“The Price of One Forbidden Touch”

Callum never imagined it would go this far. From the moment he crossed that line with Johnny Carter, something shifted within him. Guilt took hold the next morning, heavy and inescapable, and he made what he believed was the right choice — to walk away, to protect his marriage to Ben, to convince himself that what happened was just a one-time mistake. But desire has never been that simple.

Despite his promises, despite his denial, Callum found himself drawn back to Johnny in ways he could no longer explain. It wasn’t just about attraction anymore. It was about everything he had buried: the need to feel understood, the weight of loneliness, the exhaustion of keeping up appearances. When he heard that Johnny had slept with someone else — just once, on a night he was hurting — something in Callum cracked. Jealousy surged, irrational and overwhelming, and all the restraint he had managed to hold onto vanished. He went looking for Johnny not to accuse, not to scold — but to reclaim something that deep down, he had never truly let go of.

They met at The Vic. The place was quiet, half-lit, and for a moment, it felt like they were the only two people in the world. They didn’t talk much. Words would’ve only made it harder. It was a kiss — desperate, tender, wrong — that shattered every lie Callum had told himself. In that moment, he wasn’t a husband, he wasn’t a Mitchell — he was just a man chasing what made him feel alive.

But they weren’t alone.

Phil Mitchell walked in without warning, called in by Linda on a whim. He wasn’t supposed to see anything. And yet, the very second his eyes landed on the scene unfolding before him — Callum’s hands, Johnny’s gaze, the unmistakable heat between them — the room seemed to collapse in on itself.

Phil didn’t speak. He reacted. He surged forward with fists clenched and fury unleashed. He grabbed Johnny, slammed him into the bar, roaring like a man betrayed not once, but a hundred times over. The shock was so sudden, so brutal, it took Jay, Billy, and even Callum himself to pull Phil off before things spiraled into something irreversible. But the damage was done.

Blood may not have spilled, but something far worse had been broken.

Later that night, Callum showed up at Phil’s doorstep. His voice was low, his eyes hollow. He didn’t beg for forgiveness — he knew better than that. What he asked for was silence. For Ben’s sake. For Lexi’s. He pleaded with Phil not to tell his son the truth, not yet, not while Ben was still locked away and vulnerable.

But Phil wouldn’t hear it.

“You swore to love him,” he snapped. “You stood in front of all of us and you lied. And now you want me to protect you?”

There was no warmth left in Phil’s tone, no remnants of family. Only disgust.

Callum tried to explain. That he never meant for it to happen again. That he was confused, overwhelmed. But Phil had no patience for guilt dressed up as justification. He turned away, leaving Callum standing alone on the front step, shoulders shaking, still in uniform, but nothing about him resembling the man he once was.

Back at The Vic, tension spread like wildfire. Johnny nursed his bruises in silence. Jay argued with Phil, trying to hold the family together with fraying hands. No one mentioned Ben. No one had to. His absence was louder than any scream.

And still, the question loomed: who would tell him?

Ben, behind prison walls, still believed in his marriage. Still clung to the hope that Callum was waiting for him. What would it do to him to learn that trust had already been shattered — not just once, but twice? And what about Lexi, who had already endured enough upheaval in her young life? Would she be caught in the crossfire of yet another Mitchell implosion?

Callum had made his choice. In a moment of weakness, he had reignited a fire he swore he’d extinguished. Now, he faced the consequences not just of infidelity, but of betrayal that threatened to unravel everything around him.

Phil’s silence wasn’t forgiveness. It was a warning.

Some truths, once revealed, don’t just destroy relationships — they destroy legacies. And this one, buried or not, had already started to rot at the core of the Mitchell family.

Callum walked away that night without answers. He didn’t know if Phil would tell Ben. He didn’t know if Johnny would survive the blowback. He didn’t know if the family would ever look at him the same again.

All he knew was that a single touch — one stolen moment — had set off a chain of events that couldn’t be undone.

And now, somewhere in the dark, the truth waited to explode.