Make a Right (21 page)

Cade picked at the label on his water. A long strip came free. “No matter what?”

“Not even if you killed someone, babe. Then?” Tuck shrugged. “I’d help you hide the body. Bodies plural, if there were more than one.”

“You would,” Cade said, as if to himself. He leaned his head against the seat. “But I wonder. I’ve always wondered. You know that by now, don’t you?”

“Jesus, Cade,” Tuck said, starting to worry now. “What did you do?”

“What I had to, at the time.” Cade closed his eyes. “More than one time.”

“Cade…” So help him if Tuck knew what to do. He had to settle for laying his hand on Cade’s leg and kneading the tough muscle under soft skin. “Whatever you did, I don’t care. I can promise you that.”

“Promises can be broken.” Cade dropped the bottle to lie forgotten in the footwell. “I care.”

Tuck had to turn his attention back to the road to navigate a tricky curve. Damn foothills. “Are you going to tell me?”

“I’m not sure.” Cade took the sort of breath that was meant to settle a man and only did half the job, but for once, that was mostly enough. “You make me want to.” His nudge in the side took Tuck by surprise. As did Cade’s light press of hand over his hand. “You make me want to,” he said to himself. “Maybe I’ll get there.”

Damn this road for being tricky enough to keep Tuck looking out over the blacktop and not at Cade. “Then tell me what I can do,” he said.

“There’s nothing.”

“Then make something up, because you know I can’t sit here and be helpless.”

“I know,” Cade said quietly. “Keep trying. If you still want to. That’s all. Keep trying. I didn’t think you’d need to be asked.”

He hadn’t. Nor had he known how much he needed to hear that. Tuck turned his wrist awkwardly so he could interlace his fingers with Cade’s. “No stopping,” he said. “I promise.”

“Even if—”

“There is no ‘even if.’”

Cade subsided.

Tuck didn’t. “We’ve always been good together. You and me. For richer or poorer. In sickness and in health. Fucked-up and doing okay, before now. Marriage in America, man. Land of the free and home of the crazy.”

“If anyone ever wondered about the divorce rate in this country…” Cade said drily.

Tuck rolled his shoulders, trying to work out the stiffness from all this tension. “Don’t go there, Cade. Seriously, don’t.”

Cade rubbed his thumb over the back of Tuck’s hand. “I’m being difficult. Don’t blame me. I learned from the best.”

A laugh exploded from Tuck, sharp and short. “Sometimes I wonder if too much of me rubbed off on you.”

“Tell me about it.” Cade sighed. “You make things happen that shouldn’t be possible. You always have.”

Tuck rolled that one over. “Then we’re two of a kind, huh?”

“Say again?”

“I make things happen, sure. That’s me at heart. You ever stop to think you make things happen?”

Cade hadn’t, and clearly it surprised him. Tuck could feel the questions permeating the space between passenger and driver’s seats.

“You do,” Tuck said. He cleared his throat. “You make things happen to me. Just most of the time you’re coming from the opposite direction. So we make a circle. Like a wedding band.”

He pulled to the side of the road. You couldn’t do this kind of stuff on the road, even if it hadn’t been the worst thing he’d feared—far from it—and for once, even he couldn’t pay attention to double yellow lines.

“You said we needed to talk,” Tuck said. “‘We’ means me too. You okay with that?”

Cade hesitated, but he nodded.

“You remember what I said in the parlor? People who don’t love each other can’t rip each other to shreds like we have.”

Cade didn’t deny it, and he kept listening.

“It’s not over.” Tuck had to look at him head-on, even if the seat belt did half choke him and its holster jabbed him cruelly in the hip. “We’re damn good at fighting, you and me.”

Dry hint of a smirk. “You don’t say.”

“No jokes. That’s my job, and don’t. Not now.”

Cade bowed his neck and rolled his shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

“I wasn’t blaming you. Just saying. There’s a difference, even if you don’t get it.” Tuck tried out one of his old cocky grins. “Trust me on that one, at least?”

Cade straightened some. Good enough for a start. And he was still listening.

“Tell me the truth about something,” Tuck said. “Not what you think you should say, but the truth. Deal?”

Cade went slightly still. Not quite statue, not quite human. That old flash of fear darted through him.

He nodded all the same. “Ask.”

“You and me, we never said good-bye. It occurs to me you would have.”

The plastic water bottle crumpled in Cade’s hand. “I know.”

“No good-bye means it’s not over. See? I know you. And you ask me why I push? I come back with smart-ass answers, answers that make you mad, and answers that I know will hurt you, but they all come from here.”

Tuck thumped his chest and brushed his fingertips over Cade’s heart, over the key he wore. It looked as if it’d been made to belong to him and that he’d worn it for years.

Cade waited, lips parted, eyes dark and wide. “What are you saying?”

“I want you to tell me the truth. No pressure. No sarcasm. You still love me. I know because I still love you.” Tuck spread his hands wide. “Tell me if it
is
true, and then that’s all there is left to say.”

Tuck waited. He’d know now. Where they were headed next. Down separate roads or together.

“It’s true.” Cade dropped the bottle and wrapped his arms around his chest. “So where does that leave us? Where do we go from here, Tuck?”

“Forward,” Tuck said. “That’s all I know how to do. It’s up to you if you’re coming with me or not.”

“I want to,” Cade said. “I don’t know if I can.”

Tuck accepted that. Something about this day, start to finish, had changed him. “What’s it going to take to help you figure that out?”

Cade laughed humorlessly. “Telling you the truth. Back to square one.”

“Does the road go on from square one?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure which way.”

Tuck thought about that one. “It beats sitting still,” he decided out loud, reaching for the keys dangling from the ignition.

“And you’re all right with that?” Cade asked, sounding dubious.

“I can try,” Tuck said. Honesty went both ways. “There are worse places to start.”

He changed his mind about the keys; his legs had begun to grow restless, and they didn’t stop now. The hummock on the side of the road was gentle in grade and looked as if it might just lead up somewhere a guy could walk and stretch his legs in peace. “Take a walk with me?”

Cade nodded and reached for his door handle. He stopped after he’d opened it and before he’d gotten out. “I think…” he said under his breath. “I think we’re both becoming something. I don’t know what.”

“But not a bad thing?”

“I don’t want it to be bad.”

“Then that’s better. See, that gives me something to work with.”

Silence fell, but it was a peaceful silence. Tuck enjoyed it for one beat, two beats, three, and then elbowed Cade with affection in his nudge. “C’mon. Fresh air will do us both some good. I’m a convert. See? Things can change.”

One of those rare smiles softened the curve of Cade’s lips. “Maybe.”

He exited the car first, and Tuck followed after.

Chapter Sixteen

They ended up on a more or less quiet street in an older neighborhood, its houses dignified in the way of a grandmother who ruled the roost but didn’t need to make a fuss about the fact. Spread far enough apart for stretches to walk between and distant enough from the road to admire at a distance.

Cade walked beside Tuck, hands in his pockets, Tuck content to be as quiet as him for once.

Should’ve known that was the calm before another storm, but foresight had never been one of Tuck’s strengths.

“I need to ask you one thing,” Cade said abruptly, without preamble.

Tuck sighed. “Go ahead.”

“You’re not going to like it.”

The softness of fresh-cut grass not yet raked up blew across Tuck’s feet. He shrugged. “I don’t want to fight about it either. You say I won’t like it, fine. Try me and find out.”

Cade swung in front of Tuck and stopped, bringing him to a halt. Crap. Whatever it was, he meant business. Tuck mirrored him, hands in his pockets too, waiting.

“Lay off of Thomas,” Cade said. “I mean it, and I won’t ask again. Either you agree or you don’t, and I can’t… Look. He tweaked me out at first, sure. Not for the reasons you’re thinking. Now he’s more of a comfort. I need that. Do you understand?”

Ah, hell
. Tuck nodded, biting at the inside of his cheek. “Got to ask you one thing myself, then. Why?”

“Why not?” Cade returned, though wryly.

Man, Tuck just didn’t have it in him anymore. “Did you know he wants you?”

“I know.”

Tuck stopped in his tracks. “You what?”

“I always did. And I knew you thought I didn’t.”

Well…hell
. “Why are you saying this now? To get me to drop it?”

Cade looked him in the eye. “Yes. It’s not your problem. It’s mine.”

“The fuck you say.” Tuck’s temper prickled. “The guy I hate wants the guy I love, and I’m supposed to just let it ride?”

“My only love sprang from my only hate,” Cade murmured. “Who am I with right now? Thomas or you?”

And what the hell was a guy supposed to say to
that?

Cade touched the key around his neck, as if it were already an old habit. “Thomas is… He’s not what you think. There’s more to him than that. His being here helps.”

That stung and confused, and Tuck let it show.

Cade rubbed at his shorn head, pressing knuckles to his scalp. “I don’t—I can’t explain it. Not yet. Give me a chance.”

Hell and hell again
. “I don’t have to worry he’s going to take you away?”

“God. Not even close.”

“You sure about that? I’m not joking.” Now Tuck was the one blocking Cade’s path. “Well? Leave the other shit be for now. Okay. It’s just—Thomas, he…”

“Threatens you,” Cade said.

Yeah, and Tuck wasn’t going to tell Cade how direct that’d been. A man’s pride had its limits. “He makes me think he would have been a better man for you than I am.”

Limits, of course, being defined by what came out of a man’s mouth and what he managed to bite his tongue on.

Tuck sighed. “Forget I said that.”

“No.” Cade tilted his head to one side. “You really—Tuck. No. Not ever.” He stopped himself, jaw working. “I couldn’t be with Thomas. If you don’t believe me, then at least pretend.”

“For how long?”

“Until I figure out how to…” Cade pinched the bridge of his nose. “Until, I don’t know.”

Tuck nudged at the edge of the blacktop with the toe of his shoe. “You’re asking a lot.”

Cade toed at Tuck’s shoe in turn. “I’m aware.”

Tuck might have said no. He sure as hell wanted to, but when Cade asked something of him, something he needed—well. When had he ever been able to spit that word out? “I’ll try,” he said. “Can’t promise how good I’ll be at it, and I don’t want to. Know that for sure. But I’ll do my best. For now.”

The relief in Cade’s smile and the easing of his shoulders made that worthwhile. “Thanks.”

“That, I don’t want your thanks for.” Tuck crossed his arms and rubbed them to ward off a chill from a brisk breeze that’d sprung up. He sniffed the air. It was a smell long forgotten but familiar once he’d put a name to it. “Smells like rain.”

Cade did the same. “I’d forgotten. It doesn’t smell like this in the city.”

“If we’d made it to that house I’d wanted for us, we could have—”

“Yeah.” Cade was stronger when he took Tuck’s arm, and not just in muscle. Easing up made him tougher. Somehow. Tuck didn’t get how that worked.

He bumped his shoulder against Cade’s. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

* * *

Cade had changed. Tuck could see it still more when Cade opened the car door and tucked himself inside the way he used to, not as if something Tuck drove was a thing to be wary of. Still on edge. Just—not a razor’s edge.

He watched Tuck the way Tuck had grown accustomed to watching him.

“You weren’t done out there, were you?”

“Almost.” Cade wanted to reach for him. Tuck could tell. But he held himself back.

With a sense that it was only for now, not for forever. It made Tuck catch his breath.

Gave him the strength to listen when Cade said, “Tell me one more time. You keep saying you’re mine. And even if you knew the worst, you’d still love me?”

“There’s worse to come? No, stop. Sarcasm at a bad time.” Tuck rubbed his face. “Would I love you then? Yes. Even if it ripped me open and left me bleeding.”

“I might have to hold you to that promise. Sooner or later.”

“Then do.”

“God, you’re unreal. And you’re going to regret what you said.”

“You don’t know that.” Tuck took Cade’s hand. “As long as you’re mine too.”

“You’re going to regret it,” Cade repeated. “You know how you’re always saying ‘I can’t help this’ and ‘I can’t help that’?”

Tuck nodded.

“I can’t help this either. Or…” Cade hesitated, and there was a little making himself do it, but truth too in the way he reached out for Tuck and drew him closer. His lips brushed Tuck’s neck. “Or this.” He pressed them next beneath Tuck’s ear to make him gasp and shift in his seat. He’d gone right for the hot spot.

“Cade—”

“Do you want this? I need you to tell me.” Cade was almost pleading.

Tuck never could say no. He couldn’t stop himself from saying now, “Yes.”

“God.” Cade pressed his face against Tuck’s neck. “It’s what I can give you.”

That made sense, but it didn’t make Tuck as happy as he wished it did. He stroked Cade’s nape where once he would have rumpled Cade’s hair. “Yeah, babe. I know.”

“And you still…?”

“What?” Tuck pinched his lover’s ear. “You’re still doubting me?”

Cade snorted. “And you’re still making me laugh.”

“If you don’t like it…” Tuck trailed his fingers down Cade’s back as far as he could reach. “Then make me do something else. I dare you.”