It was a good question. He wasn’t sure if it would be worse to know the truth or not. Maybe some secrets were best kept.
“I don’t know,” Joe said. “It doesn’t sound like it will be a happy ending.”
If Kristen had beenthe one behind the poison-pen emails, then the whole search had been a comedy of errors from the start. Maybe it would be best to put it back in the ground.
A taxi slowed on the way past, and a woman with a pale mohawk peered at them. Joe started to raise his hand, but she drifted past, and a tangled knot of drunk girls, interwoven and giggly in heels and spandex, poured themselves into the back.
Joe glanced down at his hand, still tangled with Cal’s, and he supposed there was one thing that had changed since he arrived. He certainly hadn’t expected to be standing on the curb, ripe with sex, stuck to his—date’s, he decided—hand while they waited for a taxi. It felt good. So maybe he’d just… fucked his troubles into perspective.
He could live with that.
The taxi arrived as the weatherbroke. Fat, round raindrops hammered the tarmac and bounced off the slick black curve of the cab’s hood. It rained as though someone had dumped out a bucket, a hard splash of water that immediately soaked everyone on the curb. The huddle of smokers by the door tossed their butts down in puddles and squeezed back in through the door. Others, whose rides were still en route, swore and withdrew intodoorways or under shared umbrellas. One woman laughed and turned her face up into the rain.
“Fuck sake,” Cal grumbled.
He tightened his grip on Joe’s hand, and they dashed through the rain to their ride. Oily puddles splashed up to soak their ankles and drench their socks. They toppled into the back seat, wet as though they hadn’t bothered to run, and Joe shook his head to shed water like adog.
“St. Pancras,” he told the driver, who squinted at them sourly in the rearview mirror and nodded.
Cal didn’t have to worry about wet hair. He swiped his hand over his sandy-brown crop and slouched back in the seat. His shirt gaped open over his bare chest and clung to his skin, hints of ink visible through the soaked fabric. Joe swallowed the lump in his throat—the only dry thing abouthim right then—and resisted the urge to crawl on top of him.
It was strange. Joe had come to London to look for the truth. Somehow, even as the lies piled up, it felt as though that was what Cal was. Joe’s truth, anyway.
JOE WASwell aware that there was a tracker on his phone. He never turned it off, and Edward never questioned where he’d been. It was a silent game of digital chicken.
So it wasn’t really a surprise to see Edward at the door of the hotel when they got back, dropped off on the wrong side of the street by a dour taxi driver who didn’t want to swing back around. He was tucked back in the shelter of the door, out of the rain, with the doorman. When he saw Joe get out of the car, Edward flicked his umbrella open and stepped out into the rain under its shelter. He walkeddown the swooped drive toward the road and stopped at the curb to wait.
Cal slung an arm around Joe’s shoulder, a comfortable weight, and tugged him down to plant a kiss on his temple. It was a half measure—intimate if Joe wanted it to be, friendly if he didn’t.
“Do you think someone squealed on you?” Cal asked.
Joe turned his head and claimed a kiss from Cal’s full, rain-wet mouth. “Probably,”he admitted. “But I’d have to have this conversation eventually.”
Edward had said he liked Joe’s mother, even though he hadn’t known her long. He could have meant Abigail, but maybe he meant Joe’s real mother, the woman who’d gotten pregnant, broken up a marriage, and then died before she knew if any of it had been worth it. Andmaybehe was finally ready to tell the truth about it.
The rainplastered Joe’s hair down over his face in wet curls and commas. He slicked it back with a faint flash of annoyance—the first week he’d been in London he’d carried his coat everywhere. There’d been an umbrella tucked into the back seat of Cal’s car. In spite, the weather had stayed bright and hot—a late summer the news had complained about—until he forgot to be wary. It wouldn’t change anything,but the fact he looked like a drowned rat put him at a disadvantage going into the conversation.
Cal’s arm stayed slung over his shoulders as they jogged over the road. Edward’s mouth was turned down at the corners as they reached him, and his nostrils flared as he ran a scathing look over Cal from head to unbuttoned shirt.
“Not exactly the consummately professional behavior your company boastsof, Mr. Tate,” he said icily. “When I hired a driver, I expected a sober one. I’ll convey my displeasure to your brother.”
“Enough, Edward,” Joe snapped.
Cal laughed and licked a kiss over Joe’s throat. “He’s my brother,” he said to Edward. “He might rake me over the coals, but he’s going to tell you to go and fuck yourself. Grandad might have liked you. Doesn’t mean El is going to crawl.”
Surprise and what looked like embarrassment flashed over Edward’s face. He pressed his lips into a thin line and worked his jaw from one side to another.
“Don’t forget who pays your wages, Mr. Tate,” he said. “Joe might be stupid enough to have a soft spot for you, but his father does not. Nor do I. If you want the contract paid, I expect appropriate decorum.”
Joe caught Cal’s arm as it lifted,middle finger already extended. “I need to talk to Edward, alone,” he said. “Go inside. I’ll meet you upstairs.”
“Indeed,” Edward said dryly. “Run along, young man.”
This time he got a finger jabbed in his direction, but Cal stepped away and jogged up the drive to let himself into the hotel. Joe’s good mood went with him, and that left the rest for Edward.
“I told you, Cal’s not your business,”Joe said.
Edward extended the umbrella to cover him. “I don’t want to see you get hurt,” he said. Then he admittedly stiffly, “Either of you. Whatever you… whoever you love in the end, Joe, it’s not going to be him, is it? An ex-con, dragged up in Tottenham, can barely even read? You’re going to have him on your arm at the theater. Cut him loose now, before he thinks this means more than it does.”
