The next day found me trailing Kim around his workshop, shoving my camera in his face, and asking him a million questions he clearly didn’t have time to answer. Though, to be fair, he put up with me with an easy smile.
Midmorning, I brought him some tea. “Am I getting in the way? You can say if I am; I won’t be offended.”
“You’re fine.” Kim barely glanced up from his work. “Don’t think anyone round here is going to complain about having a tea fella in for the day.”
That, I could believe, because Kim wasn’t the only one who’d been hard at work since he’d opened the workshop at arse-o’clock that morning, and his three colleagues had seemed extraordinarily grateful for the chipped mugs of builder’s brew I’d passed their way. “Still, not helping much, am I?”
“I don’t need you to help. Your company is keeping me sane.”
I nodded slowly. Kim’s mood was becoming increasingly tough to gauge, but it was obvious that he enjoyed his work, even if he did have far too much of it. I did feel more than a little guilty for my part in his fatigue, though. We’d gone to bed at a touch before midnight, but it had been gone two before we’d found sleep.
Like he’d heard my thoughts revisit those heady few hours spent in his bed, Kim looked up and met my eye with a grin that lightened the fevered atmosphere of the workshop. His smile was like a warm breeze. I love him.
Stop it.
But I do.
Around midday, I retreated to make the lunch run. The workshop was due a wood delivery to finish the final batch of chairs for the barn, and my car was in the way.
I drove to the seafront and went to the sandwich shop beside Blood Rush. My sleep-deprived body craved a pasty, but I didn’t have the patience for the queues. Instead I ordered enough doorstep chicken sandwiches for a small army and stepped outside for some air while they were made.
Curiosity drew me to the studio’s window. They’d changed the photographs, swapping out the vintage images for brighter, bolder shots of the resident artists: Brix, Kim, Calum, Lee, and Jory. Each artist clearly had their own style, but there was a harmony running through the images that drew them all together. I’d always found tattooists fascinating, and this eclectic bunch more than most—
“Can I help you?”
I turned to face the petite woman who’d emerged from the studio. It took me a moment to place her as the sole female artist in Blood Rush’s window of fame. Lee, apparently. “Brix around?”
“Nope. Him and Calum are off today.” The woman lit a cigarette and regarded me with a piercing gaze. “You’re Kim’s fella, ain’t ya?”
“I’m Jas, if that helps.”
“Not really. I knew that already.”
Okay. I turned my attention back to the window. “Which work is yours?”
I waited for Lee to point to the dark geometric designs that seemed to suit her intensity. Her jerked nod at the delicate watercolour pieces caught me off guard, but what the fuck did I know? “They’re gorgeous,” I said. “I feel like I’ve seen that one before.”
Lee followed my finger to the seahorse design at the back of the display. “You probably have if you’ve been hanging around Kim’s place. Brix bullied me into painting it a few months ago, and it’s on Kim’s bathroom door.”
Of course it was. I’d seen it this morning when I’d stumbled into the shower, but Lee was gone before the blush reached my cheeks, and the girl from the sandwich shop called me inside a moment later.
I drove back to the workshop with my giant bag of sandwiches, hoping that my bounty would help me persuade Kim to take a break before I left him to it for the rest of the day. It would be a tough ask, but the signs of burnout in him were ominous, and there were certain times that my life would’ve been a whole lot easier if some fucker had just brought me a sandwich.
But when I pulled up outside the workshop, it quickly became clear that no picnic was going to fix Kim’s day. I got out of my car and approached where he was standing forlornly by a huge pile of what smelt like rotten wood. “What the fuck?”
He sighed. “You can say that again. What a crock of arse.”
I picked up a damp plank of wood. It was soft, like a stale biscuit. “What happened?”
“I get wood from a social project over near Dartmoor Prison. They get the lags to collect it and bag it up, then I buy it, and the funds go to art projects or some shit. They’re usually really good, but this lot must’ve got rained on. No good for nothing now.”
“You can’t send it back?”
“To a charity? Nah. Ain’t got it in me, mate.”
I couldn’t think of a sensible solution, and from the slump of Kim’s shoulders, neither could he. “Is there nowhere you can get more wood from?”
“Today?” Kim shook his head. “The only way is to collect it ourselves, but even if I pull all the guys from the workshop, it’ll take all day, and we don’t have the time to lose.”
“I can help? The guys can keep working and—”
“Thanks, but you and me can’t bring in enough on our own.”
“No one else can help?”
Kim shrugged, and the problem was suddenly obvious. There were people who could—who would—help; he just didn’t want to ask. “Brix is off today. Calum too. Why don’t you call them?”
“How d’you know what Brix is up to?”
“Lee told me.”
“Yeah? What else did she tell you?”
“Nothing. I got the feeling she didn’t like me.”
“Don’t mind her. She’s a spiky motherfucker, but she’s got a good heart.”
That was something I’d have to see to believe. “All your friends seem nice. Why won’t you ask them for help?”
Kim shrugged. “They help me enough already.”
“How?”
“How do you think?”
“I don’t think anything, mate. That’s why I’m asking.”
Kim sighed again and kicked a lump of wood. “It ain’t easy to ask folk to help you when they’ve spent years carrying your sorry arse. I wouldn’t have a home if it wasn’t for Brix, or Lena. He gave her half the studio when I’d screwed up so bad we had nothing. She gave it back last year, but how the fuck am I supposed to ask him to collect driftwood on the beach for me when he’s already given me so much?”
I had no answer to that, and not for the first time, it struck me that I had much to learn about Kim and the effect his addiction had on his day-to-day life, even when he was dry. “Look, I’m not going to pretend that I know how all this makes you feel, but the way I see it, you have two choices: ask your friends for help, or tell my dad you’re going to be late. Whatever you do, you’ve got to reach out to someone, and there’s no shame in that. You’re human, Kim, not a bloody machine.”
The last sentence came out harsher than I’d intended, and Kim raised an eyebrow. “You sound like Lena.”
“Good. She had your back, now I’ve got it. So what are you going to do?”
Being late was apparently not an option, so Kim begrudgingly called Brix, who turned up at the workshop ten minutes later, with a man I presumed to be Calum.
Brix greeted me with a nod. “I’ll walk with you, if you want? Cal’s better with Kim when he’s in this mood.”
Fair enough. Brix drove his van down to the beach, and we set to work collecting sand-dried driftwood. Like Kim, Brix didn’t say a lot, but I enjoyed his company, and eagerly absorbed every insight of Kim he let slip.
Not that he told me much that I didn’t already know, something I absently voiced when we came to a stop by the rocks.
“Ah, I see.” Brix glanced behind us to where Kim and Calum were dragging huge lumps of wood back to the van. “You’re trying to figure out how to handle him, aren’t you?”
“Handle him? Nah, I just don’t know how to be there for him when he’s like this.”
Brix said nothing for a moment, focussing instead on shoving wood into the sack he carried, and then he straightened up and fixed me with a gaze that was a disarming mix of hope and sadness. “Kim’s a proud man. I don’t often know he’s been down until after the event. All I can say is keep him as close as he’ll let you, and don’t blame yourself if his demons get him anyway. You can’t control that shit any more than he can.”
“He told me he’s fucked everyone over at one time or other.”
Brix snorted. “It’s never gone down like that. The only help he’s had has been forced on him. He’s a bugger like that, and it drives me up the wall, which is why I leave him with Cal. That boy’s got the patience of a saint.”
The love in Brix’s gaze then made me feel like I was intruding on a private moment, even though Kim and Calum were too far away to feel the weight of Brix’s warm words.
We completed the rest of our wood forage in relative silence, catching up with Kim and Calum at the van. Calum, who I’d yet to speak to, approached me with a shy grin. “I think we’ve got enough. Brix is going to drive it back with Kim. Fancy a pint?”
Actually, I couldn’t imagine anything better, but guilt gnawed at my gut. Where was Kim’s relief? His quiet half hour to think of nothing but a soothing pint and gentle conversation—
“Go.” Kim elbowed me in the ribs. “I’ll find you later.”
“You sure?”
“Sure enough to deck you if you don’t do as you’re told.”
His tone left no room for argument, though the playful glint in his eye held a promise he’d make good on later. And I couldn’t deny that it felt good to see his light, easy way return.
Calum and I decamped to the Sea Bell, a pub that the Porthkennack locals claimed as their own.
“I still feel kinda weird in here,” Calum confessed. “Even when Brix is with me, they still look at me like I’m in my birthday suit.”
“That doesn’t change. If you weren’t born here, you’ll always be an emmet.”
Calum chuckled. “True that.”
We bought pints of Doom Bar and sat outside, despite the bitter breeze the ocean had kicked up since we’d left the beach. Calum was quiet, but it was different to the reticence that Kim and Brix carried like a second skin. Instead it seemed to be shyness that I hoped would fade as we sat together.
And fade, it did. Like me, Calum was a London boy, and it turned out that a similar clusterfuck had led us both home to Porthkennack.
“So your ex was an arsehole too?”
Calum nodded. “Something like that. He did me a favour in the end, though. I’m never going to be a native around here, but I’m more at home than I’ve ever been.”
I seconded that, though it was obvious Calum’s contentment stemmed from his relationship with Brix—that he’d have been happy anywhere as long as they were together—and envy crept through me as he talked. Would I ever have that with Kim? I was perilously close to falling in love with him, indelibly marked by the short time we’d already shared, but would he ever look at me like Brix looked at Calum? Would he ever trust me enough to share his burden?
And what about me? I’d dragged all my shit down to Porthkennack from the city, never stopping to think that I’d meet anyone to share it with. Rich had hurt me badly, but I knew now that what I’d felt for him had been a long way from love, and light years away from how I felt about Kim.
I loved Kim, and the realisation struck deep. Pain lanced my chest . . . and my heart. I loved Kim, and it would never matter if he loved me back, because how I felt about him was here, on its own, and it wasn’t going anywhere.
“Dude.” Calum’s dark gaze bore into me. “You’ve got it bad, eh?”
I didn’t have it in me to deny it. Didn’t want to. And I didn’t need to. Calum’s shrewd grin told me he already knew what was going on in my tiny brain.
“Be patient,” he said. “These Porthkennack boys are born thinking they don’t deserve to be happy, that anything good needs to cost blood, but they’re wrong. We love them, whether they let us or not. Just gotta wait for them to see it.”
Wise words, and I took them to heart as we found room for a few more ales.
That afternoon, I left my car at the workshop and raided the local shops for something to cook for dinner. Then I walked to the commune, musing that my relationship with Kim was fast becoming the most exercise I’d had in years, even without the fuck-hot sex.
In the trailer, Kim’s bed—still rumpled from the night before—was tempting, but I put off a nap in favour of knocking up one of the only proper meals I could cook: Laura’s famous fish pie.
It was resting on the side when Kim finally came home that evening. I met him at the bottom of the steps, refraining from chastising him for being dead on his feet, and settling for a simple hug that he all but fell into.
“You smell of lemons,” he said.
I laughed, with relief more than anything, because it was a hell of a lot better than reeking of fish. “Come inside. I made dinner.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Kim said as I shoved a bowl of fish pie and peas his way. “It seemed too much to hope you’d be here when I got home.”
“Where else would I go?”
“Home? Your parents? On the piss with Calum? I’ve been such an arse all day, I can’t imagine why you’d want to be here.”
“Then you need to work on your imagination. Now eat your dinner.”
And eat his dinner he did, before he let me lead him to the shower, and then to bed, where I didn’t let him move a muscle as I rode him, making him come with a silent scream, before I spilled over his belly and coaxed him to sleep.