Page 66 of Going Solo (The Brent Boys #2)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

A n hour later, I got off the bus at Golders Green in shock from the claims in Jasper’s book. I found Mitch waiting for me. When we got to the house, the SUV pulled into the garage, and I waited for the door to come down completely before I got out of the car, making absolutely sure none of the paparazzi gathered outside Cole’s Hampstead compound got a photo. My whole body was shaking.

“Have you got it?” Fiona said, as I walked into the large open-plan kitchen and living room. Cole was dressed in slouchy pyjamas and was buried so deep in the brown leather couch it looked like a gigantic fungus was swallowing him.

“Hello to you, too, babes,” I said, my head still spinning. I handed her the book. It looked decidedly well-thumbed from where I had skimmed through it with all the forensic precision of a panicked squirrel.

“Sorry,” she said, kissing me on the cheek. “Thank you.” Fiona dropped the book into her bag and shovelled in assorted notepads and scraps of paper. “Cole, I’m taking this back to mine. If Winslow, Carmel, Angie, and I pull an all-nighter, we might have something by morning. Stay by your phone, please.” She swung her bag over her shoulder. “Love you,” she said to her brother. “Don’t let him leave the house!” she said to me, before bouncing out the door, keys jangling.

“Hey,” Cole said. He looked childlike, broken, swamped by his couch, surrounded by empty crisp packets, water bottles, and disintegrating balls of tissue. He stood, put his arms around me, and pulled me into a hug. “I missed you. I’m glad you’re here.” His eyes were puffy and red. I returned the hug, but I could feel myself holding back. If even half of what I’d read in Jasper’s book was true—the drug taking, the sex parties, the violence, the infidelities, the self-entitled douchebagginess—I wasn’t sure I knew who Cole was at all.

* * *

“You read it,” Cole said as I sat down beside him with a freshly made pot of peppermint tea. I paused, unsure whether to admit it. “I can tell. You’re looking at me differently now.”

I shook my head. “Don’t be silly.”

“I knew you would.”

I poured the tea, grateful to have something to do. “Has there been any news?”

“Fiona spoke with someone from Totally Records this afternoon. They deny they’re behind the book.”

“So, they’ll be suing him for breaching his NDA, then?” I handed Cole a mug of tea.

“You’d think that. But no, it’s ‘not in their interests to invest capital in protecting an asset they no longer own.’ That’s a direct quote, by the way. If you ever wondered how they viewed us, there’s your answer.”

“Wow.” I sat back with my tea.

“If nothing else, it confirms Totally Records is behind this book.”

“But why are they doing it?”

“Because FQ doesn’t like to lose.”

Silence fell between us.

“How bad is it?” he asked.

I sighed, not wanting to have this conversation but wanting answers. I told him about “the Viking.”

“Is that how he says that night went down?” Cole scoffed and shook his head, then let it drop towards his lap like he was a condemned man. “Do you want to know the truth?”

I nodded.

“I’d just come offstage. The show had been terrible. I’d been high for days. A week maybe, I don’t know. I desperately needed sleep, so I said I was going to take a couple of downers and go to bed. But Jasper wanted to go out. ‘But it’s New York,’ he said. So, he swapped out one of my bennies with a tab of E, and before I knew it, I was flying. Funnily enough, suddenly I felt like going out.” Cole stood and started pacing around the room. “Jasper puts me in like a wig or some disguise, and we go to Punk. Then he abandons me on the dance floor to go who knows where and do God knows what. I could have died that night, Toby. In fact, I almost did.” Cole knelt beside me on the couch, the veins in his neck and his arms pulsing with anger. “It was one pill too many. That ‘Viking’ was an off-duty paramedic who broke down the toilet door to make sure I was OK. The only thing he put inside me that night was his finger—to make sure my airways were clear. The guys standing around? Regular concerned dudes. They had to hold Jasper back because he was hysterical. He’d fucked up, and he knew it. He was more worried about Felicity’s reaction than what might happen to me.”

I pulled Cole up onto the couch, and he curled up beside me like a child.

“I was lucky I didn’t have to go to hospital. Jasper nearly killed me that night.”

It was such a different version of events, it sat uncomfortably with me.

“Why go for such a big lie, though? Isn’t choking on your own vomit enough drama? Why make up the whole Viking-sex thing?”

“That’s easy,” Cole said. “Vomiting only makes me look stupid. Fucking strangers in a filthy nightclub toilet turns me into a cheat and makes him look hard done by.”

I grimaced. Cole caught it.

“You don’t believe him?” he said. He sat up. “Come on, Toby, you know me. Do I seem like a ‘let’s go to an orgy’ kind of guy?”

Well, no, he didn’t. And from what I’d read of it, the book couldn’t have made Jasper sound more squeaky-clean if he’d been fired out of an autoclave machine into a paddling pool of bleach. And Chase had made it clear that’s not who Jasper was. They were both probably on so many drugs, neither description of that night could be entirely believed. But, on balance, Jasper’s story didn’t ring true.

“I don’t believe him,” I said. Cole’s eyes flickered with relief. “But from tomorrow morning, The Bulletin is running bits of that book every day, and what I believe won’t matter one bit. It’s what the public believes. And they’re going to want to believe it all.”

“It’s so unfair,” Cole said. “I’d finally got control of my own narrative. My own life. I was free !”

“Sue him into financial Armageddon, babes,” I said. “Get the truth out of him in court. It’ll be the trial of the year.”

Cole shook his head. “Jasper’s fighting his own demons. We have to focus on the real enemy in this situation.”

My phone pinged.

Ludo Boche: You’ll never believe who’s sitting across from me in Maxime’s.