Page 44 of Not Your Golden Boy

Instead of answering, Nikky let out a shaky breath and buried his face against Harry’s neck.

That action seemed to calm Nikky without Harry having to do anything but stand there and be his rock. It was flattering to think Nikky trusted him that much and felt that kind of comfort with him, but Harry was desperate to do something.

“Let’s sit down,” he said, nudging Nikky to let go so they could walk to the sofa. “Do you need a glass of water or something? Tea?”

Nikky shook his head. “I just need to be here for a second.”

They sat, and despite the awkwardness of Nikky’s tall, fit body folding into the position, Nikky wrapped himself around Harry and held on tightly.

“Something happened,” Harry said. It wasn’t a question. He didn’t need to ask to know. “Were you mobbed by fans?”

Nikky shook his head, took in a deep breath, then straightened enough to look Harry in the eyes. “There’s something I haven’t told you,” he said, his voice flat and miserable. “Something I haven’t told anyone, not even Drew.”

“Okay,” Harry said, rubbing Nikky’s tense arm. “You can tell me anything.”

Nikky nodded, but it took him several more seconds to gather his courage. He stared at Harry’s chin, and his breathing turned short and sharp. Then he swallowed before he dragged his eyes up to meet Harry’s and said, “I have a stalker.”

Harry sucked in a breath and tightened his hold on Nikky. He knew better than to laugh off Nikky’s statement. It was farfetched for most people, but celebrities had stalkers and overly avid fans all the time. Some of them were dangerous.

“Do you know who it is?” he asked. “Have you gone to the authorities about this?”

Nikky shook his head, then said, “I know who it is, but I haven’t said anything to anyone about it.”

Harry frowned, and his protective instinct kicked into high gear. “We’ll talk to the police right away, tonight.” He blinked, then backed up a step and asked, “Who is it?”

The guilty look that washed over Nikky’s beautiful face, causing him to look down again, told Harry there was more to the story than just an excitable fan. “His name is Stuart Holberg,” he said. “He’s an entertainment journalist. Not one of the well-known ones. He’s more like the sort who digs up dirt on famous people and either sells it to the highest bidder so people’s careers can be destroyed, or he blackmails celebs into paying huge amounts to keep him quiet.”

Harry nodded slowly, feeling sick to his stomach. “Yeah,” he said. “I know the type.” If someone like that was after Nikky, the man might be in more danger than even he knew. “Have you given him anything to use against you already or is he just following you hoping to catch you out.”

As soon as Nikky’s mouth turned down and his eyes went glassy, he knew the answer. “I didn’t know who he was when I met him at a party. We made out. I was flattered that someone as handsome and well-connected as him would be interested in me. I’ve, well, I’ve kind of always liked older men.” He blushed up a storm, which Harry would have thought was hot under any other circumstances.

“Okay, so you made out at a party,” Harry said, rubbing Nikky’s arm more gently. “That’s not super unusual.”

“It’s not?” Nikky’s eyes went wide.

Harry fought not to wince. He knew Nikky well enough now to guess at a few things. The man was unusually naïve, even now, after fame had found him and rocketed him to the stratosphere. How green and inexperienced had he been at that party, when this Holberg arsehole had approached him and probably manipulated him into the kiss?

“Did anything else happen?” he asked, worried about the answer.

Nikky shrugged uncomfortably. “It almost happened. For maybe a week, I thought Holberg was actually interested in me. We went out a few times. We did some…stuff, but I didn’t sleep with him.”

It was almost cute how eager Nikky was to make sure Harry knew that. Again, if things had been different, he would have teased Nikky about it and flirted and tried to change the moment into something more.

“He started asking me questions about Drew and Joe and some of my other costars right away,” Nikky went on. “I might be an idiot when it comes to judging other people’s characters and doing stupid things to make people like me, but I figured out pretty quickly he was using me to get dirt on people I cared about. I cut things off with him as soon as I figured it out.”

It hurt something in Harry’s soul to know that Nikky thought so little of himself. Yes, the man was abnormally innocent about the world, especially for someone who was now smack in the middle of the Hollywood meatgrinder, but it wasn’t completely unusual for a sweet twenty-five-year-old who had been an aspirational nobody just a year ago and who had been raised with the constant instability of the foster care system to be young for his age.

“So what’s the rest of the story?” Harry asked. “You told Holberg to fuck off and he chose to follow your every move and switch up his tactics from coercion to blackmail?”

Nikky’s eyes went wide again. “How did you know?”

Harry huffed an ironic laugh. “Remember, this isn’t my first time on the Ferris wheel,” he said. “I’ve been in this business long enough to have seen this story a dozen times over. Paparazzi are parasites who bottom feed. Fortunately, they’re easy to get rid of.”

“Are they?” Nikky perked up even more. “Because Holberg has been on my case for more than six months, and nothing I do has made him go away and find someone else to bother.”

Something occurred to Harry that almost made him laugh out loud. “Did you go to Rent-A-Boyfriend to find someone like me to ruin your career because you thought it would make Holberg go away?”

One guilty look from Nikky and the whole story took form in Harry’s mind. A couple things stood out. First was what Harry already knew, that Nikky was adorably innocent and didn’t actually have a clue about how the world he’d been thrust into worked. He’d been grasping at straws and had probably latched onto the idea of Rent-A-Boyfriend because his buddy Drew had found the solution to his problems, thanks to Javier and Desmond.