Page 71 of Going Solo (The Brent Boys #2)

Chapter Forty-One

T hree days later, I found myself sitting in Nick’s car in the car park under his building, waiting for Cole to arrive. It was the morning Cole was due to fly to Stockholm and the first time I’d left Nick and Dav’s apartment since arriving there direct from Miss Timmy’s. I had cabin fever. Now, finally having stepped out the front door, I was terrified someone was going to rumble me. The press seemed to have bought the big lie that I was in Gran Canaria, but that hadn’t stopped them finding new angles to fill the paper every day. I wore my purple onesie, partly so I could throw up the hood if anyone came by, and partly because I hadn’t taken it off since I’d moved in. Dav had volunteered to sew up the leg the evening I arrived because, and I quote, “I’ve just seen how impressively thorough your spray tan is, and that’s more information than I needed at dinner.”

Cole’s big black SUV rumbled up to the gate. As I pressed the button to let him in, I felt both excited to see him and annoyed that all this cloak-and-dagger stuff was necessary. Cole climbed out of the car with a cheeky smile on his face.

“Is this for me?” He batted the velvety ears of my hood, pulled me into a hug, and kissed me. “You can tell me if this is your kink, Tobes. Purple kitty cats in underground car parks is incredibly niche, but… I can work with it.”

I buried my face into his shoulder, sucking in the smell of him. He ran his hands up into my hair, letting the hood drop down.

“I’ve missed you,” I said.

“I’ve missed you too.”

Fiona got out of the SUV and coughed politely. “Before you boys get too carried away, can I borrow Toby for a second?” She was holding a pile of papers and a pen. Cole released me.

“I’m sorry, Toby,” she said, “but with everything that’s going on, we’ve had to beef up our insurance. We need you to sign a new NDA. We also need you to sign a release form for some incidental footage WebFlix might want to use.”

This was a punch to the stomach.

“I already signed an NDA and a release form when I did all the paperwork for Pop Review joining the tour.”

“I know, but this one covers…” She searched for the right words. “All the personal stuff that wasn’t covered by the original NDA.”

I shook my head in disbelief. Cole reached for my hand and pulled me towards him. “I’m sorry, I know it’s a pain. It’s j?—”

I pulled my hand away. The annoyance that had been bubbling below the surface—my frustration at being cooped up like a prisoner, of not being able to go to my own home, of my face and name being dragged through the mud in the papers every day—began to fizzle and pop. Steam and smoke began to billow from the top of my metaphorical mountain.

“Let me guess, you feel like I’ve got a gun pointed at your head?” I said.

Cole seemed to shrink at that.

“Tobes, don’t be lik?—”

Fiona raised a hand between us. “I’m sorry, Toby, after Jasper?—”

“You’re comparing me to Jasper ?”

“We know you’re nothing like Jasper,” she said.

“Ten years,” I said, starting to pace. “In ten years, I’ve never said a word against you. Not a single social media post. I kept your secret. I never outed you. I certainly never wrote a fucking book. The one time I spoke about you publicly, I did so with kindness and love and reverence. Despite the fact my association with you ruined my life, my reputation, my mental health?—”

“Tobes, be fair,” Cole said. “It’s admin. It’s not about you.”

A car door closed. Fiona had got back inside the SUV—leaving the paperwork on the bonnet and leaving Cole and me to our fight.

“You seriously think I’m going to go to the press about you? I hate the press. Do you have any idea what I’m going through, what my family is going through? And it’s all your fault.”

Cole tried to pull me into a hug, but I shrugged him off. “It’s tough on all of us right now, but it’ll blow over,” he said. “It always does.”

“That’s fine for you to say, with your blacked-out windows and Jack Reacher in your back pocket. You’re leaving the country in an hour. I’m literally hiding out at my best friend’s gaff because someone was going through my mum’s bins.”

“Always put rat traps in your bins,” Cole said.

“I don’t have rats, I have reporters!”

“That’s why you put rat traps in your bins. Old trick of Robbie’s.”

“Arghhhh!” My cry of frustration echoed through the concrete car park.

Cole held up his hands. “Look, we don’t think you’re going to go sell us out. We know that’s not who you are. Fiona’s being extra cautious. After everything that’s happened. It would mean a lot to me if you would sign it. It’s meaningless. It’s basically symbolic.”

Finally, Cole had said something I agreed with. I looked him directly in the eye. “You’re right, babes. One hundred per cent. It’s symbolic of the fact you don’t trust me. It’s symbolic of the fact you think I’m here to profit off my association with you.”

“Profit off your association?”

I’d finally hit a nerve. Good. I wanted a fight. I wanted to see a bit of mongrel burst through the sweetness. I wanted to have this out. “Toby, you don’t even want to be seen in public with me. This whole past month you’ve been behaving like I’m a?—”

“Dirty little secret?” I said.

Cole looked wounded. “You wouldn’t even go to Stonehenge with me because people would see us.”

“Look at what happens to my life when people see us together!”

“Do you know how it feels to think I’m only good enough for you in private?”

“Shall I ask Jasper how it feels?”

I was like a sniper. You could almost see Cole recoil from where the bullet entered his heart.

“Are you ashamed of me?” he pleaded. “Do I embarrass you? Or is it that you want all the good stuff that comes with being with a celebrity—the money, the private jets—but not the hard work of dealing with the price of fame?”

The volcano finally erupted. “Oh my God, you so nearly had it, babes. You were so close. But you can’t open your eyes wide enough to see the world outside your own narrow experience. This is about protecting myself.”

“From me!” It was a statement. There was no question mark in the way he said it.

“From the circus that comes with you.”

“The circus is a part of my life,” Cole said, hitting his chest with his finger, tears welling in his eyes. “You don’t get to have me without it.”

“Can you hear yourself?”

“You think I don’t know how hard the circus is? It’s been my life for a decade. But it won’t always be this way, Toby. In a few years, no one will care. You know as well as anyone pop music moves on. I’ve got what, five years, and I’ll be forgotten. But right now, the circus is a big part of my life. I hate it as much as you do, but it’s part of the deal.” He was pleading with me now. “I need someone who’ll walk tall and proud by my side, who’ll be there for me when it all gets tough, who’ll be there to tell me it’ll all be OK.”

I looked Cole square in the eye. “I’m sorry, but that person was never going to be me.”

“That person is you, Toby,” Cole said. “I know that person is you. You’re stronger than you think you are. Together, I genuinely believe there’s nothing we can’t do. The press will get bored with us in a few days anyway.”

My tears burnt my cheeks. “I’ve been ‘marriage material boy’ for ten years, Cole. The press never gets bored. I’m sorry, I’m not built for this.”

Cole’s arms reached out for me, then fell back to his sides. We stood there, both in tears, three feet apart, neither of us able to close the gap.

“Are you breaking up with me?” Cole’s chestnut eyes pleaded for me to give the answer he wanted to hear.

I wavered, unsure what I wanted. If I was honest with myself, what I wanted was what we had together when the rest of the world wasn’t watching, when no one else got to have opinions about us. But that wasn’t on offer anymore. If I thought about it, I’d been lucky to have what we’d had for so long. It was always going to end. But did I want to lose Cole from my life completely? I thought of the hours in the broadcast van, getting to know each other again, and the amazing week on the farm, falling in love with each other again. Was all that over? I wasn’t ready to make that decision.

“No.” I shook my head. “No, I’m not breaking up with you.”

Cole leapt forward and folded me up in a hug. “Thank you.” He kissed my neck, my cheek, my ear. His face was wet against mine. “Thank you, so much. We can make this work. I promise. I know we can.”

I held him in my arms, not feeling at all sure that we could make this work. I couldn’t be the guy who broke up with Cole Kennedy right before he left the country on an eight-month-long world tour. But the fight had opened a wound that needed time to heal.

“You don’t have to sign the NDA,” Cole said. “I trust you.”

“I think Fiona?—”

“Fiona is being a big sister. And a lawyer. Will you come to Stockholm for Friday night’s show?” Cole’s eyes looked hopeful.

I wiped my face on my sleeve. “If you’re inviting me because you need a translator, they speak better English there than we do in Essex.”

“Please say you’ll come.”

I shook my head. “I have a job to do.”

“I can fly you out Friday afternoon and get you back in time for your show Saturday lunchtime. Come on, it’ll be fun. And the world already knows about you now. The sooner I start showing you off, the sooner the press will get bored with us.”

The thought turned my bowels to water. I tapped my hand against Cole’s chest. “I’ll think about it.”

“Let me know, yeah?”

“Of course.” But something inside me had curdled. Being a dirty little secret had suited me fine. Cole’s plan would turn us into public property. What was a nice thing for him would be a nightmare for me—and I felt like I had very little control over any of it. But what choice did I have? I spotted the pile of papers on the bonnet of the SUV where Fiona had left them and, in a fit of self-destructiveness, decided to do something symbolic of my helplessness. I picked up the pen and signed them.