Make a Right (16 page)

“Again I say bullshit. Because I love you. And if you don’t get that by now, I’m sorrier than I can say. Leave me again if you want. That’s not going to change anything.”

Cade said nothing. Christ. Why hadn’t Tuck been able to do that? Why had he said those things?

Fuck it
. Tuck knelt and set four of the boards into a useless square just to give himself something to do; something that’d hide how he tried to shunt away pent-up emotions so tangled he couldn’t even begin to make sense of them.

“Tuck.” Cade’s hand was abruptly on Tuck’s nape, holding him almost aggressively, meaning business and taking pretty clear pains to be sure Tuck got how serious he was when he said, “You should have said. If you’d told me the truth from the start—”

“Yeah,” Tuck said. “Don’t tell me what I already know.”

Cade let go of Tuck. “You don’t know as much as you think you do.”

Tuck’s mouth tasted bad. “Funny. I already knew that too.” He lined up hammer with nail and brought them together, hard.
Bang!

Chapter Eleven

“Let me see.”

“You don’t need to. I’ve had worse slamming my hand in car doors.”

“Sure. That’s why you’re bleeding.” Cade wasn’t messing around. He twisted Tuck’s wrist to turn his thumb toward the sky.

“One drop of blood, if that.” He’d given himself no more than a scrape and a torn nail. Trust him, he knew it could have been a hell of a lot worse. His pride was the thing that smarted after all that bragging to Cade about DIY, and Cade going Mother Hen now did
not
help.

Suzie-Q whined and tried to stick her muzzle in the middle of the whole business.

“Calm down, girl. I’m fine.” Tuck bumped the top of her head with his elbow. “Go find Megan. Cade, you mind giving me my hand back now?”

Cade let him go after he’d held on long enough to prove some kind of a point. “Idiot.”

“What did you just say?”

“Stop trying to prove things to me. Okay? There’s nothing I don’t know about how hard you try. I just—I—” Cade pressed his hands over his eyes. “Just stop hurting yourself for my sake.”

Tuck glared at him. They knelt almost knee to knee, eye to eye, only just managing to keep their voices low. Who knew how that was possible. Tuck wanted to shout and swear just to relieve the pressure, and he wasn’t talking about the throbbing of his banged-up hand.

“Tuck?”

Shit
. Tuck nearly had his second heart attack in as many days. Cade too, if the half-corkscrew jump he gave was any indication. “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. Do you want to not do that, Hannah?”

“Fair payback for this morning. Are you bleeding?”

“It’s not bad.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” Hannah said. She wasn’t smiling. More upset than she should be for…

Oh, hell. Come
on! Tuck very deliberately did not look at Cade. “We’re fine.”

“Sure you are.” She wasn’t looking anywhere near Tuck’s injured hand. “Come inside with me. Cade, you stay out here.”

Tuck hesitated, trying to think and failing, before he did as he’d been told. What other choice did he have? Besides running away, and that wasn’t an option. Never had been for him.

* * *

Hannah kept her mouth shut. At first. Long enough to drag out the first-aid kit and point Tuck to a chair at the cleared end of the kitchen table. Then again, she didn’t so much have to say anything for Tuck to know the score. All he waited for now was for it to bubble over and prove this—all of it—had turned out about as useful as casting pearls before swine.

She sat with a
thump
across from him, bandages and tape laid out before her, and got to work. None too gently. She had an alcohol swab in her hand and wasn’t afraid to use it either.

He might have figured she’d wait for that moment before she spoke. And she wasn’t just angry. He’d seen Hannah angry. This was somewhere far beyond that point. “How long have you been lying to me?”

“Hannah…”

“How long?” She threw the swab, stained with Tuck’s blood, on the floor. Gone was the golden goddess who almost never stopped smiling. She still looked like an angel to him but more the kind who carried a flaming sword. “Tell me. How long have you and Cade been separated?”

“Goddamnit it, Hannah.” Tuck sighed. “Fuck it. Fine. Six months, give or take a week.”

She let his hand go when he wasn’t expecting it; he rapped his knuckles sharply against the table and winced, but she didn’t notice or didn’t care. “You’re an asshole, Tuck. You know that?”

Yeah. That, and tired again. So fucking tired. He lifted one shoulder. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“God.” Hannah sat as still as Cade, when Cade was in the mood, before she reached as sharply for the gauze-cutting scissors as their blades themselves. “You know, I wondered when you first got here.”

Tuck let her have her way with him. He deserved it. “I hoped you hadn’t. Wasn’t sure.”

“It wasn’t one big thing that gave you away. More like a bunch of small ones. Cade didn’t step up; you had to push him. Every time he said something, or you did, you’d give each other this little look like you were checking to see if you’d screwed up. He’d shaved his head. No way you’d have let him do that.”

“In his own words? I don’t ‘let’ him do anything. He’s a big boy.”

“Fine. No way he’d have done that when he knows you love it long.”

Okay, Tuck had to concede her that point. Even if it made him uncomfortable to guess she probably knew exactly
why
he liked Cade with enough hair to grab on to.

She dropped everything and dragged a hand backward through her hair, elbow resting on the table and her face hidden. Her tone flat. He knew that particular pitch. That was the one a person hid the big hurts behind. “I never thought you would lie to us, Tuck. Not you.”

Tuck took the blow as best as he could, breathed through it, and let it out. “I meant well.”

She scoffed and curled in tighter on herself, so stiff she’d break if he poked her with one fingertip.

“I couldn’t tell the truth,” Tuck said, feeling helpless as the kids she and Megan had been, once upon a time. “This, right here? This is why I did what I did. I take care of my own. I have to. That’s who I am. If I’d sent back the invitation with ‘sorry, haven’t seen the man I love in months. Sucks to be me, right?’ that would have started your married life off real good, wouldn’t it?”

She did him the courtesy of looking him in the eye. “It wouldn’t have been the worst thing that ever happened to us.”

“Not that I guess this helps.”

“It really doesn’t.” She took a deep breath and tried to square her shoulders. “So that is it. The end.”

“Maybe.” Tuck rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know anymore. Hell, I still don’t have a clue what this is, and I never really have. It just happened, and Cade would never…” He gestured uselessly. “We never stopped. And now here we are.”

“You guys have fought before.”

“Sure we have. Now ask me what makes this different and see if you get a better answer. Dare you.” Tuck wished to God he had something to drink. Preferably whisky. “I’d fix it if I could. He won’t let me.”

She looked at him, lost little-girl eyes in a grown woman’s face that’d been rosy and happy just last night. “Is that a lie too?”

No thought, just reflex in his answer: “No.”

Hannah sighed. He could see the anger drain out of her like air from a popped balloon. “I should hate you for this.”

“God. Don’t, baby girl. Please don’t.”

She scoffed and rubbed her face. When she came up, she looked as tired as he felt. “Cade, he’s—”

Movement in the corridor just outside the kitchen startled Tuck and Hannah. He waved her silent and stood, moving slightly in front of her. Automatic shielding. “Who the fuck—
shit
.”

Thomas blocked the doorway, wiping clean hands on a clean towel. Tuck guessed he’d been doing regular old yard work like a good little boy. “Everything okay?”

Hell
. How much had Thomas heard?

As if in direct answer, Thomas slipped Tuck one flat stare. Fuck. He’d heard it all.

“Don’t you have some vines to yank?” Tuck demanded. “This is private. Fuck off.”

Hannah slapped his hand; thank God she hit the one he hadn’t hammered. “Tuck. He is my guest. So are you. Both of you behave or I will send you home, and don’t think for a second I won’t.”

Thomas shrugged as easily as if it didn’t matter a bit to him. “No problem. I’m here if you need anything.”

Like he’d been there before, far more than Tuck had. Or Cade. That new-old hurt seared under Tuck’s skin. He glared at Thomas on his way out, ambling and casual.

A short encounter, but it did nothing for his temper. Tuck thumped back into his seat and stopped Hannah before she could scold again. “Leave it alone. I’m sorry about the bad blood, I am, but that’s between me and him. I’m asking you to let it go.”

“Right. Because you’re doing a great job of that yourself.” She drew in a long breath and said, sounding like a woman far older than her true age, “What do we do now?”

“I don’t know, baby girl.”

“Not good enough.” She took his injured hand, but gently. Just like him. Never could stay mad. Sometimes Tuck thought that was as much a curse as a blessing.

He figured he was probably right about that one.

She dabbed ointment on Tuck’s cut and asked, “You do know when you talk about loving Cade, you’re using the present tense, right?”

Tuck nodded in silence.

She pushed the point. “Then you still love him.”

“What kind of question is that? Of course I do. I love, therefore I am. And he still loves me. He’s said so.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Answer that for me and you’ll solve all my problems in one fell swoop. You know him, Hannah. He’s so fucking stubborn.” Tuck pinched his nose. “I keep asking myself and asking myself some more: what am I supposed to do? What
can
I do when he won’t even let me try?”

She looked helpless, at a loss for words. “What do you want to do?”

I don’t want to wake up alone when that’s not the way it’s supposed to be, forever and ever amen, was what Tuck thought.

“I think that depends on Cade,” was what Tuck said. “I think the same thing as I always did. He’s mine, and I’m his. I feel him like a phantom limb when he’s not around.” He watched her fix him up on the outside, still tired and feeing that odd salty-sandy-dry of sunburn he hadn’t noticed until now, in the cool of the old house. “I don’t want him and me to be over.”

“That’s all?”

“That isn’t enough?”

Tuck watched Hannah gather her strength. She stood and offered him a hand up. Her fingers were wiry and her wrist strong. Tougher than she looked, yeah, that was his girl. She had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze now, but she did it. “If you don’t want it to be over, don’t let it be over.”

Tuck hated like hell to ask, but he had to. “And Megan?”

“Oh God. I don’t know.” Hannah shook her hair forward to hide her face. “I have to think about that. I don’t want to lie to her.”

“Don’t. Don’t you start off your life together with lies.”

“Then you want me to tell her the truth?”

“I—” Tuck stopped, at a total loss. “Man. When I fuck up, I do it right, huh?” He had to ask, no matter how much he wished it were otherwise. “Do you hate me for this?”

“I couldn’t hate you,” she said. “I wonder if that’s Cade’s problem too.”

Impulse overcame Tuck; that and the need to
make
things right. To stop the hurting for everyone he’d meant only the best for. He took Hannah by the shoulders in a one-armed hug, even if he didn’t kiss her head or cheek. “I’ll fix it. Somehow.”

“You’d better.” Hannah brushed at her cheek.
Oh no
. He’d made her cry.
Fuck me for being such a…

Tuck turned her about and held her as carefully as he could by her slim arms, just beneath her shoulders. “I
will
fix it. Or die trying.”

“I believe the ‘trying’ part, at least.”

Was that a joke? She’d smiled anyway, even if she shook her head in seeming resignation.

“You know what your problem is, Tuck?” she asked, looking not at him but out the window. “Your heart is bigger than your head sometimes. His head is too tied up to pay attention to his heart.”

Tuck frowned. She wasn’t just looking; she was watching. Big difference between the two. He followed her line of sight and swore inside his head.

Thomas had moved into the empty space Tuck left behind.
Swoop
. Like he belonged there. And be damned if Cade wasn’t—well, not glad, not relieved, but somehow breathing easier in his presence.

“I think I’m starting to understand some things,” Hannah said.

Tuck swallowed down enough pride to answer. He owed her that. “Yeah.”

Hannah socked him one in his arm. Not as hard as she could have. “Like I said. You’re a dumb-ass.”

“You think?” Tuck brushed off the pseudo-insult; truth be told, he barely heard her. From where he stood, he had a perfectly framed view of Cade through the kitchen window. Cade—and Thomas—talking quietly together. They knelt on the grass, Suzie-Q running in circles around them, far enough away to be out of earshot of
quiet
voices from the house. That was good.

Yeah. That was the only good damn thing about it.

The bad thing? As Tuck watched him, he saw Cade
listening
to what Thomas had to say. Looking thoughtful about it, and uncertain, but paying attention and taking in those words inaudible to Tuck from inside the house. The uncertainty and tension Tuck had seen in Cade when Thomas made his first appearance began to melt. Disappeared like frost on glass at dawn. You could track it, but if you blinked, you’d miss the moment when the one became the other.

When Cade smiled at Thomas, even if it was hesitantly, Tuck came
this
close to snapping.

Thomas said something Tuck couldn’t hear and couldn’t read off his lips. Cade blushed. He shrugged, tossing the words off; that told Tuck they’d been a compliment. That was
his
look. That was what
he
got from Cade. No one else owned that.