The place was deserted, save Lena on the front desk. Brix glanced at the clock. Oops. He’d been nursing Dottie for the best part of three hours, and it had passed in a flash. The only appointment left was Calum’s—a quick rework of an existing piece that wouldn’t take long.
Brix placed Dottie on Calum’s bench and looked around for paper and pencils. He tore a page out of a sketchbook and folded it in half, and half again, then put pencil to paper, and said everything and nothing in five short words.
Meet me at the cave.
“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.
Brix settled for a nervous smile. “Good job you learned in Porthkennack, then, eh?”
“I have Porthkennack to thank for a lot of things.”
“Me too.” In spite of the wind howling outside, warmth filled the cave and Brix’s heart. He gave in to it and grabbed Calum’s hand, yanking him farther inside. “Did you find Dottie?”
Calum stumbled into Brix’s side before he steadied himself on a nearby crate. “Find her? I fucking fell on her like a long-lost lover.” His choice of words did odd things to Brix. Calum squeezed his hand. “Seriously, thank you so much. I was going to send her off to be repaired. It never occurred to me to ask you.”
Brix shrugged, twining his fingers with Calum’s. “I should’ve fixed her when you brought her home. I could see how special she was.”
“I bought her at Dalston flea market the day I got my apprenticeship. Didn’t use her much until after you left, though. Dunno why, ’cause I’ve felt lost inking without her down here.”
“I left four years ago. You’ve had a long time to become dependent on her.” Brix grinned. He knew all too well how it felt to be attached to a favourite gun. “She is beautiful. I wish we had more vintage machines. Lee and Jory don’t know they’re born with them flashy new ones.”
Calum chuckled, but then his expression sobered, his eyes curious. “You gonna tell me why you’ve summoned me up here?”
“I’m gonna try.” Brix inclined his head to a clear corner of the cave, a place he and Abel had often holed up when they should’ve been at school. “Sit with me?”
“Always.”
Brix sat, tugging Calum with him. “Do you mean that?”
“That I’ll always sit with you? Whenever you need me to? Yeah, Brix, I do. And I meant it after I knew you were HIV positive. I’m not afraid of it for my sake, only of what it could mean for you if something goes wrong.”
It was Calum all over to tell Brix everything he needed to know in one breath. No guessing, no games. No hiding from the truth. “You know things could go wrong, don’t you? I’m undetectable now, but that might not last if I become resistant to the meds, or liver-toxic from the Truvada . . .”
Brix didn’t have the stomach to list any more ways the shadows lurking in his blood might kill him, and it seemed Calum didn’t have the heart to listen either. He pressed a finger to Brix’s lips and shook his head.
“You told me you had every chance of living as long, and as healthily, as you might’ve done without HIV. I’m going with that until the universe gives me a reason not to. But whatever happens, I got you on this, Brix, I promise. The days of you facing this alone are over.”
“I shouldn’t ask that of you, and you shouldn’t stay with me because you feel sorry for me.”
“I don’t feel sorry for you. I love you.”
“Why?”
It wasn’t the response Brix’s heart was screaming, but Calum’s smile seemed to know that. He put his arm around Brix and held him tight against him. “Because you’re the strongest, kindest motherfucker I’ve ever known, and I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to see it.”
“You know I love you too, don’t you?”
“Some days. Others I still find it hard to believe you’d want to, but I’m working on that.”
“I can help?”
“You already have. 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 so was you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah . . . you. Who needs closure on bullshit that was never real when I can sit in a damp cave right here, right now?”
Brix sat back, letting his head gently knock the stone behind him. “I didn’t drag you up here to convince you that I love you. I can show you that, every day, until you believe it.”
“You want to talk about sex?”
“Am I that transparent?”
“No, I just can’t think of anything else that would have you rambling like a maniac.”
“I’m not rambling.”
“Warming up to it, though, aren’t you?”
Brix couldn’t deny it. Talking—God, thinking—about sex had been off the table for so long, he’d almost forgotten how. “There’s an article online that says it’s likely safe for us to fuck without rubbers while I’m undetectable. I won’t ever test that theory, even if the science makes sense. If we’re going to do this, you gotta know that.”
Calum nodded and waved his hand for Brix to continue.
“I’m not promising that I can do it, either. I’m so fucking scared of hurting someone, Cal, I reckon my dick has probably turned to ash.”
“I doubt it, mate. Felt pretty solid to me.”
Heat flooded Brix’s cheeks. He gave Calum a playful shove, glad the cave hid his blush. “I’m serious. Thinking about it gives me palpitations.”
Calum held up his hands. “Okay, so try and look at it from another angle, then. Lee told me she had terrible panic attacks when she first came here. Couldn’t get on the bus by herself. She said you helped her get over it. What did you do?”
“I took the bus to Bodmin with her every day until she could do it on her own.”
“Then what?”
Brix shook his head slightly. “I followed the bus in the van so she could get off anytime she wanted. Sounds like madness now.”
“So why did you do it?”
“Because she deserved better than to be afraid of something so ordinary.”
Calum spread his hands, like he’d made his case. “Why is sex any different? In this context, at least? If it’s something you want—and I’m not saying it has to be—but if it is, why shouldn’t you have it? Why do you deserve that normalcy any less than Lee does?”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“Isn’t it? Seems to me you and Lee were both fucked over by the very people who were supposed to protect you. You helped her get over that, but you won’t let me help you with this.”
“I do want it . . . I want you.”
“I know. You just gotta let yourself have me.”
Brix sighed, letting loose a gust of air that seemed to lessen the weight on his chest. “I don’t know when, or how, but I’d like to try. Soon. Perhaps. Maybe.”
“And I’ll be here whenever that is. I’m not waiting on it, though, mate. What we already have is more than enough.”
There wasn’t much left to say with words. They’d kissed too many times for Brix to count, but as their lips met, it felt like the first time Brix had ever lost himself in the gentle, dizzying sweep of Calum’s tongue. He fell into the kiss, one hand sliding past Calum’s coat and under his T-shirt.
Calum’s body had hardened since he’d ditched his city habits of kebabs and Tube rides for fresh Cornish produce and walks by the sea. Brix traced a path over his stomach and chest, clawed up Calum’s neck to his beard, the inky scruff on his jawline that made Brix’s head swim. He scratched his fingers through it, scrambling up on his knees and pushing Calum against the wall. A lightbulb in his head smashed, bu
t instead of darkness came light, and it was only Calum’s arm, tight like a vice around him, that tied him to the murky cliff-top cave.
Calum pulled away, gasping, his eyes wide. “Jesus.”
In answer, Brix kissed him again, hard, and then more lightly as his pulse slowed. “Oops. Guess it’s gonna be like breaking a dam?”
Calum chuckled. “I hope so . . . or maybe I don’t. Not sure how much of that I can handle.”
“We should probably head home, then.”
“I s’pose.”
Calum seemed reluctant, and Brix felt the same, but despite the painful rush of blood to his groin, he knew they couldn’t finish what they’d started yet. Not today, and definitely not in the Lusmoore family cave, though the idea had legs.
Brix let his hand drop from Calum’s face and released his death grip on Calum’s coat. They straightened their clothes and scrambled to their feet. For the first time in a while, it was Brix’s turn to help Calum up, and they shuffled absently to the cave’s entrance. Brix emerged into the outside world a hairsbreadth ahead of Calum, their hands, as ever, tightly entwined. As he took the first step down the cliff path towards home, his heart turned him around, pushing him chest to chest, nose to nose, with Calum once more.
“Just so you know, when we do fuck? It won’t be anything close to ordinary.”
Calum moved through the crowded room, feeling the heat of too many bodies packed into the side bar of the Sea Bell for Lena’s leaving party. Most faces he knew, some he didn’t, a situation that would’ve made his skin crawl at one of Rob’s seedy drug parties, but it wasn’t like that in Porthkennack with the mismatch of souls he’d come to call friends. At this party, he couldn’t move a yard without someone stopping him to look him in the eye and genuinely care what he had to say.
He dropped onto a couch beside Kim. “Holding up?”
Kim grinned, waving a glass of local apple juice. “Can’t complain, mate.”
“Are you driving later?”
“Aye, someone’s gotta drive her to Bristol up the way.”
There was no malice in Kim’s tone, only the warmth and affection of a relationship Calum had yet to understand.
“I took another phone call for you the other day. Been meaning to tell you.”
Calum’s stomach did an uncomfortable flip. It had been Rob. It had to have been. “What did he want?”
Kim shrugged. “Didn’t ask. Just told him straight to fuck off before I hopped on a train and skinned him alive. Pretty sure I heard him piss his pants.”
“What?”
“Oh, come on, mate.” Kim turned his steady gaze on Calum. “Someone had to, and I don’t reckon you wanted it to be Brix, eh? You can take care of your own shit, and I know it, but that smarmy prick’s voice rattled my bones.”
Calum laughed. Couldn’t help it. “Rob is a smarmy prick. I could’ve told him to fuck off myself, but thanks. You’ve probably saved me six months of harassment.”
“Nah, Brix would have killed him before that.”
Calum couldn’t see that side of Brix anymore, but he let it go and instead occupied himself with surreptitiously observing Brix, who was at the bar with Jory, trying to hide the cake he and Calum had butchered the night before. Who knew baking could be so complicated? At least a shit-ton of icing had hidden the worst of the cracks.
The image of Brix covered in sugar and blue food colouring stayed with Calum and he was still entranced a little while later when Lee appeared in front of him and trod on his foot.
“I need you.”
Calum squinted up at her. “What for? I already drove you to Bude and back today.” It had got out that Calum had access to Brix’s van—legal access now that Brix had added him to the insurance policy. “What more could you possibly want?”
“Help carrying Lena’s present in.”
“She said she didn’t want one,” Kim said.
“So?” Lee treated him to a withering glare. “Didn’t stop you building her that massive coffee table, did it?”
“I had a surplus of pallets. Bite me.”
Lee poked her tongue out and offered Calum her hand. “Please?”
As if Calum could refuse. “All right, all right. I’m coming.”
Lee yanked him up anyway. “It’s outside.”
“Duh.”
He followed her out of the side bar and into the main room of the pub. Once they were out of the party, Lee nudged him. “I don’t really need your help. We got her a charm bracelet, remember?”
Come to think of it, Calum did remember a posh gift bag appearing at the studio a few days ago, though it had been swiftly whisked away from Lena’s eagle eye. “So what did you drag me out here for?”
Lee shrugged and stepped towards the bar. “I saw Brix go out looking a bit glum. Figured you might want to follow him without causing a scene.”
Calum hadn’t noticed Brix leave, too caught up in his blue-handprints-and-naked-Brix fantasies. He left Lee ordering herself a bucket of vodka and dashed outside, half afraid of what he’d find. Brix had seemed on good form of late, but a few days had passed since they’d hashed it out—sexually speaking—in the Lusmoore cave, and despite sharing Brix’s bed every night, they hadn’t talked about sex since.
Kissed enough, though . . .
Calum quelled the instant heat in his blood. Kissing Brix, touching him, holding him, was—Jesus—it was fucking incredible, but Brix’s demons remained. How could they not when he’d lived with them for so long?
Calum scanned the pub’s car park, searching for any sign of Brix—his tall, lean frame and slender shoulders, his battered leather jacket and windswept hair—but there was nothing. The car park was utterly deserted. Calum walked to the entrance and glanced up and down the road, his gaze coming to rest on the outland road leading back to the sea. He’d never given much thought to the oceans surrounding the British Isles before he’d come to Porthkennack, but it was all he could think of while he pondered where Brix might be. Somehow, Brix and the sea had become one and the same.
“You waiting for a bus?”
“Wha—” Calum whirled around, his stomach in his mouth, though his heart already knew he’d find Brix behind him, smirking that damn crooked smirk that turned Calum’s brain to mushy peas. “You fucker. I was looking for you.”
“Up the road? I was six feet away from you five minutes ago. Where on earth did you think I’d gone?”
“Er . . .” Calum couldn’t find a sensible answer. He settled for holding out his hand and coaxing Brix closer.
Brix took his hand and stepped into his arms. Calum squeezed him gently. “Lee sent me after you. She said you were, uh, glum. Something like that.”
“‘Glum’?” Brix snorted. “She’s taking the piss. She’s been on at me all day about us shagging. Reckons you need to get laid. If only she knew, eh?”
“Knew what? That there’s more to life than getting dicked?”
Brix chewed his bottom lip briefly before he relaxed again. “You know what I meant.”
“Uh-huh.” Calum buried his face in Brix’s hair. It smelled of wood smoke and beer. “Doesn’t mean I have to live with you giving yourself a hard time. I told you, I don’t care about the sex. I just want you to be happy.”
“I’m as happy as I’ve been in forever, Cal. Don’t mean I can stop thinking about fucking you, though.”
Calum blushed, glad the darkness hid the worst of it. “Who says you have to stop thinking about it?”
“Me, I guess. I’m starting to feel like a pervert.”
Calum had no answer to that either. He smiled into Brix’s hair, wondering if the flowing cider had wounded the demon in Brix’s mind, and then if he could kiss Brix yet. He’d drunk his fair share of nuclear local ale tonight, so the slippery slide from one thought to the next made an odd kind of sense. “I want to kiss you.”
Brix looked up, his eyes mischievous. “So why haven’t you?”
“Because we’re in the pub car park? And y
our dad’s inside? And all your staff, and—”
“And what?” Brix shifted in Calum’s arms, leaning back so Calum could see him properly. “You think I care who sees us? Fuck no. I’ve got enough bullshit in my brain without worrying about that.”
“So—”
Brix leaned in and kissed Calum, lightly at first, but then harder, and the kiss quickly exploded into something that would be best kept behind closed doors, no matter who they were.
Calum stumbled, taking Brix with him, and collided with a nearby drystone wall. He lay back on it, hooking one leg around Brix’s waist, and opened his mouth, letting Brix’s tongue inside to dance with his.
Brix’s response stole his breath as their chests pressed together, their hips, and lower, and then he felt it—Brix’s dick grinding against his thigh, solid and long.
Calum gasped, breaking their kiss, and stared wildly at Brix. He’d felt Brix’s cock before, on that stormy night while the Porthkennack lifeboat crew had battled the high seas, but it seemed different now, like Brix meant for Calum to feel it. Like Brix wanted him to know it was there, hard and ready for whatever might happen.
Might happen. Two words that meant everything and nothing as Brix gazed down at him. Part of Calum had prepared himself for the real possibility that Brix would never be ready to fuck him. And, despite Brix’s determination in the cave that fateful day, Calum had accepted that any change in that was a long way off.
But something had changed in Brix’s eyes, and was still changing as Calum stared at him, even though he couldn’t quite decipher what it meant. Brix leaned down and kissed Calum again, but it was nothing like the kisses they’d shared before. In the cold, windy car park, the heat between them held a tangible presence, like Calum could reach out and touch it.
“Brix?”
“Aye?”
“Are you okay?”
Brix nodded slowly and withdrew, bringing Calum with him until they were both upright. “I was just thinking . . .”
“Thinking what?”
House of Cards Page 19