Page 57 of Going Solo (The Brent Boys #2)

Chapter Thirty-Two

A t quarter past ten the next morning I was sitting in the driver’s seat of the van—the GPS set, my hands on the steering wheel, desperate to hit the road. Where was Nick? Not only did we need to make tracks, I was in urgent need of a debrief about the night before. I honked the horn. My phone pinged.

Nick: Sorry, he called shotgun.

The passenger door opened, and Cole Kennedy jumped in, wearing his Pop Review baseball cap. He held up a bag of sweets.

“I come bearing the Haribos of apology.” He pushed the peak of his cap back so I could see his eyes. Nick, I guessed, was in the jet again. “I’m sorry about last night. I had no idea that was going to happen.”

“Really?” I was gripping the steering wheel as intensely as Aunty Cheryl gripped the off-duty Magic Mike dancer she found in the bar on our Royal Caribbean cruise last winter. “So that little stunt wasn’t the ‘surprise’ you promised me?”

“No!” Cole held up his hands in surrender. “Chase was the surprise. I thought you’d like to see him. You two always got on. I practically had to sneak him in. Felicity has been reading him the Riot Act all morning, apparently.”

“You know the press can never see us together!” I said, feeling the heat rise in my face. Dammit, I was going to cry. I fought it. “Why would you let an entire TV crew anywhere near your dressing room, when you knew I was in there? It ain’t right.”

“They weren’t the press,” Cole said. “They’re the WebFlix crew that’s following me around. They’re making my documentary. I get final say on the edit. Even if they film you, it wouldn’t go out unless I gave approval.”

It wasn’t enough. Hot tears welled, and I turned to look straight out the windscreen so Cole couldn’t see them.

“Did you, or Fiona, or anyone on your team, tell them to film me?”

“Absolutely not,” Cole said.

“Because they seemed pretty determined to film me.”

“I think when they saw you in my dressing room, they got a bit overexcited. Journalistic instinct, or whatever. I’m sorry. I know that must have been triggering for you. But I promise, I didn’t know they were going to be there. They were there to film me, not you.”

“The stupid thing is,” I said, “I thought we were going to hang out last night, the two of us. And all along you’d planned to film your ego project and spend time with your mate.”

“Toby, please look at me.” I felt the warmth of Cole’s finger against my chin, gently pulling me to face him. My eyes met his. “Toby, they wanted to film me last night because they’ve found my birth mum.”

My anger evaporated. “What?”

“The producers have been looking for my birth family, and they’ve found my mum. She’s alive. She’s living in New Zealand. I’m going to go out there next month to meet her. I’d go sooner but… schedules.”

“Cole, that’s amazing.” I slid my hands into his. There were tears in Cole’s eyes now too.

“The crew had just found out and wanted to film my reaction when Fiona told me. They had no idea you were in my dressing room.”

“I ain’t bothered about that now,” I said. “Tell me about your mum. What do you know about her?”

“No, come on. We need to scoot, I’ll tell you on the drive. But… can I have a hug first?”

I shuffled across the bench seat and put my arms around him. I felt like an absolute melt. Cole’s arms slid around my body and held me tight, his cheeks damp against mine. He smelt of cinnamon and citrus, and I breathed it in like a drug. What must he be feeling? I wondered. I should have been there for him last night.

“I’m sorry I ran off. I thought you’d stitched me up.”

“No, I’m sorry you were alone in my dressing room for so long. I hope you weren’t too bored before Chase arrived.” He looked over at me with an eyebrow cocked.

Oh God. Please. No…

“Not at all,” I said, cautiously. “Whyyyy do you ask?”

“Left my pants in a right old state.”

I shrieked and tried to pull away, but Cole’s arms gripped me tighter, and his hand wove up into my hair and held my head firm against his. Cole’s breath was hot against my ear. “I loved it. I haven’t taken them off since I found them.”

I shrieked again. “You’re winding me up?”

Cole’s shoulders started to shake, and a laugh rumbled up from his belly. “Maybe. Maybe not. If you behave, you’ll find out. Come on, start the van. We’ve got places to be.”

* * *

As we drove up the M4 towards the bridge over the River Severn, which would take us up to Birmingham, Cole told me how the WebFlix producers had followed a paper trail through local councils, fostering agencies, social services, and emigration records to track down his birth parents. His birth mum’s name was Marie Everest. She came from Ipswich.

“She was seventeen when she fell pregnant,” Cole said. “Her parents wouldn’t let her keep me.”

“Were they religious?”

“I don’t know. I think it might also have been about my dad.”

Cole scratched at the thick black hair on his forearms.

“You mean his skin colour?” I asked.

“The producers said I’d have to ask Marie for the details when we met in person. But they did tell me that he was Turkish. He was also seventeen, and they met at the local kebab shop where he worked.”

“So, you’re Turkish?”

“According to the DNA test I did, I’m Turkish, Iranian, Syrian, Georgian, you name it.”

“Your birth dad, do they know what happened to him?”

Cole went quiet. “I don’t have all the details. They’ve confirmed he died, though. A motorcycle accident. Before I was born. I don’t even know if he knew he was going to be a dad. I wondered if that might be why Marie decided to give me up.”

I reached over a hand, and Cole grabbed it, squeezing it.

“How do you feel about it all?”

Cole shrugged. “It is what it is. I can’t change the fact he’s dead or that my mother put me up for adoption. I had a brilliant childhood. I love my parents. There’s no space for regret, you know?”

“But you must be feeling something.”

“I am, obviously,” he said. “But my therapist, Summer, says we can’t change the past, so have to learn to sit with the discomfort the past has left us. If we let it weigh us down, it’ll only make us unhappy in the moment we’re in. And every moment is a new moment. So, while you should acknowledge the discomfort, you have to live in the moment. That’s the only thing that’s real. The past, the future, they’re not real. All we have is this moment.”

I’d never thought of the world like that before. All the countless hours I’d wasted worrying over everything that had gone down, or what the future might hold. If someone had taught me years ago to see the world like this, I might not have spent so much of my life doing my own head in. That said, I was willing to bet living in the moment was harder than it sounded.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you last night,” I said, glancing across at Cole.

“It’s OK,” he said. “Last night is also in the past. Fi was there. And Chase. I was well looked after.”

“All the same, I’m sorry.”

We drove across the Prince of Wales Bridge, and a comfortable silence fell between us. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, the wide silver ribbon of the River Severn shimmered to the north and to the south of us. Behind us, a string of black SUVs shadowed us. As we came off the bridge, a sign said it was forty-seven miles to Stonehenge. Cole practically bounced out of his seat.

“Oh my God, we have got to go to Stonehenge.”

I glanced over at him. “It’s a hundred miles out of our way.”

“Live in the moment, Toby! Come on!”

“You’re onstage in nine hours.”

“That’s plenty of time.”

“And I’m on air in five. In this van. I can’t afford to miss a show, because someone put a condition in my contract that says if I miss a show, my network doesn’t get our million quid.”

“That was Fiona,” Cole said. “It’s a gorgeous day. Come on. I want to feel the sun on my face and the grass under my feet.”

But I loyally followed the GPS, taking the turn-off for the M5 up to Birmingham. Cole pulled his cap down over his face, folded his arms, and put his bare feet up on the dashboard.

“That’s sad, Tobias.”

“Oh, I’m back to Tobias, I see.”

“Today would have been the perfect day to see an ancient historic monument.”

“What happened to sitting with the discomfort?” I asked. “How does sulking like a five-year-old fit in with that?”

“I didn’t say I was perfect. It takes practice.”

“So, practise.”

“Can’t we call in for a little bit?”

“Imagine the chaos it would cause if Cole Kennedy rocked up unannounced at Stonehenge.”

“We could go in disguise!”

“Did you bring a spare Druid costume, babes? Only mine’s being dry-cleaned.”

“Fine,” Cole said, kicking his legs down and opening the packet of Haribo. “But I haven’t given up on feeling the grass under my feet today. It’s a gorgeous day. I spend way too much time surrounded by air-conditioned concrete. I’m a farm boy. I need grass and dirt and…”

“Cow poo?”

“Cow poo is a remarkably underappreciated commodity.”

Five minutes later Cole was plugging in his phone to share a playlist of obscure Estonian pop he thought I would like when he started tapping wildly at the GPS screen.

“Hetty Pegler’s Tump!” he said.

“Are you having a stroke?”

“Hetty Pegler’s Tump,” Cole repeated, frantically pointing at the screen. “It’s a historic ancient monument. And we’re driving right past. Can we go? Just for half an hour. Please? Let’s sit in the long grass and enjoy the sun.”

I looked at the GPS. Sure enough, there were the words Hetty Pegler’s Tump right underneath the words Uley Long Barrow . A barrow is an ancient burial ground. I knew that because there were heaps of them around Colchester. We’d gone to one called Lexden Tumulus when we were doing the Romans in school, but I didn’t remember too much about it. All I could remember was we had this lush tour guide who wore a centurion uniform. He had thighs like the trunks of horse chestnut trees, and when he bent over to fix his sandal, I copped an eyeful of both of his chestnuts and the horse they rode in on. Come to think of it, I’m not sure he should have been working with children. Anyway, I’d never heard of Uley Long Barrow, so I didn’t think it was famous. If it was anything like the barrows at home, there’d probably be no one there. If Cole wanted grass under his feet, Hetty Pegler’s Tump seemed like a safe, Kenneddict-free option.

“Sure,” I said.

“Get in!” Cole pumped his fist and lobbed a Haribo into his gob.

* * *

It was almost midday, and the summer sun was high in the sky. Cole Kennedy and I lay flat on our backs in the tall grass with our shoes off. Above us, a vivid blue expanse and dots of fluffy white clouds. Beneath us, the skeletons of a bunch of people who, according to the interpretive sign, died more than five thousand years ago. There was absolutely no one around—just us, some deceased ancestors, and four of Cole’s Jack Reacher–fied security detail. It was almost romantic.

“You know those texts?” I asked.

“ Those texts?”

“The one where you said you felt like you’d grown up in the wrong country, the wrong culture, and the wrong religion.”

Cole picked a stalk of grass and rolled it between his fingers. “Of course.”

“So, now, knowing you’ve got Turkish heritage, I was wondering if you finally felt like you belonged somewhere? Like, has it helped?”

“It certainly explains my fetish for watching big hairy guys wrestling in olive oil.”

I laughed. “You don’t have to be Turkish to enjoy that. That’s universal.”

“Oh. That’s disappointing,” Cole said. “I thought I was connecting with my culture.”

“Besides, I thought you liked your boys fat and synthetically orange.”

“Someone once told me the correct term was cherubic.” Cole rolled onto his side, facing me, and propped his head up on his hand. “I like that too. But then, I think we always have a thing for guys who remind us of our first love. Subconsciously, at least.”

“I remind you of your first love?” I frowned, pretending to be confused.

Cole smiled and flicked me with his stalk of grass. I pushed it away, playfully, hamming it up a bit because, well, I was lying in a wildflower meadow with the most beautiful man in the world and he was flirting with me like we were sixteen again.

“Can I play you a song?” he said.

“You’re not getting a guitar out, are you?”

“Oh God, no! I’d never serenade anyone.”

“Thank goodness for that, babes. Because, to be honest with you, people think things like that are romantic, but it makes the person playing the guitar look like a divvie, and it’s dead uncomfortable for the person forced to listen to it.”

“Noted,” Cole said, with a wry smile. “I was planning to play you something from my phone, if that’s OK?”

“Sure,” I said, still uncertain. Cole scrolled through his phone, then laid it on the grass between us. It started playing “The Flame.” When the words kicked in, Cole sang softly along with them, his eyes never leaving mine.

“ You lit a fire inside me that burned like the sun. You lit the way forward. You were the one. How did it burn out? Please, baby, explain why the fire died inside you. And I’m still holding the flame. It burns and it burns and it burns. You turn and I yearn and you burn—me. ”

I lay in the grass, stunned. Nick had been right. I’d never truly listened to the lyrics before. The song finished, and we lay there for a moment, looking at each other. Cole’s mahogany eyes searched mine, begging me to say something.

“Did you write that about me?”

“I wrote it for you,” Cole said. “It’s about us.”

“But it’s a song about unrequited love.”

“You know, you’re very deep into mansplaining territory at this point.”

I rolled onto my side, leaning on my elbow.

“I wrote it one night after watching you on Celebrity Dorm Room .”

“Not the?—”

“The drunken night on the couch?” Cole chortled. “Yeah, that episode.”

I cringed. “I’m sorry for anything I said that upset you. I didn’t mean to tell your business. I went on that show wanting to reclaim my narrative. I only meant to tell enough to exorcise the ‘marriage material’ demon.”

“I don’t think you can exorcise it, Toby,” Cole said. “That meme is bigger than either you or me. It belongs to the culture now.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I supposed he was right.

“Anyway, I didn’t mean to tell the whole country about losing our virginity. In my defence, I was terribly drunk.”

Cole laughed. “Don’t be silly. That conversation gave me hope. I sat up all night, pouring out my heart onto the page the way you’d poured yours out on that couch.”

A dragonfly hovered between us for a moment, then zipped away.

“That was five years ago. Why did you only reach out now?”

“Felicity. The band. The rules. I’m sorry.”

“The album…” I said, recalling what Nick had said to me. “Everyone reckons it should be called ‘Reborn,’ but you called it ‘The Flame.’ That’s for me too?”

“You’re on your second warning, soldier,” Cole said. “Three strikes and I’m going to have to kiss you.” His trademark smirk lit up his face, and his eyes sparkled. My heart was pounding so loudly in my chest, the ancient bones in the dirt beneath us would have been within their rights to complain to the council.

“Was… this whole album… for me ?”

Cole laughed gently. “Not quite,” he said, leaning towards me. “You’re getting closer, though.” He bopped my nose with the soft, bristly end of the grass. My mind raced, putting the pieces together.

“Calling it the Flame Tour, dragging Pop Review along, that was all because, what? You’ve loved me all this time?”

Cole leaned in closer, his lips almost touching mine. His breath was sweet, like berry-flavoured Haribo. His leg hooked over mine, rolling my hip towards his. He was so near now, so inside my personal space, that I could see the thousand ways the sunlight caught the amber in his eyes. He was so beautiful.

“That’s three strikes. Would you like to collect your prize now, Tobias?” Cole’s eyes glimmered with mischief, lust, and hope, and I could resist him no longer.

“Yes, please.”

Before I could close my eyes, the heat of Cole’s lips found mine. He kissed me tenderly at first—delicately, like he was savouring this thing he had yearned for, like this kiss was a precious gift and he meant to unwrap it slowly. His hand slid around my waist and pulled me towards him, closing the gap between our bodies. A lock of Cole’s hair fell against my cheek, tickling it. I flicked it back for him, gently raking my fingers through his thick black hair. The tenderness of the gesture seemed to awaken something in us both, and we kissed deeply, passionately, urgently. I held Cole’s jaw in my hand, the bristles of his stubble rough against the soft flesh of my palm. Cole rolled me back onto the grass, letting me feel the weight of him on top of me. Breathlessly, he pulled away, stopping only to look at me, like he was seeing me for the first time, like he was drinking me in. It was how he used to look at me, all those years ago. Cole said more with the hungry flickering of his gaze in that moment than we’d ever managed with words. He ran his thumb gently across my lips, tenderly cupping my jaw with his fingertips, before weaving them up into the blond tangle of my hair.

“I’ve wanted to do that for so l?—”

A heavy shadow blocked our sunlight, cutting Cole off mid-sentence.

Mitch cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Mr Kennedy, Miss Kennedy says to tell you playtime is over and you’re needed in Birmingham.”

Cole sighed. “Oh, all right.”

“Estimated time of departure, twelve twenty-three. Two minutes’ time,” Mitch said. “Travelling in delta formation, as before.” Mitch nodded, turned, and walked down the barrow towards the cars.

“You make your security guys call you Mr Kennedy?” I asked.

Cole rolled his eyes. “It’s not my rule, it’s theirs. Something to do with their union, supposedly. Truthfully, I think they find it funny.”

Cole got to his feet, brushed himself off, and reached a hand down to pull me up. We walked back to the van hand in hand.