Chapter 11

Calum woke with a jump, heart racing, breath caught in his chest.

He sat up, gaze pinging around the dark room, aware that whatever had startled him was likely a cat, but freaked out all the same. His chaotic life with Rob had left him a light sleeper, attuned to every sound of someone sneaking in or out. Every quiet click and creak of a house that should've been sleeping.

The metallic scrape of Brix's back gate.

Calum frowned and reached for his phone.

3 a.m.

What the fuck?

Against his better judgement—mind your own business—he got up and moved to the window. A shadow caught his eye, and the looming outline of pallet crates. Was he dreaming?

Staring at the shadows gave him no answers. Instinct drew him out of his room and on to the landing, but he hesitated at Brix's bedroom door. He'd been unpredictable since the drunken night neither of them ever mentioned—the scrumpy, the kiss. Some days he seemed the happiest bloke in the world. Others, Calum couldn't tell if his ominous words about the past still held true.

You can come up here wanting to jump…

My brother found me in the shed with a noose around my neck.

Calum shivered on the cold landing. Brix had been suicidal at fourteen? Jesus. Calum's clusterfuck with Rob felt more pathetic than ever.

Fuck it.

He knocked on Brix's door. There was no reply. He tapped again, louder, but when he heard nothing, grew a pair, and pushed the door open to Brix's empty bed, sheets rumpled and scattered, clothes littering the floor, like he'd got up in a hurry. Only the navy-blue washbag seemed to be in its place, and unease prickled Calum's skin. He left the cluttered scene behind and padded downstairs, half-expecting to find Brix in front of the dying fire, sipping tea and sketching, like he did most evenings.

But the living room was empty too, and the kitchen. Brix was nowhere to be seen, and for the first time in more than a month, Calum felt truly alone. Don't like it. He rubbed his chest, worry squeezing his heart. Brix hadn't said he was going out, and at 3 a.m. where the fuck would he even go?

Calum had no idea, and the unease in his bones kept him from shuffling back to bed and minding his own business.

He stoked the fire, remembering what Brix had taught him about stacking the logs for optimum heat. The flames were hypnotic, but the phantom crates in the garden drew him to his feet again.

Outside, he shivered in the bitter wind that blew in from the sea. The crates were real, solid wood—he checked—though they weren't as tall as he'd imagined. And fuck knew what was in them.

"What are you doing out here?"

Calum spun around.

Brix stepped out of the shadows, eyes dark and hooded. "Missing the wind from your warm bed?"

"Missing you." Calum spoke without thinking. "Not from my bed. From yours. You weren't there when something woke me up."

"Fuck's sake." Brix ran a hand through his wild hair.

"Sorry."

"Not you." Brix stepped closer, hooking two fingers under Calum's chin and coaxing his gaze from the ground. "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Look down like you're the fucking problem. You surprised me. I don't hate you."

Brix meant well, but the fierceness in his gaze made Calum's heart race. Or maybe it was his proximity. The heat of his fingers. His ocean scent.

Who knew? Not Calum. He didn't know anything except the hard truth that he should've stayed inside. In bed, in the house Brix was charging him fuck all to live in.

The cold wind made itself known.

Brix shivered and reclaimed his hand. "You shouldn't be out here. It's fucking baltic."

"I'm not going to get any colder than you."

Light flickered in Brix's gaze. "I'm already freezing."

"Then come inside."

"Can't."

To ask why burned Calum's chest. He turned his attention to the boxes instead. "What's in these?"

"Dunno. Haven't looked."

"Because…"

"They're not mine." Brix sighed and his faint grin disappeared. "My aunt, Peg. She dumped them here cos she's too tight to pay her gang to lug them up the cliffs to the caves. Reckons I'll get pissed off enough to do it for her . . . and she's right."

The cliff-top cave Brix had disappeared into a few weeks ago flashed into Calum's mind. If Brix was talking about the same one, it meant he'd be lugging the stacked crates up the highest cliff in the town…on his own.

Calum eyed the crates. "You've already moved some, haven't you?"

"How can you tell?"

"Because you're knackered, and there's less crates than when I first saw them out of the window. You must have been and gone while I was messing with the fire."

Brix nodded slowly. "This isn't me, you know that, don't you? I have no idea what's in them, or where they came from, I just . . . can't have them here. I'm not part of that world."

"I know." Despite what Calum had yet to learn about the Lusmoore clan, he knew there wasn't an ounce of bad in Brix. "Wait here."

He stepped inside, grabbed his coat, and stamped into his shoes. Back outside, he thought he might find Brix already gone, but he remained, staring at the crates in the misty moonlight, his expression inscrutable.

Calum approached, his footsteps quiet on the gravel. "How are we doing this? On foot?"

"You don't have to help."

"If you think I could sleep with you out here, you're out of your fucking mind." In the harsh night air, Calum felt more awake than ever, but Brix was exhausted. "Come on, mate. Let's go."

Daylight Brix might've taken more persuading, but late night Brix shrugged and picked up a box, holding it out to Calum.

Calum took it, inclining his head. "Stick another on."

"No."

"Yes."

The stand-off was short. Brix conceded, loading Calum with another box before hoisting the last onto his shoulder. "It's a fair walk. Let me know if you need to stop."

"I won't."

"What? Ever?"

Calum held Brix's gaze under the light of the moon. "For as long as you need me."

* * *

It was Brix who stopped first in the end, at the bottom of the cliff path. "It's fucking windy up there, and the path's slippery. Stay tight, okay? Walk where I walk."

Calum nodded and leaned closer to Brix, raising his voice over the crashing waves. "I can take your box too."

Brix rolled his eyes. "I'm fine. Let's go."

And so they went, scaling the steep cliff path with careful steps, slowed down by the weight of their cargo. Their heavy cargo, that Brix had already carried up the cliff alone.

Twice. A strong gust of wind blew Calum off course. He stumbled into Brix's back, causing Brix to stoop low to steady them both.

"All right?" Brix shouted over the wind.

Calum nodded, then remembered Brix couldn't see him. "I'm good. Keep moving."

They pressed on, battling the oncoming gale. The cold seeped into Calum's bones, freezing his joints and numbing his fingers. Twenty feet from the cave, it began to pour a hard, driving rain that soaked his clothes, plastering his jeans to his legs. Wet through, he navigated the final ascent to the cave's entrance, following Brix around the rock and under the ledge, guided by the faint glow of Brix's phone.

Brix dropped his crate on top of the others. Calum followed suit and then took in the murky interior of the cave.

It wasn't what he'd pictured when he'd first seen Brix slip inside all those weeks ago. Damn. This wasn't a cave; it was a fucking warehouse. "What is all this?"

Brix covered the new stack of crates with some dusty tarpaulin. "Fuck knows. Most of it comes ashore in the next town over, same as it did back when we were a clan of wreckers."

"Wreckers?"

"Lazy smugglers. Thieves. The Lusmoore gangs lurked on the cliffs in bad weather, and falsely guiding ships into the rocks, wrecking them so they could loot when the storm cleared. Made my ancestors a tidy fortune, until my great-grandad lost it all."

"Wow." Porth Ewan was like nowhere Calum had ever been. "How does that link to now?"

Brix shrugged. "It don't, 'cept my lot are still a bunch of pirates. They just bring the stuff ashore themselves these days. Got contacts in the shipping world, pals in Ireland and France. All in with the biker gangs, before I begged Rubi to cut them off. All sorts end up in my garden before some mug lugs it here, and to the other caves Peg's cousin has a little ways over."

Again with the biker gangs. Calum recalled the sleeping man he'd inked and tried to marry that with the stereotype dancing through his wild imagination, but even though he'd come in with split knuckles and bruises, it was hard to picture Rubi anything but fast asleep on his table. "How often do you have to do this?"

"Once a month, sometimes more, depending on the tides. It's always Peg who drops me in it. Her crew went to shit when her fella got sent down, and she reckons if she dumps loot in my yard, she won't have to get it up here herself. And she's not wrong. I can't have this crap anywhere near me. I've got a business to run, people who depend on me." Brix's expression fractured. "I can't live that life—it would kill me."

Can't lose him.

That thought was louder than any other. In the cramped space, Calum moved closer. "Can't pick your family, eh?"

A shadowy grin warmed Brix's face. "Nope. Thanks for helping me, though. There's no one else I'd trust."

"Nowhere else I'd rather be."

Brix's smile expanded, but a vicious gust of wind broke the moment. "Come on. Let's get home before your city bones freeze to death."

"I'm okay."

"Okay isn't good enough."

Calum didn't know what that meant. He followed Brix out of the cave and down the rocky cliff path. The promise of imminent warmth felt like Christmas come early, but he couldn't deny the magic he'd felt holed up in the cave with Brix, like it was the two of them against the world. Brix had saved him, in more ways than one, and the idea that maybe he'd repaid a tiny fraction of his friendship was too good to leave behind.

Shame the wind and driving rain had other ideas. For most of their descent, it was all Calum could do to keep his head up and follow Brix's sure-footed lead, which left him to the mercy of his mind, replaying the tale Brix had told him in the cave.

He caught up with Brix at the next bend. "Is this what your brother went to prison for? The family business?"

Brix cast an unreadable glance over his shoulder. "No. Abel was even less involved in it than I am. Ironic, eh?"

"There's no irony if you don't have a choice."

"Yeah, well. Abel would've tossed it out on the street, left it for the old bill to find and do whatever they'd do with it. He didn't give a fuck about family loyalty. He had his own life."

Brix turned and kept walking.

Calum followed, warring with indecision. Brix seemed in the mood to talk, but he'd had years to tell him—to tell anyone in London—why his brother was in a Cat-A prison, and he never, ever had.

Leave it alone.

Calum swallowed a thousand questions and pressed on.

Ten minutes later, Brix stopped dead and spun around.

"Abel's nothing like my dad and my uncles, or Peg and me. We didn't even know he had the Lusmoore temper until the coppers came to tell us he'd beat some bloke to death at the side of the M4."

The rumours were true. Calum's breath caught in his throat. "He killed someone? Why?"

Brix shrugged, walking again, Calum beside him now the path had widened. "Road rage? Who the fuck knows? His girlfriend ran off with his best mate the day before, so it could've been that, or any of the Lusmoore shite he'd lived through, but I ain't ever been convinced he meant to kill anyone."

"You don't think he had it in him?"

"More that the evidence pointed to an accident. The bloke hit his head on the road when he went down. But because he was a rich kid driving a fucking Lexus, and Abel was a Lusmoore, none of that mattered. Abel was a champion boxer and they said in court he'd have known how much damage he could do with one punch. Didn't matter that he hadn't been in trouble since he was fifteen. They did him for twelve years."

"Twelve years?" Calum whistled. "And he's got two left?"

"Thereabouts. He could've been out sooner, but he's never applied for early release."

"Why not?"

"Guess he doesn't want to come home. Speaking of, you can see the shop from here, look."

Calum followed Brix's gaze inland to the seafront. Beyond the main promenade, he could just make out the neon lights that lit up Blood Rush when the studio was closed, Brix's house further on.

They kept walking, the silence between them loaded and hot, distracting Calum from the cold until they reached the cottage twenty minutes later.

Brix made straight for the fire.

Calum made tea and took it to him. "Can I ask you something?

Brix glanced up, eyes hooded and weary. "Can't promise an answer if it's pirate related. Don't think there's much left I can tell you without walking the plank."

"It's about what you said about wanting to jump from the cliffs. It made me wonder if what happened when you were a kid had happened again."

"You wanna know if I've tried to top myself since?"

Physical pain twisted Calum's gut. "I guess."

Brix held Calum's gaze for a long moment before he turned back to the fire. "The simple answer is no. I've never done anything like that since that one time, but I'd be lying if I said I'd never thought about it. It's in me, you know? In my blood. Lusmoores can't deal with life without turning the sea black."

"Depression?"

"No . . . jumping off cliffs. My sister was ten years older than me. She offed herself when I was nine."

Calum blinked. "What?"

"You didn't know that?"

"Only that she died. You never said how." Calum gave up on his crouch and parked his arse on the floor. "Was I that hard to talk to back then? That self-absorbed?"

"Cal, don't torture yourself over my bullshit. It ain't worth it."

"I reckon it is."

"So? I reckon whatever's put yourself-esteem in a skip fire is worth me jumping on a train back to London and kicking the shit out of your dickhead ex, but I've gotta live with that, cos I can't see you letting me do it."

"That's not the same thing."

"Isn't it?"

"Rob never did anything that matters."

Brix's eyes blazed. "He hurt you. Don't think I don't see you flinch every time a door slams at the studio. Or Kim's shouting cos he's lost something."

Calum turned away, gaze fixed on the wall, certainty roiling through him. Brix's sister had killed herself. Brix had wanted to die too—more than once. How did anything that had happened in Calum's life compare to that?

Simple. It didn't. "You're wrong," he whispered.

Brix's only answer was to lie down on the floor and sleep, hand over his stomach, face hidden in the crook of his elbow, while Calum stared.

The hand on Brix's abdomen bothered him. He'd seen it all week, as if Brix's hangover had never quite gone. There's more. To Brix's story. So much more, but Calum wasn't sure how much he could take before every horrible thing that had happened to Brix tore his heart in two.

He got up to make breakfast. Feed the chickens and raid the egg stash, moving slowly to give Brix more time.

Then he got worried that sleeping on the floor would do more harm than good, and crouched to wake him. "Brix?"

Brix's groan was tortured. "Hmm?"

"Breakfast. You need to eat before work."

"Fucking hell." Brix shifted, opening his eyes. "You're an actual, real life angel."

"If you like your angels washed up and poor."

"I like you."

Calum liked Brix too. More than that. But without the balls to say so, all he had was two plates of egg-on-toast.

Brix disappeared upstairs.

He came back ten seconds later and necked a mug of cold tea, when Calum happened to know Brix thought cold tea was the worst abomination on earth.

"You want a hot one?"

"Nah. Let's eat."

They fell on their breakfast. Calum watching Brix in case he slid back into sleep where he sat. "I can open the studio for you. Your bookings don't start till ten."

"How do you know that?"

"My name's below yours on the computer."

"If you ever put your face in that thing and understand it, you're weeks ahead of me." Brix cleared his plate and pushed it away. "And thanks for the offer, but I've got one of the bikers coming through first thing for a touch-up. He's hard to nail down, so I don't want to put him off."

"He a friend of yours?"

Brix shrugged. "As much as Rubi is. We lead different lives, but we have history. I used to tattoo his dad, and Rubi's. They're both dead now—fuck, have I told you a single anecdote without someone dying?"

Not recently, but Calum kept that to himself and took the plates to the sink. Yawning. Rinsing. Watching the chickens dance in the dirt as lean, tattooed arms slid around him, stilling his busy hands.

Brix.

"Cal," he whispered. "I need you to know that if I was gonna tell anyone my darkest secrets, it would be you."

Calum closed his eyes, absorbing the bone-warming heat of Brix's chest against his back. "There's always more, isn't there?"

"For both of us. What I'm really saying is I wish you trusted me too."

Brix was gone before Calum could answer.