Make a Right (28 page)

“You know something?” Tuck said. “You were wrong. That wasn’t the ‘worst of all.’ Not what you did to survive. Not your lying to me, making me think of all the ‘worst’ there could be out there. Hating myself. Blaming myself. You want to know what the worst is? Do you?” He didn’t relent when Cade stilled, fear slinking back in his eyes. “The worst of all is that I still love you. You fucking asshole. Get away from me.” Tuck pushed past Cade and made for the steps. He needed to—he didn’t know. He had to be somewhere that was else, or Cade did.

“Tuck!” Cade called.

Too late. “Don’t.” Tuck kept his back turned, and he walked. He didn’t know where. Just away.

And for all those brave words he’d spouted…Cade didn’t follow him.

* * *

The stroke of midnight, chimed out on a grandfather clock somewhere in the house, had gone past before Tuck went back inside. Who knew how long he’d stalked around that yard? How many times had he reached for his keys, just wanting to go?

And he came back here. Drawn, no matter what.

But be damned if he could go up to that room where Cade would be. Tuck knew that as sure as he knew the streets of New York, the ones he could drive almost blindfolded. Like the back of his hand, scarred knuckles and stiffening old breaks and all.

Like he knew what Cade would look like if he’d fallen asleep waiting for Tuck, and Tuck knew he’d have done that too. Curled on his side, arms drawn tight to his chest and knees tucked up until dreams took him. The peaceful dreams, anyway. Then he’d ease out, stretching his limbs, his toes pointed and his arms lying halfway to open in front of him.

But asleep and so sound nothing would wake him. Anytime something big happened, Cade’s body took over, and it dragged him into sleep. Hiding, the way he’d done after the first night he and Cade had—

There was nothing left in Tuck’s stomach to come up, not even bile, but it did its best. He gritted his teeth around a dry heave and refused to let it happen.

He couldn’t go upstairs. Call him a coward, call him a stubborn asshole—just call him confused and hurt and angry and a hundred other things—but he couldn’t.

Tuck’s legs weren’t going to hold him. That pissed him off almost as much as everything else.
Now
he got weak, when Cade had gotten strong? How the fuck was that right, how was that fair? Tuck was the strong one. That was his job.

And now, with the world turned upside down…

The room they’d practiced dancing in like a pair of fools had a couch deep and old enough to be, if not comfortable, at least bearable. Tuck let himself fall into the deepness of the thing, cheap foam squares instead of cushions covered over with quilts made a hundred years ago. He kept quiet. He had to. Upstairs, Megan and Hannah didn’t know a thing. They mattered. They were the only things left that did.

Wrong. Liar, liar. Even now, wishing he didn’t—one thing remained true. He loved Cade, and he always would. A fool for love? He scoffed at himself. Always and forever, a fool for Cade.

So where did that leave him—them—now?

God, his eyes were dry, sore, scratchy, as if someone had thrown a handful of sawdust in his face. He closed them. Just for a second. Then he’d get up, and he’d figure out what to do. He’d go to Cade. Shake him, punch him, argue till his throat was numb. Say good-bye.

He’d get up.

In a second, he’d get up, and…

Chapter Twenty-three

Tuck woke too warm from the blanket tossed over him, its summer-weight wool still hot and heavy, sticking to him with sweat. Perspiration made his hair stick to his face and neck in slick curls. Suzie-Q had draped herself across his ankles and snored gently.

He blinked once, twice, and again, the fuzzy world not focusing. Dawn? Only just barely. Enough light for the room to shade from black to gray.

He didn’t remember the blanket. Or falling asleep, for that matter. Last thing Tuck could recall was leaning back into the cushions and closing his eyes. Sitting up, not lying down.

Sometime during the night, someone had laid him down. Put a pillow beneath his head, one that left ridged corduroy marks on his face, and taken off his shoes. Covered—draped—tucked a blanket around him. Like he was a kid having bad dreams.

Tuck couldn’t remember those dreams, if he’d had any at all. They faded from shapes and thought and memories of shouting to a distant echo in the back of his head, and then they were gone.

Too warm or not, he curled in against himself and bit down on his cheek to stifle a shiver. Probably a good thing those dreams weren’t coming to mind.

And that he didn’t know for sure who’d taken care of him.

Though he was almost certain he did know, after all.

Tuck pushed the blanket off, heaping it in a messy pile on the floor, and sat upright. His back protested, as did his neck, and his head throbbed. See, that was why he hated crying. Not for the shame of it, but for the morning after.

Really, that was why.

He pinched his nose. A shower. That was what he needed. A shower, a cup of strong coffee, a handful of aspirin. Clean clothes, soapsuds, caffeine. He was sticky from sleep and not so much rested that cool water wouldn’t be a blessing.

God almighty, the wedding was today.

Tuck dug his nails into his thighs for the shock of pain to help him keep it the fuck together just a little longer.

Stand up. Get to it; do what you’ve gotta do.

Tuck stood and pushed himself toward the servants’ stairs. A shower. God, he needed a shower. Cade would still be asleep. Should be. He could sneak in and out, and Cade would never be the wiser. Once he’d shaken off the brain fog, surely he’d know what to do then.

Or not. The stairs echoed underfoot, warped and bent, as he took them up one step at a time.

* * *

Cade lay on his side on the bed they’d shared the past few days. Christ, had it only been less than a handful? Seemed more like weeks, not days.

Tuck meant to scoot past him without more than a passing glance.

Only he couldn’t. Cade had tucked one arm under a pillow and rolled free of all but a cotton sheet wound around him. Not naked, though close, wearing only a snow-white muscle shirt and, from the one glimpse Tuck had of a long leg slipped out from the under sheet, a pair of running shorts that rode high toward his hip.

How was it fair that even after what’d happened, when Tuck looked at Cade, all he could do was want to climb in beside him?

“
Love bears all things
,” he remembered Thomas saying not too long ago, despair only just hidden beneath the words.

Thomas could go get bitten.

Only…

Shower. Get it done
. Tuck searched the floor for his duffel. His soap and stuff should still be in there; he’d used Cade’s without thinking, wanting the smell of him. Where was the thing? He’d kept it toed just to the inside of the closet, and though the door had been left open, the bag was nowhere to be found. He bent to search the corners just in case, and as he did, he caught sight of the sack out of the corner of his eye.

He tried not to laugh or even snort, because be damned if he didn’t see it now, clear as the slow-lightening day, tucked up behind Cade, pinned between body and wall. “Sneaky son of a bitch,” he said under his breath. Admiring the shrewdness despite himself. “Gonna make sure I didn’t give you the slip?”

Cade’s eyes opened. Maybe he’d actually been asleep. Maybe not. Maybe he’d woken sometime between when Tuck had padded as silently as he could into the bedroom and now, but however it’d gone down, those eyes were dark and lucid, his gaze clear and fixed on Tuck. “You’d have done the same thing.”

Tuck could recall a time or two when he had. He stood where he’d been planted, hands spread in a silent question.

“You know why.”

“I really don’t.”

Cade slid free of the sheet that looked blessedly cool and smooth where he hadn’t rumpled it about his body, and sat on the edge of the bed. His toes curled against the cold of the hardwood floor. Either planned or a trick of the light, but he moved into the patch of sun coming through the gap between the shutters outside.

No circles under his eyes. No paleness to his cheeks.

Tuck wanted that to piss him off more than it did.

“You look like you had a bad night,” Cade said, heavy on the dryness. When he sat up, the loose shorts he’d slept in rode high, baring long stretches of leg, then slid down, revealing a hard stomach and the wings of his hip bones. Too thin from not eating. He needed someone to take care of him even now.

God, the things he did to Tuck on the inside. Still. Made the ache worse and the need to be comforted a sharper thorn in his side.

Cade slid farther forward. Near enough to reach out and touch, if Tuck wanted, and God help him if he knew whether it was “yes” or “no.” He was sleep-rumpled and bed-warm, the covers turned back far enough to leave room for a second person to crawl in.

If they chose to.

He rested his hand on the top of Tuck’s leg, just above his knee. Not quite holding Tuck. More making his presence known. Real. Close enough to see the curve of his smile. “You look like hell.”

“And you call me a charmer,” Tuck said, his tongue thick in his mouth. When had he dropped his hand to the nape of Cade’s neck and let it rest lightly there?

Cade bent his head, leaning into Tuck’s touch. Not asking for more. Simply taking. Reminding Tuck now of not an alley cat crouched at the end, behind a cardboard box with nothing showing but claws and dark lights, but of one that’d been tamed. One that’d bump his head against a guy’s legs to say—different things.

People said that the wheel of the world kept turning, turning, turning. Tuck thought maybe they were wrong, and it didn’t go in a circle, but from front to back. Flipping a guy about, faceup looking at the stars. Facedown in an alley.

Lions to feral starveling cats. The cards turning over and over until their edges frayed or tore.

“Want to tell me something?” Tuck ran his fingertips against the grain of Cade’s half-inch hair. “How do you do this to me just by being you?”

Cade took his hand, easy as breathing, past the point where Tuck might have freed himself, and pressed it between both of his. “There are still some things I need to tell you.”

“Jesus Christ. More?” Tuck’s head pounded.

“Not like that.” Cade kneaded his hand.

“Can we not do this right now?” Tuck nodded backward, at the sounds of a household slowly waking. The sense of action building behind them, below stairs. “It’s their wedding morning. I didn’t go through all this to fuck up the day itself.”

Cade didn’t let go. “There’s time.”

Tuck flexed his fingers. “Let go. I need a shower.”

“No.” Cade stroked their joined hands. “If I do, you won’t come back.” He caught Tuck with that look of his. Wasn’t one Tuck had seen in a long, long time. Clear. No shadows.

Had
he seen that look before, ever? Maybe once in a while. Driving away from St. Pius toward the city. Breathing deep in the campus garden. Watching the sun move across the sky.

“Then you’ve gotta tell me why,” Tuck said, a whisper that emerged hoarse and raw around the edges. “How are you better now? How is that fair?”

“It’s not.” Cade lifted one shoulder. “You’re the one who always told me that. Life isn’t fair. Bad things happen to everyone.”

“Don’t throw my words back at me. Don’t you do that.”

Cade held on tight, his wrists like steel, and didn’t let go. “Then let me use my own.”

Tuck wanted to give in. He did. Only—“I can’t stop you. Can I?”

“Do you want the truth?”

Yes. No.

Cade pulled at Tuck’s arm, winding him down onto the bed, and he used that as a fulcrum to lever himself to the floor at Tuck’s feet. “We said everything that needed to be said last night. That’s true. But I didn’t say it all. I want you to hear the rest.”

Tuck found a thread of strength. One of the last, and he had to guard those carefully to make it through this day without screwing over the ceremony. “Talk. I’ll listen. More than that, I can’t promise.”

Cade took Tuck’s hand. It was instinctive, Tuck thought. As was his letting Cade do it. Clasping Cade’s in return.

Waiting and listening for what Cade would share.

“Do you know,” Cade said, pulling each word out like bad teeth, “what it’s like when you don’t know what love means?” He waited for Tuck’s confused pause to end in a small noise that said it all. “You don’t, because you were born in a gutter, but you were born with a heart that never quits. No matter what. When I looked at you, once upon a time, I didn’t understand that. For years I didn’t.”

“Cade…”

“I’m not done yet.” Cade stroked the back of Tuck’s hand, all the while shaking his head slowly. “You made me want to believe, and I tried. I did. I tried so hard I think I fooled myself too.”

Tuck didn’t want to hear this. But Cade wouldn’t let go.

“When you took that job…” Cade stopped in what looked like an attempt to put himself back together. “Right then, I thought ‘there, see? There’s my proof. It can’t be this good. Guys who’ve done what I did, they don’t get happy-ever-afters.’ Too good to be true means it usually is. When I caught you working that job I thought,
I was right. Now I can go
.”

“Stop it. Please stop.”

Cade didn’t. He’d gotten lost again, gone where Tuck couldn’t follow. All he could do was sit and wait for Cade to find his way to the end of that road. “But then every night, almost, I dreamed about you. In the same bed. With me. I woke up wishing I was back home.”

Tuck meant to push him away. Why that didn’t happen, he couldn’t have said. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because when I thought that, you didn’t know the truth.” Cade focused on Tuck as if he were the only thing in the world but without hard sharp corners. Not soft. Strong. Pinning him down. “Now you do.”

Tuck couldn’t speak as clearly as he wanted to, not around the thickening in his throat. “Yeah. I got what I wanted. Lucky me, huh? You look—like you’re new. All shiny. And me, I’m…”