“A hundred and seventy-five days.”
I did the maths. Kim had been dry less than six months. “So—”
“It’s an ongoing thing,” he said. “I haven’t lost my mind on it for a while, but I have slipped a few times—more than a few.”
I sat back in my seat and tried to imagine my life without the comforting burn of a shot of whiskey, or the refreshing buzz of an ice-cold beer. “How long have you been in recovery for?”
“Four years, off and on. I’d been dry for eighteen months before I fucked up last.”
“Was there a trigger?”
“For fucking up? Man, there’s always a trigger, an excuse. That’s what AA’s for . . . to learn better ways of handling them.”
I’d always pictured AA as a place for old men—a last stop for the winos who lived in the shop doorways on Oxford Street. In my ignorant imagination, young addicts fried their brains on Mkat and got sent to cushy rehab centres. “Thank you for telling me. You didn’t have to. I wouldn’t have lost my shit if I’d found out later.”
Kim smiled. “I believe you, but I don’t like hiding it. It’s not healthy for me. Besides, if I hadn’t told you, someone else would have. You can’t hide anything in Porthkennack.”
“Sounds like you’ve tried.”
“Hasn’t everyone? This town, though, it’s something else, eh?”
I couldn’t deny that. Porthkennack hadn’t been my home for a long time, if it ever truly had been, but the claustrophobic town always held a certain magic, even if I did feel like I’d returned to it to die this time around. “Word on the street is that you’re a tattooist as well as an epic furniture craftsman. What came first?”
Kim shrugged. “I’ve been tattooing for as long as I can remember—grew up doing it in my best mate’s garage—but I’d been in AA three times before I realised my heart wasn’t in it, at least, not in the way I’d thought it was.”
Intrigued, I put my elbows on the table and leaned forward. “I’ve never met a tattooist who is anything less than obsessed with their work.”
“Oh, I was—I am—but growing up, I was more into my mate than what we were doing.”
Ah. The penny dropped. “Was he straight?”
“Brix? Fuck no, but we’re like brothers, man. I saw that once I got out into the world and met other blokes, you know?”
Growing up in London, the world had been thrust upon me before I’d been truly ready for it, but Kim’s tale was one I’d heard before. “How did you get into the furniture making?”
“Through AA. My old sponsor was a chippie. He used to invite me down his workshop when I was having a bad day. Put a saw in my hand, and then a welder. I never looked back, ’cept when I fancy a skinful.”
It sounded almost romantic, though I was willing to bet by the subtle tension in Kim’s soft smile that it had been—and still was—anything but. “One day at a time, eh?”
“Indeed. Anyway, enough about me. If you’re not running for the hills, you wanna explain how you ended up back here when it’s clearly the last place on earth you want to be?”
“Porthkennack’s not the last place I want to be.”
“But?”
When had I become so transparent? “It’s just not the place I thought I’d end up. I had a good life in London, and it was popping, you know? I could work three gigs a day if I wanted to. Back here I get three in a month if I’m lucky.”
“Bet your quality of life is better, though. Brix looked like death when he moved back home. Took years of sea air to set him right.”
“Brix Lusmoore? The bloke you were in love with?”
Kim rolled his eyes. “I was never in love with him. Brothers, remember?”
Yeah, yeah. I didn’t know much about Porthkennack’s notorious Lusmoore clan, but I’d met Brix when my dad had bought some scruffy bald chickens from him, and the bloke was almost as gorgeous as Kim.
Almost.
Not that being gorgeous made a man lovable, or worthy of the effort it took to bother. Fuck no. I’d learned that hard lesson, more than once, and I was done getting my heart burned.
Kim tapped my temple. “You’re miles away. Don’t be. Keep your shit to yourself if you want. I don’t need to know anything about you, if you’re happier that way. We can just fuck.”
“We can just fuck.” God, the idea was tempting, but even as I turned in my seat and leaned closer to Kim, parting my lips in anticipation of his kiss, I knew it wouldn’t be as simple as that. Couldn’t be, because nothing ever was, right?
Kim’s lips brushed mine, and the coherency required to give a shit evaporated. I kissed him back and let the thrill of his touch wash over me, eclipsing any sensibility I’d arrived with—not that there’d been much. And before long, I found myself bent over the table with my legs hooked around Kim’s waist.
I arched my back, groaning as Kim wrestled with his belt buckle. “Hurry up.”
“I’m trying.” Kim finally loosened his belt enough for his jeans to drop down his slender thighs. “I’d kinda planned on getting you into my bed this time around, not fucking you at the kitchen table.”
The fact that he’d planned to fuck me again sent shivers down my spine. I reclaimed my legs then gasped as Kim lifted me from the table and deposited me on a nearby rug. The contrast between the soft wool and the cool tabletop was startling, and electric. My heart sped up, and I watched, breathless, as Kim found a condom who-the-hell-knew-where and rolled it on.
“Do you still have lube in your wallet?”
“Just spit on it,” I ground out impatiently.
Kim shook his head. “No way. That shit burns.”
My lust-addled mind realised that his knowledge on the subject likely meant he was versatile, and my cock throbbed so hard it hurt. I loved getting reamed until my mind was devoid of all else, but the thought of holding Kim’s lean legs and sliding my dick inside him was bewitching.
But the need to have him inside me won out. I jutted my chin in the general direction of my discarded jeans. “Back pocket.”
Kim retrieved the lube and slicked his dick. Then he nudged my legs apart with his knees and dropped a palm either side of my head, his cock pressing against me. “Damn. Didn’t even get you naked.”
It was true. Both of us were still wearing T-shirts and socks, but I was past caring, if, indeed, I ever had. Kim slid home, and I threw my head back, groaning, gasping, almost undone by that single, devilish stroke. “God.”
“I know, right?” Kim flexed his hips, eliciting a strangled noise from me. “It’s bloody magic.”
I couldn’t think of a better word, not that I tried too hard as Kim dug his fingers into my hips and fucked me. Lips caught in a snarl, I thrust my hips up to meet his fast-increasing pace, and it didn’t take long for shit to get real.
Kim gripped my leg and pushed my thigh to my chest, snaking an arm under my shoulders to tug on my hair. His rough touch had me seeing stars, and I took myself in hand, pumping my dick furiously to keep up with him. “Fuck, I’m gonna come.”
And that was an understatement. I’d come like a train in the basement at the gig, my yells masked by the thumping bass above us, but this—being shunted across the floor of Kim’s reclaimed gypsy trailer—was something else, something that would rattle the tin walls around us if I let it go.
Kim’s hand slid from under me to grip my chin. His eyes were wild, his breathing sharp and scratchy. He fucked me faster, groaning with every brutal drive of his hips, and a beautiful flush coloured his cheeks. “I’m gonna come too.”
Thank God. I watched, awed, as he fell apart, and then followed him, lost in the elegant arch of his neck and his ragged cry. Wet warmth coated my stomach and hand, and heat pulsed inside me. I mourned the sensation lost to the condom, but as Kim dragged me up for a searing kiss, the reckless devil in my brain danced away. We kissed and kissed and kissed, until I had no real idea how long we’d been writhing on the floor. My dick hardened again, and I gasped in enough a
ir to beg for round two. “Kim—”
The trailer door opened, letting in a warmish spring breeze that carried with it a sultry giggle and the distinctive floral scent of a woman.
“I see you started without me.”
I’d never covered my cock so fast in all my life, not even when my mum had caught me wanking in year ten. I wrenched my legs from Kim’s grasp and scrambled to my knees, swiping my jeans from the floor.
I missed and toppled sideways. “Shit.”
The woman chuckled again. “Don’t get dressed on my account.”
Oh hey, Red. I stared at the woman from the gig—the singer from Moon-Hot Monkey Paste, for a moment oblivious to Kim moving past me. In the flesh, she was as beautiful as the pictures I’d spent far too long editing: curvy and quirky, and covered in as much ink as Kim. I wanted to touch her, out of fascination more than attraction.
But Kim got there first. He grabbed her hand and started to pull her away. “Damn it, Lena. I told you I wasn’t around tonight.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Red—Lena, apparently—retorted, yanking her hand from his grasp. “To turn the burners off while you’re out. I didn’t realise you had company. I’m sorry.”
She directed her last words at me. With my skin still sheened with sweat—and other things—I didn’t know quite how to respond. I wiped my stomach with my T-shirt and shrugged. “It’s fine. I was—er—going, anyway.”
“Jas—”
Kim reached for my hand before he seemed to remember he was already holding Red’s, and something in the way he’d tangled his fingers in hers felt suddenly significant. I tilted my head to one side and regarded them, absorbing how their bodies had instinctively angled towards each other.
Shit. My stomach dropped. “You two are together.”
It wasn’t a question so much as stating the obvious. And the split-second silence that lacked the amused denial I’d subconsciously hoped for said far more than whatever Kim opened his mouth to say.
I cut him off. “Don’t. It’s not like you told me anything different, is it?”
And he hadn’t. My assumptions were my own. I yanked my now-grubby T-shirt over my head and searched for my shoes.
Kim’s hand finally found my arm. “Don’t go, Jas. It’s not what you think.”
Right. I forced a smile, struggling to keep my tone light as a brutal wave of disappointment washed over me. “It doesn’t matter, mate. Honestly. It was just a shag.”
Kim’s hand fell away. I took my chance and pushed past him, fortuitously spotting my shoes by the door. I stamped into them and made my escape, taking the wooden steps two at a time. The orchard had seemed beautiful when I’d arrived, the grass dappled with the setting sun as it filtered through the trees, but the canopy of leaves felt oppressive now, and I was drawn like a moth towards the fading daylight ahead.
“Jas! Jas! Wait up.”
Kim caught up with me on the dusty path that ran parallel to a field of strawberries I hadn’t noticed on my way in. I kept walking, though I did pay him the courtesy of looking at him. After all, he hadn’t actually done anything wrong. Hadn’t claimed to be gay, or single, or both. And, stupidly, I hadn’t asked him.
Stupidly, because this was a game I’d played before, though admittedly, this round had been lightning fast compared to the clusterfuck of my last serious relationship.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to explain.”
“I wasn’t going to. Seems to me that you don’t want to listen.” Kim’s gaze was steady as he passed me an A4 envelope. “Figured I’d give you the drawings I did for you to take home. No reason we can’t work together if it was just a shag, eh?”
I’d pretty much forgotten that the original purpose of my visit had been to discuss the furniture plans for the barn renovation, and the concept of upcycled tables and chairs seemed worlds apart from the chaos playing havoc with my insides. Just a shag? As Kim let go of the envelope and walked away, every instinct I had told me it was anything but.
I dragged myself back to my flat and hit the bottle, blocking the niggle of shame with swig after swig of my favourite whiskey. After hours of pacing, the couch called my name, and I wound up squint-glaring at the ceiling, dribble-ranting at myself for being a naive twat.
Kim had told me no lies, but he hadn’t told me the truth, either. My assumptions about his sexuality were out of place with everything I believed in, but he should’ve told me he had a missus . . . right? So what if she didn’t seem to care that she’d pretty much caught him balls-deep in me? That was her prerogative. Me? I preferred to be kept in the loop. Surprises weren’t my bag, ’cause every one that had ever been forced on me had been shite.
This one was no exception. In the murky light of arse o’clock in the morning, the reality of how taken I’d been with Kim set it. I’d fucked my way around most of Hoxton before I’d admitted defeat and retreated to Porthkennack, but I could barely remember a face, a scent, a sensation.
I remembered every moment I’d spent naked with Kim. I remembered every moment I’d been in his presence, and fuelled by a bottle of single malt, the ridiculousness of my overblown sentiment set in. I’d known the bloke a fortnight, but the churning in my gut was ten times what it had been when my life in London had unravelled all those month ago.
What the actual fuck?
No sensible explanation came to mind, so I dragged myself from the couch and fetched my iPad from my office. A photography app was open, loaded with final RAW files that I really needed to sift through before I converted them to JPEGs, but I shut it down with barely a glance and opened Facebook instead. Kim didn’t strike me as a social-media kind of guy, but what did I know?
It took me a while to track him down. I eventually found him tagged in a photo on the site for the tattoo studio—a photo of Lena wearing fuck-all clothes and baring her beautifully inked back. With considerable effort, I refrained from chucking the iPad across the room and snooped a little deeper. Kim’s name appeared frequently on the studio’s business page, but there wasn’t much of him in the flesh. I clicked through to his personal page. His profile picture was of him with another man—Brix Lusmoore if I recognised the telltale bone structure and killer good looks that held a hint of danger. The tag confirmed it.
I expected to find Kim’s photo uploads awash with Lena, but she was oddly absent, and his relationship status was blank. Hmm. I scrolled further down. His sexuality was listed as bi, which came as no surprise, though I couldn’t deny the flash of relief. And guilt. I’d judged Kim by someone else’s piss-poor standards and had half expected him to be masquerading as a straight dude with a wife and two-point-four kids.
So you erased a whole slice of the spectrum? Including yourself?
Nice.
The niggle of shame that I’d avoided by hitting the bottle finally kicked in. My insecurities weren’t Kim’s, or Lena’s, whatever she was to him—whoever she was to him. They were mine, and were only still with me because I allowed them to be. I was a big boy, not a green teenager, and I’d fucked up the one thing—my family aside—that had brightened my life in Porthkennack.
Kim likely thought I was a total wanker, and as I sloped off to bed to jack off and pass out, I reckoned he wasn’t far wrong.
A few days later, the pleasurable ache at the base of my spine had faded, but the cloud of despair remained. I stayed off the booze—mostly—and worked myself into a Lightroom-induced migraine. When it had eased, and my fridge had reached a critical state of depletion, I admitted defeat and ran home to my stepmother, craving the comfort she’d always been so much better at giving than my own mum.
She didn’t ask what had led me unshaven and bedraggled to her kitchen counter. Just dumped a dish of cauliflower cheese in front of me, and put the kettle on the stove. After plying me with obscene amounts of strong, sweet tea, she asked the one question that could put me off the first hot meal I’d had in days.
“Did you get to speak to that carpenter man a
bout the barn furniture?”
I pushed the baking dish away. “He’s not a carpenter. He does welding and shit too, and tattooing.”
“And?” Laura looked at me expectantly. “Tattooing isn’t much good for our old barn, and for God’s sake don’t let your brothers get any more ghastly ink, but the welding sounds interesting. What did he have to say?”
I wondered if I’d inadvertently called her in my sleep and told her of my plans to visit Kim at home. As luck—or not—would have it, the envelope Kim had pressed into my hand was in my camera bag, something I rarely left the house without.
With Laura at my shoulder, I spread the contents of the envelope out on the kitchen table. Sketches, mostly, interspersed with a couple of Polaroids of existing pieces I assumed Kim wanted to work from: snapshots of artfully rusted fishing equipment and seaside paraphernalia. The concept was a perfect blend of the farm’s rural setting and the wild seas of Porthkennack just beyond the gates.
I loved it, like I’d loved Kim’s work from the start, and however much I’d embarrassed myself, that hadn’t changed. If I could wrestle the rest of the design plans away from my hapless brother and negotiate a fair price from Kim, the barn could truly be something special. My imagination took over, and I pictured the rustic canteen I’d dreamed up when Gaz had first mentioned his harebrained idea. Laura and Co.’s food combined with Kim’s chalk-white pallet tables and chairs . . . Damn, if I hadn’t been so intent on mourning what had never been mine to begin with, I’d have been pretty fucking excited.
As it was, I let Laura’s obvious delight seep into me and accepted one of her crush-to-the-bosom hugs.
“Ah, sweetie,” she said. “It’s so nice to have you here, but you’re skin and bone. Won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”
My slim-ish frame had nothing on Kim’s slender bones, but my only answer was a shrug.
Junkyard Heart (Porthkennack Book 7) Page 4