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He shot me a sideways look that warned me not to mess with him, and I wasn’t planning to. All I wanted was to drink until I forgot he even existed.
When the bartender set our shots in front of us, I raised my glass. “Wanna toast?”
His dark brows lifted as his eyes met mine. “To what?”
I shrugged. “To forgetting that this day ever happened?”
“I’ll fucking drink to that,” he muttered, raising his own glass. At the same time, we tipped our shots to our lips, and drank.
It was the second time today that we’d been in agreement, but I doubted it would ever happen again.
5
COLE
Yawning, I stepped outside the side entrance of Revolve, the club where I did shifts as a bartender. It was three in the morning now, and the only thing I wanted was to get back to the house and pass out in my bed.
I shoved my hand in my pocket, reaching for my phone to book an Uber. My fingers brushed against a crumpled slip of paper, and I pulled it out. The name “John” was printed in block capitals above a phone number. Maybe I should text him. He’d been cute, from what I could remember. As a gay man working in a gay club, I never had any shortage of numbers, but I took advantage of my opportunities less often than I suspected most people would.
As I pushed the paper back into my pocket, my phone began vibrating, making me jump a mile. My heart racing, I lifted it to see an unknown number, and I hit Answer straight away. As a rule, I didn’t answer unknown numbers, but if someone was calling me at three in the morning, I couldn’t take the risk of not answering in case it was important. My mum and David were off on their honeymoon, a month-long cruise, and if anything had happened to my mum…
“Hello?”
“Is that…” The voice at the other end paused. “Do you know a Mr. Huxley Granger?”
A shocked sound burst from my throat. Huxley? “Yes. He’s…he’s my stepbrother. What’s this—”
“Right. Are you able to get to Honeybourne Road? Mr. Granger has been in an accident. He’s quite shaken up. He asked us to call his stepbrother.”
Attempting to calm my accelerating heart rate, I tried to keep my voice steady. “Yeah. That would be me. Cole Clarke. Is he okay? What happened?”
“It’s probably best if you get here as quickly as possible. Someone will be available to answer your questions.”
When I’d been given the exact location and I’d hung up the phone, I wasted no time in flagging down a black cab. Fuck waiting for an Uber, I needed to get to Huxley right now.
My hands were fucking shaking the whole way there, my heart beating out of my chest. The same question ran through my mind over and over as the cab rumbled through the quiet streets.
Why had Huxley asked them to call me?
Flashing lights cut through the darkness and my whole body tensed, my gaze scanning the road up ahead. Blue flashes lit up the night sky in front of me, throwing the buildings on either side of the road into sharp relief.
“This is as far as I can go. Police cordon.” The driver thumbed at the distinctive tape stretching across the road, flapping in the night breeze.
“That’s fine. Thank you.” Slipping out of the cab, I ducked under the tape, and stopped dead, taking in the scene in front of me.
Two cars. One flipped on its side, the underside of the car facing me. The other…my breath caught in my throat, my hand flying to my mouth as I took in the wreck that had once been Huxley’s black Audi S5 Coupe. From the back, before I’d crossed the cordon, it had looked okay, but as I forced my feet to move, I saw that the front was now a heap of twisted metal. The car’s hazards were flashing, combining with those of the police car parked at an angle across the end of the road.
“Sir! Excuse me! You need to stay behind the cordon!”
I was spun around by a hand to my shoulder. A policewoman was there, shaking her head at me.
“I—they—someone called me. Huxley. My, uh, brother. Th-that’s his car. The A-Audi.” I was stumbling over the words, my voice shaking like fucking crazy. As much as Huxley and I detested each other, I wouldn’t wish this on him. Fuck. He wasn’t dead, was he?
Through the glassy haze that had suddenly obscured my vision, I registered the policewoman’s face turn from stern to sympathetic, and the hand on my shoulder squeezed gently before she removed it. “Come with me.”
After saying something into the little walkie-talkie she had clipped to her chest, she led me over to an ambulance a little way from the scene of the wreckage. The back of the ambulance was open, and a paramedic was there waiting for me. He gave me a smile, all friendly professionalism, and my pounding heart rate slowed just a little, because surely he wouldn’t smile if Huxley was in a bad state?
“Mr. Clarke. Is it okay if I call you Cole?” he addressed me gently, and I nodded, swiping the back of my hand across my face to clear my vision. “Good. Your brother was in an accident tonight. He’s going to be okay—it’s a miracle, to tell the truth, that he’s only escaped with some minor cuts from the glass and bruising from the airbags. Someone up above must have been watching out for him.”
