Make a Right (29 page)

“I do. And I’m sorry. But here’s the thing, Tuck.” Cade’s hands wandered slower, higher, cradling his hips. He looked at them and not at Tuck’s face. “I’m free. There’s this weight on my shoulders that’s just—gone. If I’d known that would happen, I’d have done it a long time ago. Even if it would have hurt you this much. It’s not fair. It’s not right. It
is
cruel.” He let go of Tuck’s hand. “Do you hate me now, or do you get why I think you should? Thought you should.”

Tuck hunched his shoulders. His legs ached. “Yes.” It’d been meant as a slap in Cade’s face, but he was the one to take the blow, and it made his blood—fucking—
boil
. “You never even tried. Now it’s happened, you’re free. That’s great. But you slapped those chains on
me
. If you’re free, why don’t you go?”

“Because you’re here. Because I can give you the things I wanted to. Don’t you get that? The world ended, but I’m still here.”

“It’s not that easy,” Tuck said, laughing an ugly laugh at himself. “Look at that. One hundred eighty degrees. Tell me something else, Cade? What do you think’s going to happen now? I’m not being a bastard. I honestly want to know what you think, because me? I don’t have a single fucking clue.”

“One of two choices. The easiest for both of us…we get through this wedding, and you leave. And unless we cross the same road at the same time, we don’t see each other again.”

Tuck’s body went taut. He didn’t want that. He should, but he didn’t. Maybe he was as fucked as Cade after all. “But that’s not what you’d choose now, is it? You want another chance.”

Tuck couldn’t look at him. Not when he didn’t know what’d happen if he did. Too much was going on for him to keep up with. If he could get five minutes alone to think—
God
. “You have no right to ask me that. None.”

“I know.” Cade didn’t let go. That meant—something—even if he leaned on Tuck as much as he opened up to let Tuck lean on him. If Tuck chose to. “I want to try taking care of you for a change.” He laughed the smallest of laughs. “The way you taught all of us by being who you are. One hundred eighty degrees.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“When is anything?” Cade stood, rising gracefully to his bare feet. “I’m still asking. You would do the same. You always did.” He pulled Tuck upright.

“What are you doing?”

Cade didn’t let go. “You wanted a shower. Come and take one.”

* * *

Tuck was the one to follow Cade now, where Cade led. The sweat shed during his night under that too-warm blanket had dried in a film that felt like being coated with salt after a swim in the ocean. Still too warm, when he stood barefoot on the cold tiles he shook with the chill of them.

Cade didn’t look at him, and Tuck wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than if he had.

Water pattered down slow at first, then in a rush. Without the curtain drawn, drops spattered Tuck’s skin and brought goose bumps to the surface.

“These should come off. You’ll get everything wet.” Cade took each move slow, treating Tuck as if he were fragile. Bullshit; Tuck hadn’t been fragile a day in his life. He gritted his teeth—but he let Cade do it. Undress him, stitch by stitch, one piece of his clothing for each of Tuck’s.

God, he was…

“Come on.” Cade took the first step and turned around beneath the spray. Naked and thin, his hair shaved so severely short, he should have looked like a starving waif. He didn’t. He looked lean and fit, healthy for a change. Strong and tall.

Hard. Dark. Not hiding it. But waiting. Tuck’s move now.

Tuck put one foot on the tiles, and then the other, and drew the curtain behind them.

“Turn around,” Cade told Tuck, moving him. Guiding his hands to the wall.

Tuck tightened his arm and wouldn’t be budged. To hell with the risk on a slick floor tiled with tiny mosaics. “What if I told you, flat out, no? What then?”

“I don’t know.”

Tuck’s smirk wasn’t a happy one. “Liar.”

Cade sucked in a small breath; Tuck hadn’t thought it would please him, after all, and what do you know? He’d been right.

But he didn’t take it back. He pressed his shoulder blades to the wall and stared at Cade. Tit for tat. Turn for turn.

“You never took no for an answer when you knew I didn’t mean it,” Cade said. “Turn around.”

Tuck shook his head. It was all he could do. “No.”

Cade took that in, nodding to himself. Then he dipped his head beneath the water, let the stream run free from his face, and laid both palms on Tuck’s chest. “Then I’ll do it for you. It’s my turn. It’s been your turn for way too long.”

Tuck caught him. Hadn’t meant to. And all he could do was shake his head.

“Let me wash you,” Cade said.

Tuck shook his head.
No.

“You never shut me out before. Not even at my worst.”

“You never made me want to.” That tasted sour as lemon and sharp as razor blades.

Cade rubbed small circles on Tuck’s chest; Tuck didn’t know if he was aware of his actions. In the past, he’d had been sure. “And now?”

Tuck nudged Cade away. Any more of that touching and he’d—hell, he didn’t know. “Tell me what you’re doing here. The truth.”

“What you’ve done for me. Always. And hoping it’s not too late.”

Tuck knew what Cade meant to do before Cade dropped to one knee. He had plenty of time to stop Cade taking him into his mouth.

Oh God
. The touch of his lips, his tongue…

“Shh,” Cade said against the water-slick cut of Tuck’s hip. He drew his tongue downward, catching drops of water, tracing them to Tuck’s cock. He sealed his lips over the head and hollowed his cheeks.

Fuck. Tuck could see himself outlined in there. Hard without knowing more than the searing heat growing inside him. He stroked Cade’s seal-sleek half inch of hair, aching for the longer waves made for holding when they were like this.

Cade looked up then. Once. “Tell me no, and I’ll walk away,” he said. “But you have to mean it.”

Tuck’s mouth closed. He shut his eyes and groaned when Cade sucked his cock into that gorgeous mouth.

Cade took his time. Eased Tuck down, kneaded his thighs, pressed him back when he would have gone too rough, too fast. Knowing him and proving it. Teasing with the tip of his tongue and the softness of his mouth when he took Tuck’s balls and rolled them one after the other inside the circle of his lips.

Reaching between his thighs for his heavy cock when Tuck needed to go fast, when Tuck pulled his hair more than hard enough to hurt. He rolled his head on his neck and let Tuck do it. All he could want.

He let go only once, when Tuck’s breathing grew too loud and rasping for even the shower to cover it, and that was only to press an openmouthed kiss on his stomach. He ducked his head then, covered Tuck’s cock while Tuck bit his own arm, teeth almost breaking the skin. His tongue stroked just right, just in time, and—

Tuck had Cade on his feet, licking himself out of Cade’s mouth. Crazed, if only for the moment, pushing Cade hard to the wall and slapping Cade’s hand away from his cock. Taking that weight in his the way
he
knew best, and—

Who held whom up after was anybody’s guess. But Tuck was the one to feel it when the water began to run cold and not hot between them.

Cade thumbed at the corner of his lips and drew the droplet he’d caught over Tuck’s lips. “Did you ever wonder why I liked that play? We’re a
Romeo and Juliet
story, you and me.”

“That one didn’t end so well.”

“I know.” Cade lifted Tuck’s chin. “Romeo was kind of a moron.”

Tuck might have laughed. He didn’t. He wondered, instead: if he’d seen this coming, would he have done it differently? Any of it?

“Tuck.” Cade’s light touch snapped him out of it. “You don’t think I’m scared? I’m out of my mind. Feel.” He pressed Tuck’s hand to his heart. Pounding away like a snare drum. Snaring him. “I’ve said all I can say, now. What you do with it, that’s up to you. If you tell me to go, I’ll go.”

“What if I don’t know?”

“You do. You always do.”

“Not this time.”

“I’m not sure I believe that. Do you believe I’m terrified?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know your mind, and you still know me. The worst of all. Here I am. There you are. Tell me what to do.” Cade nudged wet hair out of Tuck’s face. He pressed soap and a cloth into Tuck’s hand. “Wash. I’ll see you downstairs.” He stepped out without looking back, and in the rounded slope of his shoulders, Tuck saw it then. The Cade he knew. Scared. Strong. Clear-eyed. Waiting, watching. Past and present and maybe-future, all in one.

“Cade?”

Cade looked back, and Tuck couldn’t look away. “I don’t know what to do,” Tuck said. “I still don’t.”

Cade nodded. “Come find me when you do,” he said. “Whichever way you choose. I’ll wait.”

Chapter Twenty-four

The last person on earth Tuck wanted to see after
that
was Thomas.

So of course, Thomas was the first person he crossed paths with after he sneaked out the back way, avoiding Cade like a fucking coward because he couldn’t face his lover. Not yet.

Tuck scowled at Thomas. He’d come through with flowers, the last of the trimmings Tuck had forgotten they’d need. Bet he’d driven all night to St. Pius and back, a good eight hours for both legs of the trip, raiding most of his greenhouse.

“
Go nail yourself to a cross already
,” he remembered Cade saying, and despite himself, Tuck smirked.

Case in point, the armload Thomas had burdened himself with. He had to know better than to try to carry three armloads worth of roses at once; what kind of gardener worth two cents wouldn’t?

Tuck didn’t think. Just acted. “Dumb-ass. Give me some of those.”

What he thought about but didn’t do was take care when scooping an armful of cut roses from the middle, exposing Thomas’s face. He had faint scratches on his cheeks, marks from the thorns that stung where they brushed and smacked Tuck too.

Thomas regarded Tuck with none of his usual calm. He looked better for it. More human. “I know what I can carry.”

“Yeah? Tell that to the few you dropped on the way over here. Come on, at the front. Yeah, yeah, you know where the vases are. Sue a guy for trying to help.”

The two cut-glass—or were those crystal?—vases as big as urns had already been filled with water and a handful of pennies strewn across their bottoms. If Megan hadn’t liberated those from the professor’s “do not touch” pile, Tuck would eat one of those roses without salt. He divided his armful between the two. Carefully.

Not entirely carefully enough. He poked one of the thorns and hissed, resisting the urge to shake his hand to rid it of the sting.
Sharp
. The hell? “I’d have thought you’d shave these off.”

“I wasn’t in the mood.” Thomas had the knack, no doubt about that much. The roses Tuck plunked into the vases looked like the wrecks of a haystack after a hurricane. A few sweeps and some fluffing and Thomas made them look as fine as the front window of a florist’s shop. Red roses, red as heart’s blood, buds and fullest blooms. “And I never cared much about taking off the thorns,” he said. “They are what they’re meant to be.”

Tuck watched Thomas creating beauty, and it occurred to him without knowing quite why to wonder about other things that could have been. If they’d met any other time, any other place, without Cade in the middle, could they have been friends?

But what did that matter when Cade was the whole point?

Thomas tugged a rose forward to drape over the edge of the vase. Should have screwed up the whole thing, but that made it look like a girl with one curl tumbling down from one of those artless knots. “If you have something you want to say, then say it.”

Tuck stuffed his hands in the pockets of his unfamiliar suit to hide their knotting into fists. “If you want him, this is your chance.”

Thomas glanced up, sharp as a thorn. And said nothing.

Tuck fidgeted. “I mean it.”

“No, you don’t.”

“You’re better for him than I could ever be,” Tuck said. “You should take him. Fix him up, good as new. He’d have a decent life with you.”

“He might.” Thomas arranged more crimson curls and leaves, smooth/scarred hands graceful. “But he doesn’t love me. You know that now. Don’t taunt me. I’d carry him to the ends of the earth, and he’d hate every second. I’m too easy for Cade.” Thomas didn’t look away, and he didn’t blink.

All the better for Tuck to see in his eyes what he wished he hadn’t. Disillusionment. Bleak disappointment. Crushed dreams almost but not entirely swept under the rug.

“A lot can change in ten years,” Thomas said, “but not that. You heard it for yourself. He loves you. He’d only think he was happy with me, and I’m not taking half when I want the whole.”

“But you could—”

Thomas hissed. A thorn had pierced his fingertip, drawing a bead of blood to the surface. He sucked at it. “I haven’t done that in years. Damn it.” He sucked the blood off. “I’m leaving after the ceremony.”

“What?”

Thomas raised one shoulder. “There’s nothing wrong with your ears. I’ll say good-bye to Hannah and Megan, and then I’m going home to St. Pius.”

“Just like that?” Tuck couldn’t hold still. This made no sense to him. “You waited ten years, and then you give up like that?” He snapped his fingers.

“Not exactly.” Thomas pulled a petal loose from the fullest of the roses. “You’re not offering because you mean it. It’d just be an easy way out. Fuck you for trying.” He flicked the petal to the ground. “I’m done waiting for what isn’t mine. And if you don’t take what’s yours, then you’re a bigger fool than I ever thought.” He glanced up at the house and nodded to one of the windows. “Hannah is knocking at the glass. She needs you too.”

Everyone ordered him around, saying they needed him.

Did they?

If he believed that—and he did, even after all they’d put each other through—then were there other things he damn well ought to believe in too? Like Cade, when Cade looked at him through those new eyes of his, and…

The tapping at Hannah’s window grew louder, almost urgent. Tuck shook it off. Hannah needed help. Time for everything else later.