Chapter 8 #3
“Not if it’s all a lie.” Again, Joshua swallowed. “Like, if you think it’s real, but the other person is just living out some teenage fantasy. And then ditching you afterwards, like yes, thanks, glad I got that out of my system.”
“I’ll fucking kill him,” Mo muttered.
Tristan was quiet for a moment, staring at Joshua.
Then he shook his head, very slowly, and scrunched up his nose.
“No. That doesn’t make sense. Way he looks at you, that’s not—no.
Mate, when he watched you record that interview, that didn’t look like a teenage crush to me.
And he’s prickly, yeah, but he’s also… His face goes all soft around you.
Like when we did those trial runs and you were upset, and he’s the one who—”
“Please don’t,” Joshua interrupted. No. No.
He couldn’t allow Tristan to confuse him further, not when Joshua was still struggling with the realisation that he’d been wrong about Leo, all wrong.
He’d thought the rough-cut exterior was protecting a sweetness underneath, was a defensive wall to hide the real Leo—the one who helped street kids and showed flashes of vulnerability, the one who kissed Joshua like he meant it, who built Joshua up and engaged him in serious discussions, the one who laughed with his eyes reduced to small slits, crinkled at the corners.
Joshua could have fallen in love with that Leo. Had been halfway there already.
Only it had been an illusion.
“I’m just saying it doesn’t add up.” Tristan paused, frowning. “Doesn’t give him a right to be an arse to you, mind. Mo, what do we do with the body?”
“Eat it,” Mo said, tone perfectly flat. “Use his bones for bread.”
Tristan nodded. “I like the way you think.”
Even though Joshua’s muscles felt heavy, he made himself smile at them. “Cannibalism is not the solution, didn’t they tell you? Alcohol is. And I’ll feel better once we get out of here. On top of everything else that’s going on, it was just… a bit much.”
Without a word, Tristan got up to hug Joshua from behind, cheeks pressed together.
Leaning into it, Joshua blinked away the wetness in his eyes.
He wouldn’t cry. Not over Leo, and certainly not over how his private life had become a dramatic installation for all the world to see, and he was the only one missing the spectacle.
Enough of that. In fact, he’d done enough hiding for the rest of his life, hadn’t he?
He cleared his throat and tucked his toes against Mo’s instep. “Anyway, I’m done with this. I should have known better and didn’t, and that’s that. Can we talk about something more fun? Like Mo’s date with Nate?”
There was a stretch of silence, Mo studying Joshua’s face while Tristan held on. Then Tristan straightened, Mo’s expression relaxed and Joshua could breathe just a little easier.
“Not sure it was a date,” Mo said. “We just walked and talked, you know? Was nice, though. He’s sweet.” A pause, then he snorted. “Fuck, I have no idea what I’m doing.”
On the way back to his chair, Tristan clapped Mo on the shoulder. “You’ll figure it out. Insert part A into slot B—”
“Piss off,” Mo told him.
Joshua’s grin felt like a foreign entity, not quite fitting onto his face. Stubbornly, he clung to it. “Cool, okay. I guess I’ll have to live vicariously through you guys. Since this relationship thing isn’t really working out for me.”
“One prick doesn’t make a…” Tristan trailed off and pursed his lips. “Well, fuck. I was going for some variation of ‘one swallow doesn’t make a summer’, but all I can think of now is a pack of arseholes. Not a pretty sight.”
“Says you,” Mo put in. “Also, mate, that saying doesn’t even make sense in this context. There’s no flocks here, just the one twat.”
“Which,” Tristan said, “means it’s no summer, because it’s just one swallow. Makes perfect sense. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Joshua had watched their exchange with distant amusement, not quite enough to brighten his thoughts, last night’s memories too fresh. Tomorrow would be different, though. Glancing down at his plate, he found his appetite diminish even more.
“Hey, Mo?” he asked. “Do you ever feel like Nate is holding back?”
Mo’s reply came with a delay, his brows drawing together. “Yeah. Don’t know much about his past, really. Just told me that if you’re with James, it pretty much means you got a second chance. Like a clean slate or something. Didn’t want to push him too much.”
A second chance—just like what Leo hoped to achieve for those kids.
Was it an attempt to recompense for his own fortune, paying back the favour?
There was no doubt Leo was hiding something.
How bad was it, though? Bad enough that he couldn’t face the public scrutiny that was intrinsically tied to Joshua’s life and affected anyone who got too close?
All Joshua had were fragmented pieces of a puzzle. Was Leo worth the effort of trying to piece them together? Did he even deserve it, when he’d pushed Joshua away?
It would never work.
Joshua found it hard to remember Leo’s precise words.
The thing he’d said about his teenage crush—had Joshua jumped to conclusions?
He’d been quick to accuse Leo of acting out some fantasy of the past, and Leo hadn’t corrected him.
But did that mean it was true? Why had Leo stolen Joshua’s shirt if he didn’t care at all?
God. Joshua’s head was a mess.
He must have blanked out of the conversation for a moment, because when he focused back on the present, Mo was telling Tristan that no, he was not a coward for refusing to invite Nate along on their trip today when Nate was working.
“Well, he won’t be working tomorrow, right? At least not the full day. It’s the weekend.” Tristan lifted his brows. “So invite him over for the England match.”
“Ed’s coming, too,” Joshua said. A moment later he didn’t know why he’d considered it relevant to the discussion; as far as he was aware, Nate had no particular interest in Ed. It was Leo who’d sat up straighter each time Ed’s name had come up, although he’d never asked.
“Ed is in town? Awesome.” Tristan speared a piece of tomato and waved it in the air. “Wanted to ask him for input about my new guitar, should keep me entertained if the English squad doesn’t do its job.”
“Excuse you,” Joshua told him primly. “The Three Lions are a national institution, and I will not have you sully them on my watch. Just because you insist on supporting Scotland for nostalgic reasons…”
Under the table, Tristan kicked him, and Joshua kicked back. He told himself this was just like any other day, but somehow, he could still feel the ghost of Leo’s hands on his skin. He hated it. Hated it.
There was a strange, sickening weight in Joshua’s stomach, as though his intestines had shrivelled up into a tightly compressed ball.
He might come to regret this, but he was so very, very tired of receiving information in easily digested bites.
He was an adult, for fuck’s sake, and it was time he acted like one.
Nudging his readily packed bag aside, he glanced at his watch and guessed that he had about half an hour before Tristan would be over to pick him up. Plenty of time.
Joshua grabbed his tablet off the coffee table and unlocked it while he made his way out onto the terrace.
The Sun, the Mirror and the Guardian, along with a brief look at his Twitter mentions—that should give him a good idea of the discussion in the country.
He dropped onto the sofa bed and called up the first page.
Football at the top, but right below there was an article on him.
“Prince Joshua’s supermodel: more than friends?
” Predictably, it went on to speculate about his relationship with Mo and combined it with pictures of the two of them from Spain and other occasions.
The comments were what really interested Joshua, and he skimmed through them with his heart beating high in his chest, bits and pieces jumping out at him.
Scorching hot together. Who cares. I’d do both. Disgrace. Sex tape please. Shameful. Commend his bravery.
With the words a quiet, low-level buzz in his head, he navigated to Twitter.
Twenty minutes later, he emerged blinking and a little disoriented.
So that had been… not too bad. Right? There’d been some hate mixed in, yes, of course—homosexuality as a sin, inherently wrong, and those who practised it doomed to burn in hell—but somehow, it couldn’t quite touch him.
It hadn’t been personal. He’d been the peg to hang the prejudices on, nothing more.
A week ago, he might have taken it to heart. A week ago, he might have gone running to Leo.
Now, Joshua was fine. Some of the comments had made him swallow, yes, had made his hands shake, but…
Overall, he was fine. Maybe the morning’s events had rendered him too numb to feel the impact just yet.
He didn’t feel numb, though; he felt wide awake, as though for the first time he had a clear view of the things that mattered, and the things that didn’t.
The opinions of strangers on the internet didn’t matter. They couldn’t hurt him. They couldn’t use him, betray his trust, make him fall for an illusion. They couldn’t walk out on him.
Thanks, Leo.
* * *
It was noon by the time Leo made it to the office.
After leaving Joshua’s place, he’d wandered aimlessly for…
a while. He didn’t quite know how long it had been, only that it was long enough for Nate to try calling him twice.
Leo hadn’t picked up. Instead, he’d drifted with the crowds.
For some reason, he’d expected to stick out in Joshua’s plaid shirt, but so far, no one had pointed at him and exclaimed, “He’s wearing the Prince’s clothes!
” No one had taken notice of Leo at all.