Chapter 13

Brix left the studio behind and ran home, hoping he'd find Calum camped out on the living room floor, staring into a newly built fire. But the cottage was dark and empty, the only sound Zelda's disgruntled yowl as she sashayed around his ankles demanding dinner.

Dennis was nowhere to be seen. Was he upstairs with Calum?

Brix dashed up to check, but the bedroom was empty too, and Dennis was sleeping next to a prized dead mouse in the bathtub.

Fuck.

Head-spinning, Brix disposed of the mouse and washed his hands, scalding his skin under the hot tap as every second he'd spent with Calum in the last month replayed on a loop.

His shy mellow voice and shy smile.

The long-healed bruise on his face and the profound distress in his dark gaze every time his weapons-grade twat of an ex came up in conversation

Brix's skin crawled, rage and worry fighting for dominance. Worry won, and unease prickled his skin.

Rob.

He'd hurt Calum, the scars he'd left behind far deeper than Brix could ever see, but he knew that pain. What it did to a man. And where had it taken Brix, each and every time?

Fuck. Fuck.

He shut off the tap and ran for the stairs, charging out of the cottage, the door banging shut behind him.

Boots pounding the earth, he made for the cliff path, praying he'd make it to the caves before the storm clouds over the sea came ashore. That he was wrong and Calum had more sense than to climb the cliffs in the rain. But as hard as Brix tried, he couldn't remember if he'd ever given Calum that warning. If it had ever occurred to him that Calum would ascend the path alone, and he fucking hated himself. How many lives had these cliffs claimed since Brix had been born? How many in the years and years before?

Calm your tits. He's probably in the pub.

Probably. But Brix's brain loved the dark more than his soul claimed the light, and the terror squeezing his heart choked him.

Literally.

He stopped, doubling over, hands on his thighs, coughing up fear, lungs burning like he'd smoked a thousand cigarettes before tackling a marathon. Like his body couldn't handle a good old panic attack anymore.

Get your shit together.

Find Calum.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Brix took off running again, the seafront a blur as he reached the path, spray from the crashing waves soaking his face.

Ahead, the clouds darkened as the cliffs loomed, daylight all but gone. But the gloom couldn't hide the set of broad shoulders Brix had searched for in every crowd his entire adult life. Slumped shoulders, as a lone figure brooded on the bench at the foot of the hidden path.

Relief gifted Brix a surge of fresh energy. He closed the distance between him and Calum in a snatched breath and skidded to a stop at his feet.

Calum raised his gaze from the ground as driving rain began to fall.

His eyes were hollow and the ache in Brix's chest amped up a gear. "All right?"

"Fucking blinding, Brix. Why do you ask?"

"Don't be a dick."

Calum's belligerence held. Then it faltered and self-doubt shattered his features. "Sorry."

"Don't." Brix crouched at his feet. "Just talk to me. Please. Don't go up that path."

"What path?"

Brix jerked his head, unable to voice any of the colloquial nicknames for the uphill track. "It's not safe up there in the dark."

Calum glanced beyond him. "I wasn't going to go up there."

You were. You just didn't know it yet. "You're not sitting on this bench for nothing."

"Aren't I?"

"Fuck no. Not even hard-core Porth Ewan folk do that."

Calum didn't reply, and his gaze returned to the tempestuous sea.

Brix took a chance and reached out, stilling his twisting fingers. "How's your hand?"

"It's fine."

"What did Rob want?"

"What?"

"Kim told me Rob called the studio. I didn't know you were still in contact with him."

"I'm not. He must've seen some of my work on the Blood Rush socials and recognised the style. Fucking ironic, really, cos he never took much notice of it when it was keeping him in wanky hipster suits."

"He tracked you down? What does he want?"

"Dunno. Didn't ask."

"No?" Brix tried to ignore a selfish wave of relief. "You didn't speak to him?"

Calum shook his head. "Nope. Hung up like a pussy and ran away. Fancied a stroll up the cliffs, until I remembered you already told me not to go there in the dark without you."

Thank fuck for past me."You're not a pussy." Brix squeezed Calum's hands, then reluctantly let them go. "There's plenty of people I don't want to talk to."

"Like Jordan?"

Sharper discord stabbed Brix's heart, but he suppressed the instinct to shut it down. How could he expect Calum to confront this bitter shit if he couldn't do the same?

Besides, this was Calum. Quiet. Perceptive. Observant. There was no way he hadn't registered Brix's flinch every time Jordan came up. "I can't talk to him . . . Don't think I ever will again, and he knows better than to call me. But if he did, I reckon I'd be up here just like you said. Sometimes only the sea can hear you scream."

"I'm not screaming." Calum shoved his hands in his pockets. "I wish I could, but it won't come out. Shit. That sounds so fucking stupid."

"Not to me."

"Liar."

"Bollocks." Brix dug his fingers into Calum's unyielding thighs, coaxing him to break his stare with the sea. "There's a lot of things in my life I can't tell anyone, even you, but I'm not a liar, Cal. Told you already, ain't got the heart for it."

Calum's gaze hollowed out again. I've lost him. But it was a blip. A temporary absence. A sigh rattled past Calum's lips, then he slowly placed his hands over Brix's, twining their fingers together. "I'm sorry."

"Don't—"

"Stop. Let me have that one, okay? I called you a liar and I was wrong. I just…"

"What?"

"It's been a long time since anyone tried to understand me—since I last understood me. I've got no idea who I am, but I feel like you already know."

A biting gust of wind punctuated Calum's words, but Brix barely felt it, hypnotised by the sight of Calum's hand on his. By the feel of him—his skin, his pulse thudding through his palm.

Hearts don't beat through your hands. Fact. But Brix didn't need science to know that touching Calum was a biological reaction he couldn't walk away from.

At least, not anytime soon. "You know your own mind, mate. Just gotta let go of whatever—or whoever—has convinced you that you don't."

"Whoever." Calum let the word hang. "If you'd said that a year ago, I'd have laughed in your face, or punched you. I've never let anyone talk shit about him."

"Nothing wrong with that when you're with someone. You have their back, even if they're a complete knob. That's the point."

"He'd never hit me before—not really, anyway, if that's what you're getting so angry about."

Not really. "I'm not angry."

"Right."

Calum looked away. Brix caught Calum's face and forced him to meet his eye again. "I'm not playing games with you. No lies, remember? I want to understand the hold this bloke has over you. You don't have to hit someone to fuck them up."

"I used to wish he would."

"Why?"

"I'd have known for sure then that he was wrong."

Brix swallowed. Now they were getting somewhere. "Anything he did to hurt you was wrong. Did he control you?"

"Only because I let him."

"Or because he manipulated you. That's not the same thing."

Calum's shrug was unconvinced, but the driving rain and increasing wind blew Brix's response off course.

He squeezed Calum's hands tighter. "Come home with me?"

Calum slow-blinked at the rain. Then at Brix. "Thought you were meeting your dad?"

"He'll be in the boozer all night. Let's get dry first, okay?"

Brix rose, taking Calum with him.

It made sense to let go.

It made sense to hold on, and they walked home side by side, hand in hand, silence cocooning them. But it wasn't weighted. Calum was always quiet and Brix was deep in thought. He hadn't lied to Calum. In the moment Calum had asked, he hadn't been angry. Just worried. Concerned. Drowning in his growing feelings for a man he'd spent years believing he'd never seen again. But he was angry now. Raging, if he let the devil in him run loose. And how was that fucking fair? Calum needed a friend right here. Not a hot-head to jump on the next train to London and kick the shit out of the arsehole who'd done him so wrong.

They reached the cottage.

Calum let them in, holding the door for Brix to pass. "Jesus. You're shaking."

Brix shrugged out of his leather jacket. "This ain't the coat for hiking in the rain. Have we got wood in?"

"I'll get some."

"Your hand?—"

"Brix. Sit down."

Brix shivered for a different reason. He kicked his boots off and went to the fireplace. He hadn't got round to sweeping it out, but Calum had, and Brix didn't need tangible flames to feel the warmth of that.

The comfort.

Calum came back and crouched beside him, setting the fire.

Lighting it.

The flames flickered and grew, the heat seeping into Brix's cold bones. He groaned, dropping his head, tiredness sweeping over him, recalling the dark days when huddled in front of the fireplace had been the only place he could sleep. How he'd resented the spring. How the long summer months had felt like a curse.

"Come on, mate." Calum helped him up. "Couch."

"Hmm?"

Calum frowned, the lines in his face wearing the lingering bewilderment of years of silence.

Brix yearned to wipe them away. But he couldn't. He'd speak a thousand Lusmoore secrets before he shared the darkest of his own.

He let Calum steer him to the sofa. Tea appeared. Cake. "The bakery girls still bringing you their leftovers?"

Calum chewed his lip, concealing that shy smile. "That's what Lena keeps telling me. Not sure I believe her. Reckon she's baking them herself just to rib me."

"Doubt she's got the time." Brix swiped a chunk of railway sponge. "I keep her pretty busy, and she's got a lot on her mind right now."

"Kim said she's leaving."

"He told you that?" Kim didn't share with outsiders, but perhaps he saw what Brix saw, maybe they all did. "I don't want her to go. She's practically my mother. I can't handle that computer system on my own."

"You don't want to handle it. There's a difference."

Brix snorted. "Maybe you should handle it for me then."

Calum's smile flared again, but it died as the reason they were huddled on the couch in wet clothes swamped them again. He'd never admitted that he'd stayed in Porth Ewan to hide from Rob, but Brix knew it was true, and now Rob had found him . . .

He'll leave.

The cake in Brix's belly turned to dust. Panic gripping him again. Guilt. Wanting Calum to stay for his own benefit made him no better than Rob.

"I'll miss her too," Calum said. "But Kim said it would be good for them. That he needs stability more than her, and she needs to run free without worrying about him all the time."

"Sounds like Kim told you more than he's told me in the past year."

Calum shrugged. "He seemed like he wanted to talk, so I listened."

"You're good like that."

"Am I?"

"You're the best."

"Not bad yourself, Lusmoore."

Calum leaned back on the couch, his damp clothes moulding to his body.

Brix craved to peel them off.

But more than that, he had to know. "Tell me about Rob?"

Eyes half closed, Calum sighed. "It's hard to articulate without feeling like a pathetic loser."

Brix growled. Wolfish. Territorial.

Calum's brows jumped. "All right there?"

"Yeah. Just hate you talking down to yourself."

"Technically, I'm talking to you."

"Calum."

"Brix." Calum bit his lip again. Let it go. "Look, you can tell me it's not my fault as much as you like, but it has to be to some degree. He didn't force me into being a fucking doormat."

"Was it your idea to put the shop in his name?"

"No."

"Or your phone? And what about your flat? Whose name was that in?"

"Mine. He didn't live there, but the rent came from the business account, and he raided it every month, so sometimes it didn't get paid."

"Harsh."

Calum cringed. "That's not the worst of it. I took out a massive loan a month after we met, gave it to him to set up his accountancy business, but he never made the payments. Black Star paid some of it off when I didn't take a wage, but I'm way behind."

"How big was the loan?"

"Thirty grand."

"What? How the fuck did you secure it?"

"On a bedsit in Hampstead I bought not long after you left."

Brix braced. "What happened to it?"

"I sold it at a loss. Rob didn't like me having something that was just mine."

"Rob's a cunt."

Calum snorted. "I know that now. At the time, I thought he wanted to buy a flat together, close to the shop, and maybe buy that premises too. We had plans and it took me a long time to realise he'd made them all up, and by then . . . by then I was in so fucking deep I couldn't see how badly I needed to get out."

"What enlightened you?"

"I caught him getting slammed in my bed."

Brix reared back. "Bastard."

"Nah, still my fault, according to him. Didn't fuck him well enough. Stifled him too."

More curses bubbled up Brix's throat, but Calum had more to say, and Brix let him speak.

"He liked to keep me dangling. In my place. His favourite trick was to promise me a quiet night in, then piss off into town with his mates without telling me. Then he knew I'd be at home waiting on him while he did whatever the fuck he wanted. Win-win for him."

"Why not go out with you?"

Calum drummed his fingers in his knee. "He latched onto me because of the ink, but I'm not as cool as he thought I'd be, so after a while, he quit wanting me around his friends. And I stopped letting it hurt me. Next to everything else, it didn't mean anything."

"Everything means something if it hurts, Cal. It has to, or we ain't fucking human."

"I didn't feel too human when you found me on that bench. Rob had me tied in knots. I wasn't eating, sleeping, or even thinking straight. It's mad that I was still putting ink on people. It scares me now—I see how unhealthy it was, but back then, I thought I loved him."

Calum choked on the word.

Brix got up and moved to the window. "What about now? You still love him?"

Calum made a low sound. "Not even close. Being with you again has shown me that."

Being with you again has shown me that.Brix's heart thudded, want and need swirling in his chest before he could lock it down. But there was disbelief too. How had Brix shown him anything when all he'd done since Calum had come to Porth Ewan was get drunk, moody, and jam his foot in his mouth?

"I feel like it was never real," Calum whispered.

Brix spun around.

"With Rob," Calum clarified.

"It was real. And it meant something, even if it was nothing more than a hard fucking lesson."

"Is that how you feel about Jordan?"

"I don't feel shit about Jordan." Brix's voice lowered to a gravelled snap. Fuck. He returned to the couch and tried again. "I try not to feel anything for him, but it's hard when the damage someone leaves behind makes you who you are."

Calum rubbed his hands on his damp jeans. "You're a bigger man than me."

"Not likely, I've just been around enough hate and anger to know it doesn't heal us."

"Your family?"

"We're an angry bunch."

"You're not." Calum shifted on the couch. His leg brushed Brix's knee and sent shockwaves through Brix's already tingling nerves. "You were always the one who could make me smile. I missed that when you left."

"What about now? Do I still make you smile?"

Dryness laced Brix's tone, but Calum's answering grin was dazzling. "I reckon so. Rob's mates used to say I had a face like a constipated undertaker. See what happens when you're not around?"

"Telling me shit like that isn't a good way of proving I'm not a rage demon." Brix forced a smile, so Calum wouldn't think he was angry with him. So he wouldn't know what he would give to load a van with Abel and Kim and?—

No.

That would make him no better than Rob, but the fantasy was more soothing than Brix wanted to admit to Calum's sweet face.

"What are you thinking?"

"Hmm?" Brix blinked to find Calum had shifted closer to study Brix's face.

Brix shoved all thuggish thoughts aside and forced his smile wider. "I'm thinking that I don't want you to go back to London."

"London?" Calum tilted his head to one side. "I haven't thought about going back. But I haven't thought about where I'd go instead."

"You don't need to go anywhere. I've been counting on you singing to Bongo my whole fucking life."

Calum pursed his lips. "I don't sing to Bongo. I talk to her, and you know she answers me."

Brix laughed. "She's a keeper, I'll give you that. Best layer of all the new girls. The others are too busy trying to escape."

Calum smiled, for real this time. It warmed every inch of his beautiful face and Brix couldn't look away, basking in the lighter air between them. He still raged at the shame lingering in Calum's dark gaze, but his heart felt Calum's quiet presence like a second skin, and the urge to beg Calum to stay tied him in knots.

Like he'd read Brix's mind, Calum leaned forward and touched Brix's arm, sliding his warm hand over Brix's skin. "Brix?"

"Hmm?"

"I don't want to go back to London."

"Then don't. Stay here."

"Here?"

Brix covered Calum's hand with his own and turned to face him. "Yes. Stay here with me. There's a job for you at the studio as long as you want it, and . . ."

"And what?"

"I want you to stay, in case I wasn't clear before."

"Why?"

To anyone else, the answer to Calum's question would've been obvious, but Brix had learned that Calum needed to hear these things explicitly to believe them.

I don't want to be without you.

The words were on the tip of his tongue, but as he took a breath, Calum moved again, his face suddenly inches from Brix's, his eyes so dark, his mouth so close. "I?—"

Their lips met in a gentle kiss, so soft and light it stole Brix's breath. Head spinning, he opened his mouth to the tender, mind-blowing sweep of Calum's tongue, and his fingers, unbidden, found their way to Calum's velvet beard.

He dragged his nails through it. Calum groaned, deepening the kiss. He wove a hand into Brix's hair and tangled it in the damp mess of windswept waves, twisting and tugging, the sensation a lightning bolt to Brix's dick.

Brix hardened. Heat pooled in his groin. He sucked in a harsh breath, but as the scrape of air filled his lungs, reality crashed into him. What the fuck was he doing? He and Calum had kissed before—more than once—but each time it had been over before it had truly begun, leaving it all too easy to pretend it had never happened, and that the prospect of it going further was nothing but a long-dead dream.

This is different.

Brix reared back as a thud at the door startled Calum too. For a moment, they stared at each other. Calum's intense gaze was tough to read, and Brix couldn't tell if he'd sensed the shift in the air before the pounding had interrupted the inevitable slide into a clusterfuck he had no desire to ever explain.

Then the knocking came again, loud, insistent, and impossible to ignore, breaking the moment.

Brix started to get up.

Calum stilled him. "I'll get it."

He got up and went to the door, as chill as Brix had ever seen him, as if pure mayhem wasn't erupting in Brix's soul. He stopped before opening it, though, and looked back, shooting Brix a quizzical frown as thunder clapped outside.

It took Brix far too long to realise he was asking if it was okay to answer the door. He swallowed his frustration and nodded, willing his wayward dick to retreat to its cave before his brain exploded. "You live here too."

"I guess I do." Calum opened the door. The sight of whoever greeted him made him smile, but the light in his face was brief as he stepped back and waved Kim inside.

Brix stood, the party in his jeans and the wake in his heart forgotten as he met the troubled gaze of one of his oldest friends. "What is it?"

"The lifeboat's going out to a stricken tanker."

"What?"

"They're launching now."

Ten years ago, under the cloud of a storm as fierce as the one blowing outside, Kim's words would've filled Brix with horror, because a decade ago the youngest man in Porth Ewan's lifeboat crew had been Abel Lusmoore. But Abel had been gone a long time, and there'd been no Lusmoore in the boat since. "Shit. Did your old man go out?"

Kim shook his head. "No, he's down in Porth Luck at my nan's. That's what I came to tell you. They were a man short, so your dad took his place."