Jackson stood with his back against the closed front door, head bowed and worrying on his bottom lip. He peered up, blue eyes full of remorse and, dare he think it, a knowledge gained, as he laid his gaze on Fletcher.
“There was someone out there,” he said.
Fletcher didn’t bother to honour that with anything. There was no point. He’d got what he’d come here for, now it was time to go forward.
“We’re in there.” With that, he stalked off to the living room with Jackson hovering on tenterhooks behind.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Where You Lay Your Head
As Jackson helped pull out the sofa bed and flapped the sheets that Fletcher’s friend had dumped on them before pulling his girlfriend to the next room along, which Jackson assumed was their bedroom, he couldn’t help but feel the tension clinging in the air with every breath inhaled and exhaled.
He hadn’t meant to listen in to the conversation between Fletcher and this Cameron bloke. He hadn’t wanted to. Eavesdropping was much like reading the reviews of his TV shows—whilst the majority might pour out their love and devotion for him, there was always the one-star rants that felt like a punch to the face after a fantastic night out. And that was what would be forever remembered.
He chuckled. That had once been exactly how it had felt reading Fletcher’s words.
The man himself peered up at him through narrowed eyes, folding in the corners of the sheet on the tiniest of collapsible double beds. Jackson pressed his lips together. This wasn’t a laughing matter. Still, the ability to find amusement in a situation could only help about now, considering the predicament they were currently in. And it had always been his fallback.
Fletcher looked weary, though. He was stiff, and tight, and pale. Which was to be expected, but after what Jackson had heard through the thin walls, he guessed Fletcher’s morose silence was more to do with what had just happened between him and his friend than any imminent danger that either of them were now caught up in.
The ache in Jackson’s gut returned tenfold. He shouldn’t have brought Fletcher into this. He was too young. Too naive. Too idealistic. Regardless that Jackson had been manipulated, muted and controlled from a younger age than even Fletcher was, it didn’t mean he had to do the same to a man who still believed the world could be a safe and just place.
It wasn’t.
It never would be.
Not while the top one percent owned the wealth and everything that went along with it.
But it would be Fletcher who could shine a light on the whole thing.
If he still wanted the job.
“Thank you,” Jackson said, breaking the oppressive silence with heartfelt gratitude. “For doing this. For sticking by me when you didn’t have to.”
Fletcher didn’t reply. He just sat on one side of the bed, his back to Jackson and shoulders drooping as though a lead weight was pushing him down and down until his spine would break and he’d be forever disfigured from having met Jackson Young. That was how they all went. Eventually. They all regretted being part of the Jax and Kris entourage. Once they knew what it meant to be in the inner circle of trust, they were ripped free of their spirit and had to tow the Management line or face the consequences.
Like Tallulah had.
Tallulah. The one bright star who’d tried to break free.
Jackson wrung his hands, fidgeting in the box sized living room and inhaled deeply with an attempt to stop his heart from leaping from his chest and scurrying off to find a saviour.
To find Fletcher’s.
“Get some rest,” Fletcher said, tugging off his shoes.
He then slipped onto the bed, staring at the ceiling with his hands behind his head. He didn’t seem comfortable. That wasn’t the stance of someone trying to fall asleep. That was a man who would stay like that all night in a state of trepidation. Of wondering if he would ever get his life back.
Jackson had been like that for six months straight in a smaller box room on an even more uncomfortable plastic mattress that had grazed his skin.
With nothing else to do, Jackson undressed down to his boxers and slid under the blanket, copying Fletcher by lying flat and staring up at the polystyrene ceiling tiles. There were a few cobwebs entangling the single silver light fixing and Jackson counted each thin line to give him something to take his mind off his thumping heartbeat. It took everything he had not to reach for Fletcher. Not to ask for one more kiss. Not to cross that invisible line that Fletcher had drawn with his words of ‘stop’.
But his mouth was harder to control, and so he asked the question that had been grating on his mind for a while. “How did you ever end up with a man twice your age?”