“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.”
