Make a Right (27 page)

Silence from Thomas.

“I’m trying to make him leave. Whether I do it on purpose or not.”

Cade sounded despairing. Thomas held his tongue.

“I keep wanting to think it’d be better if he
did
go. He’d be better off, not dealing with a fuckup like me.” Cade straightened, hands behind his back now, arms no longer crossed over his chest. “But that’s a lie. I don’t know what I’d do without him. If I’d even be here, or if I’d have finished the job years ago.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“No?” Cade made a small, hurtful sound aimed at himself. “I love him. I’m sorry it couldn’t be you. Sometimes I am. It would have been easier. But…”

“I’m not Tuck. Don’t remind me.”

“I don’t mean to hurt you.”

“No one ever does,” Thomas said. He sounded equally worn out. “I came here to try and help. That’s all.”

“Liar,” Cade said quietly.

“Don’t ever blame a man for hope, Cade.”

Cade laughed without a drop of amusement. “You know what’s funny? That’s exactly what Tuck has told me since the day we met, almost. No matter what I tell him. Or myself. I don’t deserve him.
Don’t
—don’t interrupt me. It’s true. All these years, I’ve lied to him. Lied right to his face, until…” He exhaled slowly. “If he knew, that would be the true ‘worst thing ever.’”

More than one ‘worst thing’? Tuck had to brace himself with one arm to keep upright.
Tired, God. So fucking tired. I can join the club.

“If he knew,” Cade went on, merciless to all of them seen and unseen, “the world would end. And yet that’s what he keeps pushing me to know.”

Grass rustled beneath Tuck’s knee; he only just managed to keep still and hidden.

Cade leaned his head back, gazing up at the ceiling of the veranda. “I would go back to tell the truth, if I could. So he’d understand why I did what I did, when I found out about that damned job.”

“I knew you back then. You never would have managed it.”

Harsh words that Cade nodded to, accepting them as true. Tuck didn’t know that they didn’t hit him deeper. Something that bad, and Cade had tried to—what? Protect Tuck from it? Not want protection from it? Would rather have held that pain close like a blanket or a shield to keep the world away?

Thought about becoming a priest so he could avoid the temptation for the rest of his life?

“Irony,” Cade said, as if he were kissing the word the way a lover would. “Irony is a cold, cruel bitch.”

Silence. Then: “You never told me what that second job was. I didn’t think it was my business,” Thomas said. “It occurs to me that minding my own business hasn’t gotten me much of anywhere. If I’d really tried, who knows what I’d have won?”

“Not me,” Cade said. “I’m sorry. I am. But it’s always been Tuck.”

That should have made Tuck’s spirits lift. Should have, could have, would have…

Thomas didn’t directly answer Cade. “I want to know,” he said instead. “If you can’t love me, ever, then tell me why you can’t give yourself to anyone. Tell me what Tuck did.” He laughed drily. “I could use an excuse to pay him back for that fistfight a while ago.”

Tuck thought he wouldn’t answer. Prayed he wouldn’t. If Thomas gained this knowledge too…

Cade spoke. Tuck figured he should have known better than to hope. “Driving a limo for call girls. Escorts, he said. A whore by any other name is still…”

Not a word Tuck had thought Cade would use. He frowned. Come to think of it… A word Cade had never used, no matter how they fought about that job. Why?

And then there was Thomas’s reaction, to confuse him all the more. Not a rumble, more silence, nor a grunt that equaled a frown, or even a question, but a soft hiss of—surprise and sympathy both? “Damn it, Cade,” Thomas said.

“Now you see what I mean.”

Maybe he did. Tuck didn’t. But all the same, he knew he was about to find out, and now that the moment had arrived, his stomach twisted into sour knots that promised he’d end up spitting bile into a sink somewhere.

He didn’t want to hear.

He had to hear.

He stayed where he was and listened. Some things that a guy never wanted were the most needful things for him.

Thomas sighed. A small one, but it had a big effect. Cade kept going. Spilling it all out. “And you didn’t tell him. Not even then. No, I know that’s a dumb question. We wouldn’t be here now if you had.”

“I want to now. I do. To be enough for him.” Cade drew the iron key Tuck had bought him from where it hung on a leather cord around his neck. “He gave me that a day ago. He never gives up, not even when he should. Not even when you try to make him. He can’t be led. He goes where he pleases.”

“Not that I like giving him any credit, but he wouldn’t have gone near that job if he’d known.”

Cade directed a narrow-eyed glare and a baring of his teeth at where Thomas must be sitting. “Go nail yourself to a cross already, would you?”

“Don’t vent your temper on me,” Thomas snapped. “And you have no room to talk about martyrdom. None.” Each word came out like a gunshot.

Cade took that scolding without a word of protest. Just let out his air and tightened his stance. “I’d rather make him hate me than him make that decision all on his own. All those lies. All those years, when the only other person who knew the truth was you.” He paused, his jaw working. “I lied to him the first time he asked, because if he thought less of me because of… And when he stopped asking, I thought I was safe. I let myself think it really was over, and…”

“Then go back. Tell him the truth. If he’s the one you love—”

“Don’t.”

“I offered,” Thomas said. “I asked. You told me no, time and time again. ‘You’re the one who picks up the pieces,’ you’d say. ‘But Tuck, I love him.’ You’d say that too.”

“God. Don’t.” Cade shut his eyes tight and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I know all this. It was true then. It’s true now. I’ve told him that much, more than once.”

The bench squeaked beneath Thomas’s weight. There was an unaccustomed hardness to his voice when he said, “Then I think you should tell me too, one more time.”

“Why?”

Thomas was merciless. “Because I need to hear it again before I take you over my shoulder and carry you out of here and give you a life where there’s no lies. Just peace. If that’s what you want, then you know I’m your man. But this is your last chance. I’m human too.”

Tuck’s throat closed. Any second now, something inside him would tear loose; he could feel everything inside him twisting and tightening far too tense for a man to survive their breaking under pressure.

Silence from Cade this time. “No. I’m sorry.”

Thomas sighed long, low, and deep. “Then tell him the truth. Stand up like a man, because all three of us know you can.”

Cade bit his lips. Strong shoulders, tall man’s body, and a boy’s fear in his eyes. “He’ll hate me, when he knows.”

“If he hates you, he hates you. Just get it done with instead of spending the rest of your life driving yourself mad—or getting what you want and making him loathe the sight of you.”

The day had come when Tuck agreed with Thomas. Hell just froze over, and Satan was ice-skating to work. Go fucking figure.

“Mostly, Thomas? Mostly, I’d
rather
that than let him see how much I’m ashamed of myself. I think back, and I freeze so I don’t get sick. I’d rather he left me than know who I was.”

Cade, baby, please
… Tuck couldn’t have moved if he were on fire. Not even to be sick to his stomach from listening to all this. He should have heeded Megan. Too late, though.

“I can still remember the way each one of them sounded. The way they tasted and how I puked every time until I learned how to keep it down.” Cade changed position, shifting into a pose and acquiring a demeanor that almost turned him into a different man, someone Tuck didn’t know at all. Someone cold, sinuous, almost snakelike, his eyes slitted and his tongue wicked with cruelty, not humor, not pleasure. “Twenty-five for a handjob, mister. Fifty to suck you off. A hundred for handcuffs. Two hundred to fuck me. Five if you don’t wear a—”

Tuck’s arm gave way, and so did his stomach.

Cade stopped. “Did you hear that? Shit. Thomas, shit—”

He stopped again, locked onto Tuck, who’d stumbled to his feet and into the light.

Tuck knotted his hands into tight fists at some point along the way, and they shook. “Thomas? Get out.”

Chapter Twenty-two

Thomas left without a word. Tuck wasn’t surprised, and he didn’t have the energy to be glad.

They held each other’s stare, he and Cade, for an endless space in time or maybe less than a minute. If Tuck moved, his knees would give out from beneath him. Again.

“So this is the ‘worst thing ever’? If it’s not, I’d sure as fuck hate to hold you back now.”

Pale as a ghost, he was, but of all things,
now
Cade stayed put. Like a man on the scaffold, he took his stand. “How long have you been listening?”

Tuck spat, wishing for a bottle of water. Anything. “Long enough. He knew? All along, Thomas knew.”

Cade nodded.

There were too many questions. Tuck couldn’t—“You were just seventeen, almost eighteen, at St. Pius. When you started doing this, how old—”

He could see how much effort it took for Cade not to bolt. Another time, Tuck would have been proud. “Eleven, and I hated every second of it, but it damn well beat what I ran away from at my stepfather’s house. Every minute, every hour, every
year
. But I did it so I could eat. So I could find safe places to sleep. Don’t ask questions you already know the answers to; you came from the streets too.”

“And don’t you fucking deliberately misunderstand me. I heard
everything
, Cade.” Tuck ran his hands through his hair backward. “Yeah, I came from the streets. I boosted cars. I held guns on people. We all did whatever the fuck we could to get by.”

Cade was angry now too. Or maybe he’d been angry for ten years. Going back and forth between that and fear.

“That’s what you’ve been doing for ten years, isn’t it?” Tuck said, the pieces finally fitting together. “Doing what you can to get by. Fuck.” There went his legs after all.

Cade followed him to the grass. “Yes. You wanted to hear it? Then I’ll tell it.” His eyes shone with unshed salt water and things Tuck didn’t want to put a name to. “I tried to forget. I almost did sometimes.”

“But Thomas knew. You trusted
him
. Thomas always knew.”

“He did,” Cade said. “If you’d looked at me before the way you’re looking at me now, I’d have killed myself. You heard that too? It’s not bullshit. I’d have found a corner and slit my wrists and been done with it. There or here.”

Tuck wanted to relent. Something in him wouldn’t let that happen. He guessed now he knew the way Cade had felt, for fucking
years
. “How long did Thomas know? He what, read your file?”

“No. I told him.”

Fuck.

Tuck didn’t want to know what his face must have looked like. Cade almost held back his flinch but not quite.

“He found me one night,” Cade said. In a rush, as if he had to get this out now or never at all. “I’d had a flashback. I was outside, under an oak tree. A real mess, you know? And he came looking for me.”

A darkness blacker still clouded Tuck’s head. He thought he knew, but if he wasn’t sure… “What night was that?”

You asked
, Cade’s white face said. “The first night you and I slept together.”

Tuck was on the move before he knew he’d started to back off, putting more than just room to breathe between himself and Cade the way he’d promised he never would. That was bad, really bad, but worse was Cade coming after him to put a cool hand on his nape.

Tuck knocked it away. “You let me,” he said, ragged. “You came back to me. Night after night. You even moved to the city with me, when just me touching you must have made you sick.”

“No.” Cade’s hand went hard, his grip too tight on Tuck’s neck for a spasm of an iron second. “After that first night, I didn’t have another flashback.”

“You know something? You’re a good liar, but I’m not that dumb.” Tuck knocked Cade’s hand away, and he wasn’t careful about it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You should have told me. Let me ask
you
something, Cade, and guess what? You’re not going to like it. Did you ever love me? Even a little?”

Cade laughed.
Laughed
. “Why do you think I wanted you to hate me? It wasn’t all about me. Not entirely, and this is what Thomas doesn’t know. Only you will. I loved you so much I didn’t ever want to see what this would do to you.”

“And that’s supposed to help?”

“No. Because I was right, wasn’t I?”

“What do you think? No, really. What
do
you think? Of me? How’s a guy supposed to get past that, when I trusted you with everything? I gave you everything I was. I gave you more.”

Cade started laughing again. “I know,” he said. “Every day I know.”

Tuck had never wanted to lay a hand on Cade in anger. He did now. “Either stop that or tell me why this is funny.”

“Because this isn’t the way the world was supposed to end.”

Tuck’s brain stopped. His thoughts were empty. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“I’m not. It’s like the electric chair breaking down after walking the green mile. God, Tuck.”

“So it’s okay to punch a hole through me as long as you’re okay?”

Cade looked up past Tuck, toward the stars. “Tell me you wouldn’t have said that, felt that way about me, before now.”

One-two punch, TKO
. Tuck backed away a few more steps, hurting so deep he couldn’t see. Still couldn’t think. But Cade?
Now
he stood straight as his body wanted to, taller than Tuck by almost two inches without his shoulders bowed. Strong, grown so strong, and with shackles Tuck could almost see lying broken at his feet, a blanket of iron pushed off his back to weigh down the earth behind him.

Tuck wanted to hate the sight of that. God, he wanted to. It wasn’t
fair
. How could anything just and good call that fair? After all he’d done before, after everything he’d tried? Useless, that was him. Fucking useless. No wonder it took a push from someone not him to get Cade to break down.