Since he’d found the pictures on Fletcher’s laptop. Since he’d met the arrogant tosser outside the Apollo, he’d been wondering. But now more so that he knew Fletcher had been in love with someone else. That he clearly wasn’t just into older men.
“That’s a long story.” Fletcher didn’t take his gaze from the ceiling. “And I’m here to write yours. Not mine.”
“You into Daddy kink?” Jackson bashed his knee against Fletcher’s beneath the blanket. It had meant to be an attempt at light-hearted banter, to soften the mood, but Fletcher still hadn’t ventured underneath the comforter and if his twisted face was anything to go by, he looked set to remain fully clothed and at an arm’s length from him.
Another layer of barrier now between them.
“No.” Fletcher’s voice was low and deep. And troubled. “I just have really bad taste in men. My track record for relationships is solely because of rebounds.”
There was that word again. Jackson pressed down on the uncomfortable feeling gathering in his chest. “Heston was a rebound?” he asked. He’d gathered that much from the conversation in the kitchen but talking about Fletcher’s past was somehow ridding him of the tormenting thoughts of his own.
Fletcher slid his head along the pillow to finally lay his green eyes on Jackson. “Maybe. Probably. Yea.” He sighed, removing one arm from under his head and scrubbed his face. “I came over here for uni. I fell in love with my roommate. He’s straight. Painfully fucking straight. Unless he’s had a drink.”
“I know those types.” For a while, he’d thought he was one of them. Until the feelings didn’t depart with the morning sobriety.
Fletcher held his gaze. As though he was searching him, reading him. But he didn’t press. It seemed like he had something to get off his chest. There wasn’t going to be any more questions fired at him tonight.
Fletcher was doing the giving this time.
“I take it we are talking about the man who lives here?” Jackson said. “With his pregnant girlfriend?”
“Aye. When he moved Vanessa into our flat, I had to get out.”
“And so you went searching for a sugar daddy?”
Fletcher gave him a look that pretty much told him to go fuck himself. All Jackson could do was shrug. It was a valid question. Was Fletcher no different to the girls from The Roxy who had buzzed around him and Kris for an inch of their fame and fortune? To sell their virtues to be ravished in luxuries.
“Not exactly,” Fletcher replied through a clenched jaw. He stared back at the ceiling, his chest rising then levelling out, then falling. Not that Jackson was watching him. It was just hard not to notice the movements of Fletcher’s body considering he was there. Beside him. Close enough to touch.
Yet he didn’t.
“I’d been doing freelance reviews for a local paper during my final year. I got sent to a press night to do a write up on a one-man play starring Heston.” Fletcher licked his lips, eyes glazing. “I was blown away by him. He was talented. I met him afterwards with all the other press to get a quote, ask the right questions, but he kinda homed in on me, ignoring all the other veteran reporters. He invited me for a drink. I went. Let’s just say, things went fast after that. I told him it was looking more and more likely I’d have to go back to Ireland. So he told me to move in. I did. And I clung to the hope that it could be real. That we could work it out. He’d been honest with me that he’d never done monogamous relationships before but I told him I didn’t share. He said he’d give it a go. For me.” Fletcher peered back to Jackson. “Guess I’m a right fecking eejit now.”
“We’ve all done it.” Jackson held his gaze. “We’ve all wanted to love the one we’re with when you can’t be with the one that you really do.”
Fletcher stared at him, chewing his lip in thought. It was as though he was unpicking every part of that sentence.
“Is that what you did?” he finally asked. “With Tallulah?”
“Yes.”
“And who did you really love?”
“There were many. If I tell you them all, this book might turn into the yellow pages.”
Fletcher snorted. “You fall in love quick? Or do you not know how to differentiate love from lust?”
“A bit of both.” That was more honest than he’d expected it to be. And probably not the best thing to admit while he lay next to a man who was conjuring up all those feelings he found so hard to put in their rightful category.
“And Diego? What was he to you?”
Jackson fluttered his eyes to a close. He’d started the conversation, he supposed. He’d asked Fletcher about the men in his past. And, at some point, he would have to explain why Diego was chasing him down. So he scooted onto his side, stuffing his arm under the pillow and stared up at Fletcher, taking in the contours of his mouth, the grooves where the stubble poked through his silky skin and counting those long, perfectly curled eyelashes that framed beatific green eyes.
“Diego was… complicated.”
Fletcher arched an eyebrow, then followed Jackson’s suit and rolled onto his side to land face to face, breath to breath, chest to chest.
Heartbeat to heartbeat.
“That’s not an answer. If this is how you’re going to be working the book, then it’s gonna take a wee while to see it on a shelf.” He tapped Jackson’s forehead with his fingertips as though they were spiders’ legs flickering across his skin. “Be gone media training.”
Jackson smiled. Because it had been nice to be touched. “Okay,” he said and, believing that to be a sign that there was a hole in the wall that had been built up around them, he grabbed Fletcher’s hand from his forehead, linked their fingers and pinned it to the mattress. He lay his cheek down onto them to keep them in place. “Diego was a regular lover, yes. Was I in love with him? Maybe. But that was before I knew what love was. Or rather what it should be. He was a safety blanket for a while.”
“How did you meet him? I mean, if he’s working for Kris, or for Charles Payne, if he’s on their side, how did you two end up in bed together?”
“He was assigned to Tallulah.”
“Assigned?”
“Yes. Bodyguard. Of sorts. We all had them. We were huge commodities, assets, for the management. Me, Kris, a bunch of others, were all part of the same crazy group. We were owned and controlled. They decided what jobs we took, where we ate, where we drank and, most of all, who we slept with. All of it was pre-planned to create the news. We had no freedom, no choices. They didn’t want anything landing in the media that could upset their cash cow.” Jackson twisted his head, his lips now sliding onto the hand that clutched Fletcher’s. “Tules came into our group, or was more forced, by her father, some shaking of hands between Hopper and Payne. Diego came with her as her babysitter. From the outside it looked like Charles Payne was protecting his beloved daughter as she’d reached the age where socialising with the upper echelons of celebrity was her calling. What it really was, was using Diego to vet and choose the best person for her to be seen with. Who she should be seen with to make them the most profit from scoops, to selling papers, to becoming the new king and queen of British celebrity.”