“Harvest House in Bodmin.”
Brix’s heart did an uncomfortable flip. “Oh. How long is she there for?”
“A month, or until she stops wanting to die.”
Calum frowned. “Sorry, Fen. I’m not from round here. What’s Harvest House, Brix?”
“It’s the psychiatric unit at the hospital.”
“The worst one,” Fen said. “Where they send you when you’re proper crazy.”
“Ah now, that’s not quite true,” Brix said. “You don’t have to be crazy to be mentally ill. And it’s not that bad there. Probably the safest place for her if she’s not feeling well.”
Fen shrugged listlessly as Brix sensed Calum’s gaze on him, and took it as his cue to move on. Some days he barely remembered Harvest House had ever existed, but others he could still smell the disinfectant they smeared on the floors every night.
He left Calum and Fen to it and returned to his own station. The half-finished sketch he needed for his first appointment greeted him, reminding him that despite what he preached to his studio crew, he was woefully underprepared for the day ahead. Rectifying that required his full attention, and the next time he glanced up, Calum was well into his own work, covering whatever ink Fen had on her chest.
Calum’s gaze was intense, his tongue caught between his teeth. Brix liked to talk as he etched ink onto his clients. Not Calum. He had a gentle touch with his needle, but his concentration was absolute. No small talk for Fen, not that she looked like she wanted it. Poor girl was in her own world.
Curiosity burned Brix’s soul. Calum specialised in dot work, but his trademark intricate style wouldn’t work here, whatever Fen needed covering. Cover-ups needed dark ink, and lots of it, which made it tricky to create a piece that actually meant something.
Still, he’d run out of time to obsess over Calum for now. The studio door opened and the biker dude who was to be Brix’s canvas for the day arrived. The back piece was large and complex, and kept Brix busy for a couple of hours. Fen was long gone by the time he took a breather, and Calum nowhere to be seen either.
Brix abandoned the biker dude under the guise of making a cuppa and went to the backroom staff used as a break room. He half expected to find it empty, but Calum was at the table, engrossed in something on the studio’s iPad. “Watcha doing?”
Calum jumped. “Fuck. Oh, it’s you.”
“Expecting someone else?”
“What?”
“You jumped like a cat with a cucumber.”
Calum stared blankly. Clearly he hadn’t seen the YouTube videos of cats shrieking at vegetables. “What are you up to? Anything fun?”
“I’m trying to get a new phone, but I can’t seem to get a contract.”
“Why not?”
Calum shrugged in a way Brix had come to realise meant he was going to give a half answer. “Credit history must be fucked.”
“Why would it be fucked?”
Calum got up and went to the sink, rinsing out his tea mug. “I borrowed a lot of money a few years ago. I got behind with the repayments pretty much straightaway, nothing major, but I haven’t done much to repair the damage since.”
“And your old phone was in your ex’s name.” That made sense. Inactivity on a bad credit file was almost as bad as fucking up in the first place. “Which means you’ve been invisible for a while, eh?”
“Yup. The bank only gave me an overdraft on my old cash account because I’ve had it since I was twelve.”
Brix hadn’t known banks existed when he’d been that age. Too busy pinching crates of mackerel and wondering why the younger fishermen were so entrancing as they hauled their catch ashore. “So what are you going to do?”
“Dunno. It’s not like I even need a fucking phone. Who would I call?”
“Whoever you called with the phone you had before you came here.”
Calum laughed humourlessly, and Brix felt like he was missing something totally fucking obvious. Then he recalled his own spell in the wilderness when he’d returned to Porthkennack, how his phone had found its way to the bottom of the cliffs, and it had been weeks before he’d seen fit to replace it.
“What about a SIM-only deal? I’ve got an old iPhone at home you could borrow, and paying the bill might help your credit score.”
“You’ve done enough for me. I can’t borrow anything else from you.”
“Buy it from me, then. I was gonna sell it to Jory for fifty quid.”
“Fifty quid? For an iPhone? Piss off, mate.”
“You think I’d lie to you?”
Crickets.
“Seriously?” Brix frowned. “It’s a phone, Cal. And I’m not a fucking liar.”
“I know, it’s just—”
“Just what?”
There was a long pause before Calum finally turned around.
“I’m sorry, okay?” He stuck his hand in his back pocket and pulled out a few notes. “I’m not used to anyone who’s not my mother genuinely giving a shit about me.”
“I give a shit.”
“I know, and I’m sorry I’m being a twat about it.”
Brix wanted to ask if being a twat about it included neither of them mentioning the drunken kiss that kept coming back to him at inappropriate moments, but for reasons he didn’t quite understand, he couldn’t. Instead, he took Calum’s money and left him to it.
An hour or so went by before Calum came to find him. “I got a SIM. It should come in the post tomorrow.”
“Good stuff.” Brix kept his eyes on the stencil he was prepping for the following day—a polka-trash pinup girl with far more colour than he’d ever imagined himself using when he’d first started tattooing.
“Lena said I need to show you the photos of the cover-up before she puts them on your Facebook page.”
“Okay.” Brix set his work aside. How the hell does she know I haven’t seen it already? “Let’s have it.”
Calum held out the studio’s iPad. “I didn’t get a before shot. Didn’t think it was appropriate, given how personal it was.”
“You thought right.” Brix was all for promotion, but a client’s privacy came first. He swiped the iPad until the photo app came up, revealing Jory’s work, and then Kim’s, and finally the cover-up Calum had done for Fen.
Brix stared, blinked, then stared some more, taking in the dark sketch of an Elastoplast with three words etched beneath it—three words that made the tattoo jump out of the screen and lance Brix’s heart: I forgive you.
“Wow. You fucking nailed that, eh?”
Calum shrugged. “Just drew what she felt.”
“Which was?”
“Angry, broken, and totally in love with the person who’d made her like that.”
It was Brix’s turn to be silent as he wondered if Calum’s empathy with Fen cut close to reality. The idea that Calum was still in love with the arsehole who’d driven him all the way to Porthkennack made him feel sick, and then more than a little stupid. Years of dormant friendship and a scrumpy-induced snog didn’t give him the right to know how Calum felt about anyone else, his douche bag of an ex included.
“Anyway,” Calum said when Brix failed to respond. “How do you know so much about the mental health ward?”
“Why do you think?”
“You were . . . er, a patient there?”
“Once upon a time. It’s probably changed a bit since my day, and I was on the children’s ward, so . . .” The distress in Calum’s eyes was too much, and Brix turned away under the guise of straightening ink bottles on the shelf. “Don’t look at me like that.”
Calum said nothing. Brix closed his eyes briefly, then turned back to face the music that was Calum’s liquid gaze. “Are you going to make me tell you all about it?”
“Only if you want to.”
“I don’t, but I reckon it would be better for both of us if I did.”
“Why?”
Brix shrugged. “Dunno.”
More silence. Brix sighed and drew Calum’s
work chair close enough to sit on. He’d recovered from their drunken escapades a week ago, but talking about the past often left him profoundly tired. Not that he did it much. “I was thirteen when I got sectioned. My brother found me in the shed with a noose around my neck. I hadn’t jumped off the ladder, and I’m not sure I would’ve, but . . .”
Calum clearly tried—and failed—to conceal his horror. “Why would you do something like that?”
“It was so long ago, it’s difficult to explain now. Erm, I was thirteen, like I said, just figuring out I liked lads rather than birds, then I woke up one night and heard my dad say he’d shoot a poof on sight rather than have a pint with one. It fucked me up for a long time after Abel found me, until I realised my dad wasn’t his words.”
“What do you mean?”
“My dad . . . he’s been through a lot himself, you know? He wasn’t raised in the world we were. I’m not excusing inbred homophobia, but he was devastated when the shrinks told him I was scared of him. He came to the ward that night with a bottle of Scrumpty-Dumpty and told me he’d be proud to share his cider with me, even if I did like it up the arse.”
Calum’s eyes widened. “He said what?”
Brix chuckled. “Don’t be hard on him. It was as much as I could ever expect from him. My lot ain’t never gonna win any diversity contests. They are who they are, and they allow me the same privilege. Can’t ask for more.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Calum shook his head, apparently bewildered. “The stuff about your dad makes sense, but I can’t believe I never knew that part of your coming-out story. I thought you’d just had a rough few weeks with your brother.”
“Nah, my brother was cool. The arse thing freaks him out, but find me a straight bloke who doesn’t lose his balls at the thought of riding a dick.”
Calum snorted. “There’s plenty of us can’t handle it either.”
The image of Calum straddling Brix’s waist, his strong thighs holding Brix’s slender body in place, invaded Brix’s mind so suddenly he had to take a breath. Jesus. The mental block on the line between his dick and his brain rattled and heat flooded his veins.
“Brix? What’s the matter?”
“What?”
Calum stared at him. “You’ve been really weird this last week. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Sorry.”
“Ah, talking about it messes with your head?”
“Aye, sometimes.” Guilt burned in Brix’s gut, though his cryptic answer wasn’t a complete lie. As Calum’s naked form faded away, the smell of Harvest House returned, and a desperate need for some fresh air rushed over him. “Listen, I’m gonna run out and get lunch. You want anything?”
“Lunch?”
“Yeah. Lunch. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“It’s four o’clock.”
“So? Nothing wrong with running a little late, is there?”
“S’pose not.”
“Good. See you in a bit.”
Brix got up and fled the studio. He was halfway up the road before he realised he’d left everything behind—phone, keys, and wallet, and he couldn’t even go home, let alone buy a sandwich he didn’t want, without creeping back to the studio and facing Calum’s inevitable confusion. Oh well. A long, lonely walk by the sea would have to do.
Calum came awake with a start, heart racing, his breath caught in his chest. He sat up, unsure of what had woken him, if anything even had. His chaotic life with Rob had left him a light sleeper. Probably the cat farting or—
The metallic scrape of Brix’s back gate cut his logic off. Calum frowned. The noise was unmistakable, but it was—he checked his borrowed phone—three in the morning. Why would anyone be pissing around in Brix’s back garden? Unless it was Brix himself, of course, but he’d gone to bed before Calum, and he slept like the dead.
The sound came again. Despite his better judgement, Calum got up and went to the window. A shadow caught his eye, and the looming outline of what looked like a pallet of crates. He blinked and rubbed his face. The new shapes in the garden blurred, like they weren’t really there. Calum frowned. Had he imagined the whole damned thing?
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. Was it worth waking him? Or would Brix give him that kind smile he reserved for Calum when he was too nice to tell him he was being a dick?
He didn’t relish the prospect of waking Brix. Brix had been . . . odd since the drunken night neither of them had mentioned—the scrumpy, the kiss. Calum had assumed him hungover at first, and then upset by the painful memories Calum’s cover-up on the girl had dragged up, but as the days and then weeks had gone by, Brix had become more unpredictable. Some days he seemed the happiest bloke in the world, and yet others Calum couldn’t tell if his ominous words of the past still held true. “You can come up here wanting to jump . . .” Calum hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but combined with Brix’s tale of Harvest House . . . “My brother found me in the shed with a noose around my neck.”
Calum shivered on the cold landing. Brix had been suicidal at thirteen? Jesus. Calum’s clusterfuck with Rob felt more pathetic than ever. He knocked on Brix’s door. There was no reply. Calum tapped again, louder, but when he heard nothing, grew a pair and pushed the door open.
Brix’s bed was empty, 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 a sudden unease prickled Calum’s skin. He left the cluttered scene behind and padded softly downstairs, half expecting to find Brix in front of the dying fire, sipping tea and sketching, like he did most evenings, sometimes chewing on the crusty sourdough bread he and Kim seemed obsessed with baking every Sunday.
But the living room was empty, and the kitchen. Brix was nowhere to be seen, and for the first time in more than a month, Calum felt truly alone. And worried. 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 disquiet in his gut kept him from shuffling back to bed and minding his own business. Rob would’ve laughed at him, called him a hormonal old woman, but Calum was learning—slowly—to ignore the nagging voice in his head that told him every instinct he had was wrong, and instead of fleeing to the relative sanctuary of his room, he went to the kitchen and flicked the kettle on.
Tea in hand, he returned to the living room and stoked the fire, remembering what Brix had taught him about stacking logs to give out optimum heat. The flames were hypnotic, and he was half asleep when he remembered the phantom boxes in the garden.
Reluctantly, he forced himself away from the fire and outside, shivering in the bitter wind that blew in from the sea. At first he saw nothing except the usual garden scenery, but then the stacked crates took shape, though they weren’t as tall as Calum had imagined when he’d seen them from the window. In fact, the stack seemed half the size it had forty minutes ago.
The discrepancy was enough to drive Calum forward to lay his hand on the crates and be sure they were solid wood, not made of the fog of his overactive imagination.
“Shit.”
Calum jumped a mile and spun around. At first he saw no source of the muttered exclamation and heard nothing over the stampeding tattoo of his own heart.
Then Brix stepped out of the shadows, his eyes dark and hooded. “What are you doing out here?”
“Erm . . . looking for you?” It was halfway true.
“Why are you looking for me?”
“Because you’re not in bed. I thought I heard something, so I checked your room. When you weren’t there, I—”
“Fuck’s sake.” Brix ran a hand through his wild hair.
“Sorry, mate. I was just a bit worried.”
Brix said nothing. Calum stared at the ground, wishing it would swallow him up. Pissing Brix off was the last thing he wanted to do. Why the fuck didn’t you stay inside?
Two fingers under Calum’s chin made him jump for a second time. Brix’s face suddenly an inch from his own startled him even more.
“Don’t do that,” Brix said fiercely.
“Do what?”
“Look down like you’re the fucking problem. You surprised me, Cal. I don’t hate you.”
Brix likely meant well, but the anger in his tone made Calum’s heart pound louder. Or maybe that was down to Brix’s proximity, or the heat of his fingertips on Calum’s chin. Who knew? Not Calum. All he knew was Brix’s gaze was so intense it left him dizzy, until their cold, damp surroundings made themselves known again.
Brix shivered and let his hand drop. “You shouldn’t be out here. You’ll catch your death.”
“I’m not going to get any colder than you are.”
“True.” The barest hint of Brix’s crooked grin briefly lit up his face. “And I’m fucking freezing.”
“Then you should come inside.”
“Wish I could.”
Calum wanted to ask why he couldn’t, but something told him Brix wouldn’t answer. Instead, he turned his attention to the boxes. “What are these?”
“Dunno. Haven’t looked.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause they’re not mine.” Brix sighed and his faint grin disappeared. “My aunt dumped them here because she’s too tight to pay her gang to lug them up the cliffs to the family 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. 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 farting around 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.”
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