Chapter 12

Chaos surrounded Brix. Mostly his own, but that didn't make it less annoying. "Where's the fucking printer ink?"

Lee ignored him, eyes on her work, following his sacred instruction to never let anything distract her when she put a needle to skin.

Kim wasn't tattooing. He was fucking about with driftwood and paint, but he had no sensible answers either. "Ask Lena."

"Your girlfriend isn't here."

"Girlfriend? Who's that?"

Brix growled and stomped to the storeroom, turning it upside down before Lee intervened.

"What are you doing?"

"You know what I'm doing. I'm looking for the printer ink like I have been all fucking day."

"It's up there."

Lee pointed to the only shelf Brix hadn't torn apart. To the box of ink sitting pretty with the rest of the office supplies. "Did something crawl up your arse and die?"

"Go away."

"Are you hangry?"

"Fuck off." Brix pushed her out of the room and shut the door.

Then forgot why he was in the storeroom in the first place. Hmm. Maybe he was hungry, but it wouldn't be because he'd missed breakfast. Despite claiming he couldn't cook for shit, Calum had made him breakfast every morning since their witching hour cave run.

I could get used to that.

Fuck. He already had. Just like everyone else. Lee, Kim, Lena. They all loved Calum. How could they not?

How could anyone hurt him?

Brix's temper burned bright again. He glared at the printer ink, trying to remember what he'd needed it for.

He was still trying when the storeroom door cracked open and Calum peered round it, hair tousled from the wind, a Blood Rush tee clinging to his shoulders enough that Brix forgot just about everything and stared.

Calum smiled, shyness creeping into his eyes, a glimmer of sunshine on a cold winter's day, until Brix noticed the bandage on his hand.

"What happened to you?"

Guilt made an unwelcome return to Calum's face. "The gun kinda blew up on me this morning. Took the skin off my fingers. Sorry, mate. I'll replace it."

"As if I give a shit about the gun. Did you let Kim check it out? He's good with blood."

"You're not?" Calum tugged the edge of the bandage.

Brix backed up so fast he hit the shelves behind him, sending paper and ink clattering to the floor.

"Whoa." Calum stepped further into the room, letting the door swing shut behind him. "What's wrong?"

Brix caught his overreaction and reeled it in, but it was too late to escape Calum's concern. "Did you call the bank back?"

"Yeah. Two hundred a month until the end of time. What's wrong?"

"Lena took the day off and the world fell apart."

It wasn't that much of a lie. But it wasn't an answer to the question Calum had asked and it showed on his face. "Do you need to eat something?"

Brix's stomach said no.

His head said yes. "Maybe."

"All right then." Calum opened the door. "I'll be back."

He melted away.

Brix wanted to die. Literally. A split second of self-loathing that drove a tortured groan from his chest, and sent his knuckles flying into the wall, grounding himself in the pain.

Except, it didn't ground him. Because nothing changed. Because he missed Calum, and waiting for him to come back made staying alive worth it.

* * *

"It's not a dhansak from the Akash in Shoreditch, but the one I scoffed on the way back from the shop was fucking amazing."

Brix raised his head from the box of spare machine parts he'd found himself lost in. "Is that a keema pasty from Belly Acre Farm?"

"You can tell that by smell alone?"

"Me and Kim lived on them for a month when they first started selling them at the street market."

Calum grinned and relinquished the paper bag, along with a tiny jar of mango chutney.

Brix dug in. "Wanna bite?"

"Nope. I was lying when I said I ate one on the way home. It was two."

"What else have you been up to today?"

Brix already knew Calum had been working on the skills he'd been trading with Lee. Her watercolour to his dot work, but he wasn't ready for Calum to leave again. Wasn't ready to lose that soft, sweet smile. The self-conscious way he rubbed his jaw as he painstakingly chose his words.

"It's a slow process. I don't have the balls to freehand like she does."

"Not the same as overthinking every dot?"

"I don't do that." Calum's shy smile turned wry. "Okay, maybe I do, and that's why Lee's struggling with my style—cos she doesn't have the patience."

"Funny that." Brix finished his lunch. "It's almost like you funnelled your personalities into your work."

"Oh yeah? What does that make you and Kim?"

"Boring."

"Lies."

"All right. We're boring compared to you. Rubi messaged me this morning asking if Kim would mind if he came to you for his chest piece."

Calum cringed. "I can't take work off Kim."

"You're not. He doesn't want to be here full time anymore. Tattooing isn't the thing that gets him out of bed in the morning."

"It's not?" Calum moved closer, and the door shut behind him again.

We're alone. Somehow, that knowledge made Brix breathe easier.

"Kim likes building furniture," he answered Calum's unspoken question. "He's just never been together enough to make a living out of it."

"Is that changing?"

Brix shrugged. "Isn't everything?"

The door opened before Calum could answer.

Kim, his curious, smirk too knowing for Brix's scratchy heart. "Your pa's here."

"For fuck's sake. What for?"

"Dunno." Kim glanced between Brix and Calum again. "Maybe he's spent all his pension already."

"In the bookies with yours, eh?"

Kim answered in Cornish.

Brix rolled his eyes and stood. "I'm coming."

He followed Kim to the front of the studio, trying not to obsess over where Calum went next. If he stayed in the storeroom, or slipped out the back door like he sometimes did when he'd had enough peopling for one day.

John Lusmoore waited at the front desk, frowning at Corey's abstract flash. "What in God's name is that?"

"Afternoon to you too," Brix retorted. "I've been looking for you all week. Where've you been?"

"What do you care? Can't a man have a life to 'imself anymore?"

"Not if you want paying."

His father's face brightened. "Got some papers for me, 'av ya?"

"Start of the month, ain't it?" Brix ducked behind the front desk and retrieved the envelope he'd stashed in the till. "If you let me put this in the bank, you'd have had it three days ago."

John Lusmoore took the envelope and stuffed it inside his coat. "Go on with yer."

Brix let it go. Some things didn't need fixing. "How are the chooks?"

"Oh yeah, they're fine." John's hawkish expression softened. "I've put 'em on that organic grain from Hunter's and got that heavy straw in for the winter. Can't have my girls getting cold."

"You want some more? Millstream Poultry are kicking out soon."

"How many you getting?"

"Haven't said I'll do it yet."

"Aye-aye, but you will."

Brix grinned. He had little in common with his father, but in this they were the same. John would be by his side at every rescue if he could be trusted not to lamp the farmers. "You're probably right. But what the fuck am I gonna do with them? Got no space left out back."

Especially with Peg's lot dumping shite in my yard.And John's dark glance told Brix he knew all about the crates that had found their way into Brix's back garden. Probably knew their contents too, which was more information than Brix needed or wanted. "What are you doing later? You want a pint?"

John was still scowling at Corey's flash. "Can do, can do. It's blowing a tewedh out there, mind. Third storm this month. Going to be a big one, let me tell you."

"You do tell me. All the time. It's why Abel calls you Uncle Fish, remember?"

"If you say so. What about that fella you got at your place? He brave enough to come out?"

"Um . . ." Brix's tongue let him down for no discernible reason whatsoever. "Do you want him to come?"

"Up to you, lad. He's not going to get all fisticuffs like that one with the orange hair, is he?"

Brix pursed his lips. "No, and Lee wouldn't have done that if you'd thumped Uncle Nige for her."

John muttered under his breath, but Brix let him be. He brought fresh eggs for Lee every day after her surgery, remember? Not that Lee would ever know the mysterious baskets on her doorstep had come from John Lusmoore, or that it was the closest thing to an apology he'd ever made to an emmet.

"I'll be off, then," John said. "Find me later."

"Don't forget to eat dinner before you hit the Bell."

"Piss off, boy."

John left. Brix watched him disappear up the road, but the call to drift back to Calum was too strong to ignore.

He found him setting up for a walk-in Brix hadn't noticed arrive.

"You want to go out tonight?"

"Out?" Calum wrapped cling film around the arm of his client's chair. "Thought you were off the juice?"

"Nah, just can't handle the bangers anymore. I'm meeting my dad for a pint at the Sea Bell. Wanna come?"

Calum had his back to him, sketching a few lines on the design the client had brought in. "You want me to meet your dad?"

"Sure, why not? He's an arsehole, but he means well. Trust me, you won't buy a drink all night."

"What was in the envelope you gave him?"

"What?"

"The envelope. Were you paying him off?"

"Well, he don't take cheques."

Silence, then Calum shook himself. "Sorry. Old ghosts, you know?"

"I know my ghosts, mate. Never met yours."

"Right."

Brix raised an eyebrow. "You okay to work with that hand?"

"Yup."

That was it. Calum had nothing else to say and a client waiting in the tiniest shorts Brix had ever seen.

This place, man. "I'll get a screen."

With tiny-shorts bloke shielded from the rest of the studio, Brix left Calum to his work and retreated to the store room again to brood. He hadn't noticed Calum observing his exchange with John, let alone thought that it might trigger him.

What the fuck did that cunt do to him?

Thinking about it wound Brix up all over again, and without Calum to calm him down, he was fuming by the time Kim came back.

"Man, you should see the piece Calum put on that weird bloke. It's fucking sick."

"What was it?"

"Come and see."

Kim bullied Brix out of the store room, probably the only man on earth who could handle Brix without getting decked. He dragged him all the way to Calum's station before he found himself staring at the freakiest penis tattoo he'd ever seen.

"Is that a dragon?"

"That's right." The client beamed. "I'm going to get a Prince Albert to give it eyes."

Calum's broad shoulders shook with silent laughter. He turned away, letting Brix deal with the man, and Brix found himself lost for words. The dragon was amazing. Intricate and clever. But seeing it wrapped around a flaccid cock was more disturbing than he cared to admit.

"It's, er, great," he finally said. "Should get it wrapped up, though. Keep it clean."

He fled to the desk.

Calum joined him, adding the job to Lena's system with zero fumbling. Printing out an invoice from the printer Brix had been so sure had run out of ink.

His body heat left Brix dizzy. Left him yearning for something just out of reach.

Give him more."I was paying my dad an instalment on the money he loaned me to open this place." Brix startled himself as much as Calum. "I paid it off years ago, but he hasn't noticed, so I'll keep topping up his pension until he does—anyway, it's nothing dodgy, I swear."

"I know." Calum focused on stapling penis man's paperwork together. "Don't humour me."

"Why not? It's not your fault someone fucked you up."

Calum's gaze snapped to Brix. "How do you know? Perhaps it was all my fault. Know my own mind, don't I? No one ever made me feel that way."

"Says who? Someone treats you like dirt, it conditions you to believe that you don't deserve any better."

They were interrupted again. Calum's client emerged from the back of the studio, dressed, and brandishing a bundle of cash. Brix waited for Calum to take the payment and the client to leave so they could finish a conversation that wasn't about chickens, food, or ink, but it wasn't to be. Dragon Dick left, but as the door swung shut behind him, it opened again, revealing that Kim had returned with Lena in tow.

Super.Brix glared at Kim, who'd always had a way of reading his mind, but Lena spoke before Kim could react.

"Can I borrow you? I need a favour."

"Better be a good one," Brix followed her back into the studio. "Nice hair."

Lena touched hair that was now her natural rich red. "Thanks. Reckon I'm getting a bit old for a technicolour barnet."

"Bet Kim doesn't think so."

"Well . . . that's not going to matter soon."

"Say what?"

Lena shrugged. "I've got itchy feet. Kim wants to stay around here, but there's someone I'm starting to miss."

"Someone else?"

"Yeah, you know how it is."

"Thought you were banging Cam O'Brian?"

"I am—I was. Anyway, I'm not talking about him. Or his friend." Lena's gaze morphed from fond to filthy. "I met someone a while back who wants to travel, and I want to go with them."

"What about Kim?"

"What about him? You didn't see the grin on his face when we came back from that gig in Bude?"

No. Brix had been too wrapped up in his own shit to notice much of anything. "He met someone?"

"He did."

"And you're okay with that?"

"Of course. He's my forever love, but we're not forever lovers."

Brix absorbed that as Lena kissed his cheek. Then the rest of it set in with a wave of holy panic. Lena ran Blood Rush with an iron fist. How the fuck was he going to manage without her?

"You'll be all right." Lena squeezed his hands. "We'll find someone to replace me, and Kim will still be here."

"Not with the wood shop taking off."

"He'll still need you, Brix. Don't forget that."

As if Brix ever would. Kim's demons were as loud and rowdy as his own. "I don't know what to say."

"Don't say anything, then. Just tell me how to sign my half of the studio back over to you."

"What?"

Lena folded her arms across her chest. "I can't keep it. Not when I owe you everything in the world for giving it to me in the first place."

"I gave it to you because I needed you to stay with me."

"That was years ago. You need to make room in your life for yourself now, and maybe someone else."

"Yeah?"

"Yes." Lena hugged him again and whispered in his ear. "Someone like Calum, cos I reckon there's room in his universe for you too."

Hearing her say it got under Brix's skin—in a good way, the best—but Brix was too used to the best things in life passing him on by.

The air shifted.

A ripple.

He drew back from Lena, feeling that pull again, but when he got back to the front desk, Kim was alone.

"Where's Calum?"

Kim glanced up from carving patterns into the legs of Lena's desk chair. "Dunno. Some dude rang for him, and he shot out of here like his arse was on fire."

"Some dude? Rang where? The studio? Who was it?"

Kim blinked. "Studio phone. Some posh cunt looking for Calum. I passed him the phone and then he was gone."

"Gone where?"

"I don't know."

"You didn't follow him?"

"Why would I do that?"

Brix cursed and ran for the door and outside, dashing to the end of the narrow street. But he found nothing but tourists and seagulls.

Kim was right: Calum had gone.