“Mess?”
“Yeah. Cal, it’s good to see you, but you look like hell.”
Calum didn’t doubt it, and lacking any brighter ideas, he pulled his legs back inside the van and clumsily shut the door.
Brix climbed in the other side and the van rumbled to life. Calum cast a lazy glance at his rescuer, absorbing his strong jaw, his elegant neck, and his beautiful coiled forearms. He’d always had a fetish for forearms, especially Brix’s. Again with the strength. How had Calum forgotten that? An odd urge to touch Brix swept over him, but it was eclipsed by an overwhelming need to close his eyes.
He gave in and shut the world out. The darkness, combined with the gentle rolling of the van, and Brix’s silent presence beside him, was so soothing he almost moaned aloud. The noise in his brain quieted, but for one thing. “Brix?”
“Yeah?”
“Your van stinks of shit.”
Consciousness returned to Calum slowly. Smells first—coffee and toast—and then sounds: a door opening and shutting, heavy metal music playing at a volume so low it was barely audible, and the gentle rumble of what sounded suspiciously like a smug cat.
Calum opened his eyes to find himself under siege from a pair of moggies who couldn’t have contrasted more if they’d been cat and dog. The first, who seemed to be digging a hole in his chest, was tiny, not much bigger than a tabby squirrel. The second was massive—like a panther who’d eaten all the pies—and without its booming purr, Calum would’ve been pretty disconcerted by its hawkish, unblinking glare.
Besides, a giant cat was the least of his worries. Calum gazed around at the unfamiliar room, the wooden floors, the low beams, and the open fire. The squishy brown leather couch, the guitars stacked up in the corner, and pirate-themed artwork dotted around. The only familiar thing was the empty bottle of rum on the coffee table, but its presence made as little sense as the rest of his surroundings. Last Calum knew, he’d dropped it on the floor of the train carriage.
Oh shit, the train.
Like a tidal wave, the events of the last twenty-four hours came rushing back. The power cut, heading home early . . . Rob. And then Calum’s flight from the city, jumping on the first train he saw, drinking himself into a stupor, and sleeping like a dead man until he woke up in fucking Cornwall. The rest of it was fairly sketchy, so much so Calum still had half a mind to believe he’d dreamed it, but on cue, the exterior door to what he was fast realising was a cosy cottage opened, and Brix appeared in Calum’s bleary line of sight. “Damn. You’re real.”
“Damn, you’re awake,” Brix retorted. “I was beginning to think you’d drunk yourself into a coma.”
The notion didn’t feel that far from the truth, judging by Calum’s headache, but as he swallowed the sour taste in his mouth, he was distracted by Brix wiping his feet on the doormat. “Are you wearing wellies?”
Brix eyed Calum like he was the one who’d grown horns. “What of it?”
Calum opened his mouth, shut it again. He would’ve pictured Brix in ballet shoes first. “Erm . . . this might seem a strange question, but where am I?”
“It ain’t that strange if the state of you this morning was anything to go by.” Brix pulled his wellies off and left them outside, shutting the back door behind him. “Could hardly believe my eyes when I saw you huddled up on that bench. Woulda passed on by if I hadn’t seen matey boy on your hand.”
Calum automatically twisted his hand to see the stag, so carefully etched by Brix himself all those years ago. He remembered it like it was yesterday, how excited he’d been to get his first tattoo, and by Brix Lusmoore, no less, an artist Calum had idolised since he’d first come to London. Even now, nearly a decade later, it was still Calum’s only ink.
“You’re in Porthkennack, by the way.”
“Hmm?” Calum glanced up to find Brix had ventured farther into the room and perched on the coffee table. “Porthkennack? Where the fuck’s that?”
Brix chuckled. “Cornwall, obviously. I reckon you knew that already if your cursing this morning was anything to go by, but if you want the specifics, we’re slap bang between Booby’s Bay and Constantine Bay, and nowhere near Newquay.”
It meant nothing to Calum; he’d spent his whole life bouncing from London to Reading, but as his rum-addled brain cleared, Porthkennack began to sound familiar. “Is this where you’re from? Where your family is?”
“The very same.”
“But . . .”
Brix raised an eyebrow. “But what?”
“Jordan came down here looking for you.”
“And he found me.” Brix’s pale gaze was inscrutable. “I told him to go fuck himself.”
“Why?”
Brix shrugged. “That’s between me and him, and I reckon it’ll stay that way until one of us croaks.”
Calum turned that over in his mind. Brix and Jordan had been on and off for as long as Calum had known them, when Brix disappeared. Calum had assumed they’d broken up, that Brix had taken off with his legendary temper, but when Jordan had returned to London claiming Brix had vanished from the face of the earth, perhaps to pursue his family’s criminal path, Calum had believed him. He’d pondered Brix’s fate every day until he’d met Rob, and after that, well. After that, he’d become so obsessed with the spell Rob had cast on him, he’d fairly forgotten everyone else.