“Most days. A doctor told me a while ago that people who get on Truvada quickly after infection have a good chance of living as long as they might’ve done without the virus.”
Brix watched Calum frown as he digested the heavy influx of information, knowing it flew in the face of everything he’d likely thought about HIV before. He wondered absently if Calum had assumed, like he had back then, that he was dying, rotting away from AIDS, like the men who’d died in the eighties epidemic. “I’m okay, Cal, really. My biggest battle is with myself.”
“What do you mean?”
Brix traced an abstract pattern on Calum’s wrist. “It just seems too good to be true sometimes, you know? Like I’m building a house of cards and it’s gonna blow down every time I get a fucking cold. Makes me want it over with. To let it kill me now so I don’t have to fight it.”
“But you’re not ill.”
“I know . . . and I believe it most days, but it gets on top of me from time to time.”
“Do you think that might be because you were prone to depression before?” Calum’s tone was cautious. “I’m not pretending I’ve got a clue how you feel, but you felt like that before the HIV . . .”
When you tried to off yourself. Brix heard the end of Calum’s unspoken sentence loud and clear. “You sound a lot like my nurse. She reckons HIV probably saved me. I thought she was off her tits when she first said it, but it makes more sense these days. I was on self-destruct in London, but I’d never have come back here if things hadn’t gone so wrong with Jordan, and then who knows what mess I’d be in now, even without the HIV.”
“I thought all Porthkennack folk came home eventually.”
“Not alive, they don’t. It’s the sea, Cal. We need it, it’s who we are, and I wouldn’t have survived this without it.”
“You’re not going to survive the night if you don’t get some sleep.” Calum touched Brix’s face, rubbing the pad of his thumbs over Brix’s stinging eyelids. “We can talk forever, if that’s what you need, but it’ll all still be here tomorrow.”
“Will you?”
“Me?”
Brix leaned into Calum’s touch. “Will you be here tomorrow . . . I mean, right here? With me?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“It is. Stay with me, Cal. Please. I can’t let you go.” There was so much more to say, but fatigue had finally won the war. Brix fell forward into Calum’s arms. “Please . . . Cal. Please stay.”
“Shh.” Calum manoeuvred them so deftly that Brix hardly knew he was moving until he found himself on his side, cocooned by Calum’s larger, stronger, warmer frame behind him. “I’m not going anywhere, Brix, I promise.”
“Stay, please—”
“Shh. Sleep, mate. I’m here.”
Calum studied the hole in the chicken wire, perplexed. It looked like a hen had tried to dig out of the enclosure, but as far as he could tell, they were all still inside. He counted heads to be sure, starting with Bongo, but lost track as they wandered in and out of the nest box to lay their morning eggs. Damn bloody birds. Though he’d fast learned to share Brix’s affection for them.
Which made the hole in the fence all the more concerning. Were there foxes in Cornwall? Wolves? Shamefully, he had no idea. One thing he did know, though, was that the hole needed to be fixed and there was no way he was waking Brix to ask him where he kept his hammer.
Calum went to the shed and rummaged around amongst the bags of animal feed and boxes of random tools, trying not to glance up at the bedroom window where he’d left Brix sleeping a few hours ago. The urge to check on him for the hundredth time was strong, but Calum fought it. Brix was exhausted, and Calum was fucked if he was going to disturb him for the sake of his own obsession.
Didn’t stop his mind racing as he armed himself with a hammer and a box of nails though, and returned to the hole in the fence. He’d done a bunch of googling that morning to fill a few blanks in what Brix had told him—medication, long-term prognosis . . . sex. Right. ’Cause that’s what’s important? With considerable effort, Calum pulled his mind from the gutter and focussed on the fence. He’d just about fudged it when a battered Land Rover drove down the side of the cottage and pulled up by the gate.
Calum locked the shed door as the infamous John Lusmoore got out, accompanied by a woman who looked so much like Brix that Calum would’ve bet a limb that she had Lusmoore blood. Would they let themselves in the gate and stroll on in?
Lacking any brighter ideas, Calum met them at the gate, his hand on the bolt to let them through, but they stopped on the other side, clearly as curious as him.
John Lusmoore eyed Calum. “You that fella from London?”
“I’m Calum.”
“Aye, that was the name, John,” the woman said. “Got the girls in town all aflutter, he has.”
John grunted. “A scruffy carthorse gets those twits excited. Where’s my boy at? Workin’? We didn’t see him at the studio.”
“He’s asleep,” Calum said. “Last few days have worn him out.” For a moment, he feared he’d said too much, but the woman nodded.