“Then don’t. Stay here.”
“Here?”
Brix covered Calum’s uninjured hand with his own and turned to face him. “Aye. Stay here with me. You know there’s a job for you at the studio as long as you want it, and . . .”
“And what?”
Brix shrugged. “I want you to stay.”
“Why?”
To anyone else, the answer to Calum’s question would, perhaps, have been obvious, but Brix had fast learned that Calum needed to hear these things explicitly to believe them. I don’t want to be without you. The words were on the tip of his tongue, but as he took a breath, Calum moved again, his face suddenly inches from Brix’s, his eyes so dark, his mouth so close. “I—”
Their lips met in a gentle kiss, so soft and light it stole Brix’s breath. He opened his mouth to the tender, mind-blowing sweep of Calum’s tongue. His head spun, and he grasped Calum’s face to steady himself, scratching his nails through Calum’s beard.
Calum groaned, deepening the kiss. His fingers found their way to Brix’s hair and tangled in the damp mess of windswept waves, twisting and tugging. Brix’s dick hardened. Heat pooled in his groin. He sucked in a harsh breath, but as the scrape of air filled his lungs, reality crashed into him. What the fuck was he doing? He and Calum had kissed before—more than once—but each time it had been over before it had truly begun, leaving it all too easy to pretend it had never happened, and that the prospect of it going further was nothing but a long-dead dream.
He jumped back as a thud at the door startled Calum too. For a moment, they stared at each other. Calum’s intense gaze was impossible to read, and Brix couldn’t tell if Calum had sensed the shift in the air before the pounding had interrupted the inevitable slide into a clusterfuck he had no desire to ever explain.
The knocking came again, loud and insistent. Brix started to get up, but Calum stilled him. “I’ll get it.”
Calum got up and went to the door, apparently oblivious to the chaos erupting in Brix’s soul. He stopped before opening it, though, and looked back, shooting Brix a quizzical frown. It took Brix far too long to realise he was asking if it was okay to answer the door. He swallowed his frustration and nodded, willing his wayward dick to retreat to its cave before his brain exploded. “You live here too.”
“Fair enough.” Calum shrugged and opened the door. The sight of whoever greeted him made him smile, but the light in his face was brief as he stepped back and waved Kim inside.
Brix stood, the party in his pants and wake in his heart instantly forgotten as he met the troubled gaze of one of his oldest friends. “What is it?”
“The lifeboat’s gone out to a stricken tanker.”
“What?”
“They’re launching now.”
Ten years ago, under the cloud of a storm as fierce as the one blowing outside, Kim’s words would’ve filled Brix with horror, because a decade ago the youngest man in Porthkennack’s lifeboat crew had been Abel Lusmoore. But Abel had been gone a long time, and there’d been no Lusmoore in the boat since. “Oh God, Kim. Did your old man go out?”
Kim shook his head. “No, he’s down in Padstow at my nan’s. That’s what I came to tell you. They were a man short, so your dad took his place.”
Calum stood by the door in the lifeboat station, shoulder to shoulder with throngs of Porthkennack folk he’d never seen before. Men, women, children. Old and young. Where on earth had they all come from?
Then he remembered that he spent most of his time in the studio, or at home with Brix and his menagerie. He hadn’t mixed much with the locals. I haven’t even met his dad. And given the haunted faces around him, there was a real possibility he wouldn’t get the chance.
Calum glanced at Brix, who was by the control centre with Kim, listening intently to an RNLI officer, like he had been since they’d burst into the crammed station. His face was pale and drawn, his eyes tight with worry. Calum wanted more than anything to stand with him, hold him, comfort him, but Kim was beside him instead, his hand on Brix’s shoulder, nodding to things Calum didn’t understand.
Brix dropped his head into his hands, looking for all the world like the worst had already happened. Fuck this emmet shite. Calum pushed off the wall he’d been leaning against and strode across the crowded room. Kim saw him coming, squeezed Brix’s arm, then stepped aside, like he’d been expecting Calum to take his place all along.
Calum dropped into the seat next to Brix and leaned in close. “What’s going on?”
Brix raised his head and met Calum’s gaze with a tense frown. “The boat’s still out.”
Calum had figured that much, but gestured for Brix to elaborate. “Why? What’s happened?”
“Tanker’s hit the rocks at Booby’s Bay. They’re taking on water. The mayday came through an hour ago.”
“Why did your dad go? I didn’t know he was part of the crew.”
“He’s a reserve,” Brix said hoarsely. “S’posed to be retired, but Kim’s old man is away, and the only other able seaman was Jonti Lahoy’s nephew, and no one was going to let him get on that boat with his uncle already skippering.”
“Why not?”
