Chapter 19

The dark outline of the rose seemed to Brix to ink itself, like he'd etched the design a thousand times over, which wasn't as fanciful as it seemed. In fifteen years of tattooing, he'd seen more than his fair share of roses, even big ones like this—a huge, intricate collection of vintage blooms, splayed across the back of the burlesque dancer occupying his table.

Taz. Combined with the ink she already had, it was going to look awesome. At least, it would if he ever got it finished. Taz had a rowdy stomach. She rarely lasted an hour under the needle before she tapped out and ran for the bathroom.

Forty minutes in, Brix changed his needle and switched from outlining to the first layer of shading, blending the gradient. Trying not to notice Calum moving through the studio to hang out with Lee, like he always did when he was at a loose end.

They're good for each other. Maybe Lee had needed Calum as much as Brix had.

Need.

Brix's brain did a sharp one-eighty, leaving Lee far behind as it nose-dived into the gutter . . . to his bed, where he'd spent the last ten nights sleeping with Calum stretched out beside him, neither one of them mentioning the giant elephant sharing their space. His hand shook, a minute tremor that was gone as suddenly as it had arrived, but it was intense enough for him to inhale and withdraw his gun from Taz's skin.

Calum looked up as Brix sat back, as though he'd heard Brix's racing thoughts. Their eyes met, and Calum grinned. Brix swallowed hard and returned the gesture, but his gut flipped, like it had every moment he had time to consider the hole Calum had kicked in his self-imposed wall of celibacy.

. . . there's no reason outside of your own head . . .

Calum wasn't wrong, but that wall…it was high, and made of the thickest stone. There was no way through, but fantasising about what could happen if Brix ever did was enough to make him sweat.

His time with Taz was running out. Brix wiped his brow and refocused. In his peripheral, Calum and Lee left. Brix panicked, but it was brief.

You sent them out, remember?

To get booze for Lena's party?—

Taz tapped his leg. "Let me up."

"Whoa. Hang on." Brix took his foot from the pedal and pushed his stool back, holding the gun safely out of the way. "Okay, you're clear. Do what you gotta do."

Taz scrambled from the bench and dashed to the bathroom. Brix waited a few minutes, but when she didn't return, he knew they were done for the day.

He packed up and went to the desk to process the card Taz had left him. A simple task, but the computer frazzled him.

"Don't look at me." Lena slunk away. "You've got to learn."

"Why? Can't we be a cash business?"

"Only if you want every crook and dodgy biker round here using your business to wash their money."

"Thought you liked bikers."

"I like fucking them."

Did not need to know that, girl. "How do I key the amount in?"

Lena pursed her lips, stubborn until she realised Brix really didn't know. "Fuck's sake, move over."

She processed the payment in record time and printed the receipt. "She was in for one-eight-five."

But Brix was already distracted by the bundle Calum had brought home from London and transplanted into a box. It was tucked beneath an equipment locker, and Brix walked away while Lena was still talking.

He dug the box out and opened it. Inside, he found Dottie, the vintage machine Calum had trekked all the way to London to rescue.

She was in a dozen pieces, waiting for someone to bring her back to life, and Brix felt that to his fucking marrow.

He took the box to the break room and laid the parts out on the table. Even fragmented, Dottie was beautiful, and working on her happened without Brix making a conscious decision to do it.

She had a weak connector.

He went to the storeroom and searched boxes of mismatched machine parts until he found the washers and clip chord for his own long-lost coil machine.

The fix worked, and he was road-testing his handiwork when Kim stuck his head around the door a little while later, leaning casually on the architrave in a way that would've fooled anyone except Brix and Lena. "What's wrong?"

"Wrong? Nothing. All good in this hood."

"Yeah?" Brix turned down the power, checking Dottie's capability at a lower voltage. "Not freaking out over Lena going back to Bristol, then?"

"You're asking me now? When she's leaving on Sunday?"

Shit.Brix switched Dottie off. With his own bullshit to drown in, he'd neglected Kim, a friend as dear to him as Calum. "Sorry, mate. I'm so fucking self-absorbed at the moment."

Kim came closer, studying Dottie. "Brix, you don't know how to be selfish. But even if you did, it's okay. I'm okay. I love Lena to death, and that ain't gonna change."

Brix nodded slowly. "You deserve to be happy."

"Take your own advice, bud. Stop Lusmooring Calum."

"Fuck off."

"Yeah, yeah."

Kim fucked off and Brix didn't watch him go. They'd been friends a long time—they didn't have to say a lot to hear each other speak.

Stop Lusmooring Calum.Was that what he was doing? Being a stubborn wanker because he'd forgotten how to be anything else?

I want him.

Brix couldn't deny that, despite years of abstinence convincing him that he didn't even like sex. That he never had. A cage around his heart that had held until Calum had rocked up at Truro station with his gentle eyes and battered soul, lighting a flame in Brix that he couldn't smother.

I want him.

Brix returned to Dottie and tightened the last few remaining parts. Then he took a cloth to her and polished her within an inch of her life, wrapping her in an old shirt and returning her to Calum's station.

A sketchbook lay idle on the desk. Brix tore out a page and scrawled a note.

Meet me at the cave xx

* * *

"You know we don't get taught how to climb cliffs in Reading, right?"

Calum ducked into the cave, his cheeks flushed, mist droplets clinging to his dark hair. Despite his obvious bemusement, he was more beautiful than ever, and it was all Brix could do not to jump on him, tumble him to the dusty cave floor, and forgo all he had to say before they could leave their demons behind.

He settled for a nervous smile. "Good job you learned in Porth Ewan, then, eh?"

"I have Porth Ewan to thank for a lot of things."

"Me too." Brix grabbed Calum's hand, yanking him further inside. "Did you find Dottie?"

"Find her?" Calum stumbled into Brix's side before he steadied himself on a nearby crate. "I fucking fell on her like a long-lost lover."

His word choice fluttered Brix's pulse. He drowned in the heat of Calum's palm tucked against his. "I should've fixed her when you brought her home. I could see how special she was to you."

"She's more than special. I got her at Dalston junk market the day I got my apprenticeship. It's, uh, the same day I met you." Calum's shy smile peeked at Brix in the dark. "You gonna tell me why you've summoned me up here?"

"I'm gonna try. Sit with me?"

"Always."

Brix steered Calum to a clear corner of the cave where he and Abel had often hung out when they should've been at school. "Do you mean that?"

Calum eyed him. "That I'll always sit with you? Whenever you need me to? Yeah, Brix, I do."

"What if things go wrong?"

"With what?" Calum frowned. "Are we talking about sex? Cos I thought we'd covered that."

"I'm not talking about sex. I meant in general. I'm undetectable now, but that might not last if I become resistant to the meds, or liver-toxic, or my—fuck. No. That's not what I'm trying to say." Brix searched for the words to explain, but as ever, they weren't there when he needed them most.

Calum did that thing where he tucked Brix's hair behind his ears and rubbed his thumbs over his cheekbones, fingers grazing his jaw. "You have every chance of living as long as you might've done without HIV—longer, probably, seeing as you don't live like a heathen anymore. So that's what I'm going with until the universe gives me a reason not to. But whatever happens, I need you to know that the days of you facing this alone are over."

"I can't—" Brix took a breath and tried again. "I shouldn't ask that of you. And you can't ever stay because you feel sorry for me. Promise me you won't."

Calum blinked. "I don't feel sorry for you, Brix. I love you."

"Why?"

It wasn't the response Brix's heart screamed, and Calum seemed to know it. He smiled again, affection—love—blazing from his dark stare. "Because you're the strongest, kindest motherfucker I've ever known, and you make me feel ten feet tall."

"You know I love you too, don't you?"

Calum shrugged. "Some days. Others I find it so fucking hard to believe you'd even want to, but I'm working on that."

"I can help."

"You already do. I felt like a different man when I went back to London. A man who never would've let Rob shit all over him, and the only reason I didn't go and fucking tell him to sit on a thorny buttplug was you."

Brix grinned. "Me?"

"Who needs closure on bullshit that was never real when I can sit in a damp cave right here, right now?"

Tension bled out of Brix, loosening every muscle. He sat back, letting his head knock the stone behind him. "I didn't drag you up here to convince you that I love you. That'll happen on its own."

"So this is about sex?"

Brix rotated, stretching his legs over Calum's thighs, anchoring himself in how Calum's hands felt as they found their way to his calves. "There's some shit I need to say."

"I'm listening."

"Shit I should've said before I fed you scrumpy and kissed you."

"Still listening, Brix."

"I'm never going to fuck you without a condom."

Calum's lips twitched. "That's progress from never fucking me at all."

"I mean it."

"I believe you."

"And what if I can't ever do it at all? What if my dick's turned to ash?"

"Doubt it, mate. Felt pretty solid to me."

Heat flooded Brix's veins. His bones. His blood. "I'm serious. Thinking about it gives me palpitations. The bad kind."

"Come here." Calum coaxed him closer, until Brix had a knee either side of him, their faces inches apart. "Lee told me she had panic attacks when she first came here. Couldn't get on a bus by herself. She said you helped her get over it. What did you do?"

"Got on the bus with her twice a day for a month. Sixty trips to fucking Bodmin."

"Then what?"

"I followed the bus in the van so she could get off anytime she wanted. Sounds mad now."

"So why did you do it?"

"Because she deserved better than to be afraid of something so ordinary."

"Right." Calum nuzzled Brix's neck. "And you helped her get over that. I know it's not the same, but you deserve ordinary things too."

"Cal, us fucking isn't going to be ordinary."

"No?"

"No." Brix claimed Calum's mouth, a kiss that started like all the others had—soft and sweet. Cautious. But there was nothing careful about the rawness that surged in him as they collided harder than they ever had before.

The roughness of his hands on Calum's skin.

The clash of teeth as the kiss deepened.

Brix pushed Calum against the cold stone, and the wall he'd built between them came tumbling down, leaving bright light in its wake. Sharper sensations. Everything, just…more.

"Fuck." Calum broke away, chest heaving, fighting for air. "Jesus."

Brix kissed him again. Then laughed, easing back as his pulse slowed. "Guess it's gonna be like breaking a dam?"

Calum rubbed his lips. "Feels that way. What's the opposite of ordinary?"

Brix kissed him again, losing his breath. Stealing Calum's. "You."