by Willa Okati
Coming without a hand on his cock, just Cade inside him, pleasure-pain white-hot with every rough stroke Tuck would swear went so deep he could taste. Coming in a second wave, an aftershock that would leave him gasping when Cade would shudder to a halt, mouthing sharp kisses against Tuck’s nape and leaving bruises on Tuck’s hips, loosing hot pulses of cum Tuck would feel on the inside.
They’d shudder their way through it, Cade pulling out before he’d finished, splashing Tuck with the last drops. Turning Tuck around to face him and stealing the last of his breath with kisses that shared their flavors between them. Driving Tuck nuts with wanting more, harder, again.
One of Tuck’s fantasies. His favorite.
Only—this was real, and it’d just happened here and now.
Dazed, delighted, and a dozen other “d” words, Tuck nipped Cade’s mouth, his nose, the sharpness of his chin, and laughed like a kid at the shakiness of their legs. Held Cade upright so neither of them fell, even if the couch’s edge bit into the bare backs of his thighs.
Cade’s gaze met his from inches away. Any closer and their eyelashes would have tangled together. Slowly, slowly, they eased down, breath hot on one another’s faces. Tuck kissed Cade one more time, lingering and deep.
Better than his dreams, that’d been.
Better than he’d ever imagined when Cade pressed his mouth to Tuck’s ear and whispered, rough as raw leather, deep as oak, “Love you. God, I love you.”
Tuck hung on for dear life, and that wasn’t hyperbole. His life? Cade was his life, and they both knew it.
Maybe he could still honest to God have that life back again. With Cade pressing biting kisses on his collarbone, well. Hard to believe otherwise.
Tuck shut his eyes and let himself float away. This was what people meant by happiness. If anyone ever claimed there could be anything better, they were liars.
And this was the truth. “Love you,” he rasped back, holding Cade tight as if he’d never let go. And he wouldn’t. And Cade knew it too.
Always knew.
“You know, every time I hear a waltz from now on, I’m gonna get hard enough to pound nails. That’s gonna be fun to explain when we’re eighty years old at the nursing home.” Tuck’s grin broke out broad and wide, and wider still when Cade thumbed at the dent in his chin.
Cade shook his head, but he was smiling. “Sometimes I wonder about you.”
“Don’t need to and you know it. Anything you want to know about me”—Tuck stole one more kiss—“all you ever have to do is ask, and I’ll tell. No secrets. No lies.”
He might have missed Cade’s small, sharp breath. He didn’t.
“You okay?”
Cade shook it off. “I’m fine.”
Tuck let it go. Or he tried his best. No fucking this up. Not now. Let the piper come calling later but not now. Tuck wouldn’t let it.
But be damned if he didn’t have to block out the sounds of that music starting…
Chapter Twenty
The aroma of steak filled the air in tantalizing billows of steam from beneath the grill’s lid. Tuck’s stomach rumbled, and his wasn’t the only one. It’d been Megan-the-carnivore’s idea to grill out and peace out the night before the wedding, and a better one Tuck had rarely ever heard.
Cade brought a bowl of briefly marinated chicken to him, Hannah’s preference. “Is this all right?”
Tuck glanced in. He could smell garlic and rosemary without needing to get any closer. “It’ll do.” He hip-checked Cade. “Just don’t go thinking you can replace me in the kitchen.”
Cade poked at the coals with a long, pronged fork. “I’d forgotten how long this takes.”
“You’re not kidding. My one bitch about a cookout? It’s a cook-fucking-slow.”
“Patience for both of us, I guess,” Cade said beside him. “Speaking of which…” He grimaced at a well-tangled pile of icicle lights waiting for his attention.
Thomas had gotten the store-bought pavilion up by himself. It would have pissed Tuck off that he’d done so and done a good job—if Tuck hadn’t been pleasantly otherwise occupied at the time. He smirked and didn’t try to hide it.
“I need to help with those. For the girls.”
“I know.” Still trying, Tuck managed a grin. “Go, do your thing.”
Cade glanced at him on a sideways slant. He didn’t quite smile back, but his mouth curved wryly at one corner. “Makes me wish I was the one who knew how to cook.”
Tuck snorted. “Too late. My grill. All mine.”
That wry half smile threatened to grow. “How do you… You have such a crazy heart, do you know that?”
“So it’s been said.” Tuck remembered how helium balloons filled, and how his chest felt the same way, lungs full of clean air. Maybe they’d be okay. Maybe it’d come out all right in the end.
Better to be mad than sad. Better to hope than despair. If he didn’t live by his words, then no one else would.
And so Tuck stood alone by his grill now, the quiet one in the crowd for once, and watched the rest of his adopted family buzzing with activity and loud chatter. It was, for an uncomfortable moment in time, as if none of them needed him.
“Hey!” Hannah called, trying to tuck down a flapping corner of the canvas pavilion cover. “Someone taller than me, help?”
Thomas looked confused by the lights. “How far do these go? All the way to the top?”
“I could get a stepladder,” Megan offered. She pushed a pencil behind her ear.
“Don’t tell me you were drawing on the tablecloths—” Hannah protested, rushing to the buffet tables she’d set up, built by Tuck from the remnants of the crashed pavilion and some plywood and covered with enough trimmings that no one would ever know the difference. “Those are for tomorrow!”
“They’re paper. Practice paper!”
“You’re insane. Someone, tell her?” Hannah turned to Tuck, beseeching him with wild gestures to knock some sense into Megan’s head. The spell broke and Tuck felt himself drawn back into the world he craved like air and water. Thank God.
Tuck chuckled, mostly out of relief. “You want to talk about crazy? That wild child going insane for math. That’s crazy.”
“Mmm.” Cade, who’d wandered back closer to Tuck, looked thoughtful. “You know, I always thought you’d end up as something besides a driver.”
“Seriously?” Tuck turned the steaks. “What did you think I’d do with my life?”
“That you’d be a teacher.”
Tuck hooted; the noise caught Hannah and Megan’s attention. Probably Thomas’s too. “A teacher, me? Please. You and Megan are the brains around here.”
“Hey!” Hannah snapped, indignant. “I am a teacher.”
“Cade and Megan and Hannah,” Tuck amended. “They’re brains. I’m brawn.”
“He’s got a point, though.” Hannah rubbed out probable soreness in her arms as she drifted closer. “If not a teacher, then a social worker.”
Tuck frowned. “I’ll bite. Why?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Look at us. All of us. You take care of everyone. That’s who you are. Do you really have to ask?”
Tuck’s cheeks burned hot. “Yeah, well. I like what I do. The rest of you, tell me there’s anything you’d be happier with than what you’re doing now.” He warmed to the subject. Anything that’d take the focus off him. “Go on. Everyone has dreams about what they’re gonna be when they grow up, and nine out of ten go for something else. Spill.”
Hannah bubbled over with a giggle. “I wanted to be an astronaut.”
“A fairy princess,” Megan said, absolutely straight-faced, even when Tuck stared at her in what he thought was understandable surprise. “And a bull rider,” she admitted. “And a stunt actress.”
“Don’t scare me like that,” Tuck told her.
She beamed at him. “I will if I want to.”
Hannah nudged her. “Behave. I thought about being a ballerina,” she said. “After I met Megan, I want
ed to be a swordfisherman. Something dangerous.”
“’Cause you thought she’d like it?”
“Not so much.” Hannah frowned delicately. “More because she made me want to be brave.”
Megan rested her head on Hannah’s shoulder, obviously satisfied that her scribblings on the tablecloths had been forgiven and forgotten. She took Hannah’s hand and raised the back of it to her lips to kiss. “I’m glad she went for teaching instead.”
Tuck’s gesture said, precisely, then there you have it.
“Thomas?” Megan craned to look at him. When he shrugged in silence, she rolled her eyes. “I shouldn’t have asked. You are what you were born to be, gardener-man.” Her tone softened. “You make things grow where they shouldn’t, and that’s where you’re happiest.”
Tuck sneaked a peek at Thomas, who seemed to accept that with a small shrug. Okay. Without grudging, or trying not to, he could see the truth of what Megan said. Thomas was made out of bedrock and tree roots and green, growing things. So to speak.
“Gardens of Eden,” Cade murmured, gazing at a point somewhere or at some time long ago and far away. Nowhere near here, for sure.
It could have ended there, but Megan never knew when to stop. “What about Cade?” she asked, jerking her head in his direction. “I always thought he’d go into the army or something.”
“Never that,” Cade said. He picked up the lights, and the mood went down. How, Tuck couldn’t say, but they all felt it. Silence fell, broken only by the crackling from the grill. All eyes on Cade, now, either for a glance or a thoughtful study.
Strand by strand, Cade unwound the tangles of light. “I thought about being a priest.”
For an odd second in the deceptive dim dusk, Tuck’s eyes played tricks on him, and he could see rosary beads, not lights, slipping through Cade’s fingers, counting off the prayers one by one.
It would have suited him. Peace. Quiet. Time to think. All the space he needed to be alone.
“When?” Hannah asked.
“The first few months of the year I turned eighteen.” Cade rolled the lights into a neat coil from wrist to elbow and laid them on the grass. “Then I changed my mind.”
“You never said,” Tuck said, hollowness at the pit of his stomach. His eighteenth birthday. Right around the time they’d started sleeping together. Oh God. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You never asked,” Cade said, clipping the words short. “It’s in the past now.”
“Yeah, but…”
Megan and Hannah elbowed each other in a tattoo of a rhythm. “So! Steaks smell great,” Hannah burbled. “Do you need help? What kind of wine goes with red meat?”
“Red,” Tuck said shortly. He turned his back on her. “Cade?”
Cade had been preparing to stand. He settled back. “That’s not the ‘worst thing’ I was going to tell you,” he said quietly.
“Somehow I figured not.” And if that was worse than this, knowing when he and Cade were fucking—making love—the way they’d done even this afternoon, that Cade had been thinking of throwing it all away to put on a collar—goddamnit. “Hannah, you mind finishing up here? I’ve got smoke in my eyes, and I need some water.”
Cade reached for and missed the cuff of Tuck’s jeans. “Wait.”
“I’ll be back,” Tuck said. Lied. “Chill. I just need to wash my face.”
He’d be okay. He would. After how much they’d gotten through and how close they were to good again? He’d make it be okay. He just needed a minute. That was all.
But Cade didn’t believe him, and Tuck could tell.
But he didn’t let it stop him from walking away. Fuck. He could see Thomas already slipping in where he’d been, that son of a bitch. He’d known Cade thought about being a priest; fuck him if Tuck wouldn’t bet his damn life on that. Known it every time he caught Tuck and Cade kissing.
He needed space. He needed air. He needed—something, goddamnit—
“Hey!” Hannah was the one to stop him. “Smoke, nothing.”
“Hannah,” Tuck said.
She ignored the warning he put into her name. “The wedding is tomorrow. Ohmygod, it’s tomorrow.”
“Hannah, I know what you’re doing. Stop.”
Like that ever worked. Hannah stood her ground, as stubborn as he’d taught her to be. “You guys promised. I want to see for myself if I should change from high heels to steel toes.”
“Not. Now.”
“Now,” Hannah said. She’d plunked herself atop a clean table and leaned back on her arms. “I’m serious. We haven’t seen you yet. Just one turn around the pavilion.” Beckoning Megan up next to her, she nailed Tuck with her stare. “I’m not asking. Go. Whenever you’re both ready.”
She meant well. Tuck supposed that was what people meant by “poetic justice.”
He made one last effort to dissuade her. “No music.”
“I’ll sing.”
Tuck heard Cade sigh from behind him. He looked over his shoulder—he couldn’t not—and saw the resigned look that he’d thought had been erased.
“Tuck, let it go.” Cade took him by the shoulders and held him in place. He brooked no more argument, and there was no fighting with a statue. “It’s for them. One more time before the music ends.”
“There is no music.”
“You know this song by heart.”
Tuck reversed the position of power and grabbed Cade, holding him too tightly and too worked up to care that he would leave bruises this time. “You do not get to do this to me. Understand?”
“I’m not asking for me. I’m asking for them.” Cade took up the proper waltz position, bodies decently apart. “Do it. You can do anything you put your mind to, Tuck.” He studied Tuck’s face as if looking for something there he’d either lost or just now found. “I always wished I had that gift.”
There was something else about Cade’s face now. Something Tuck didn’t understand and couldn’t look away from, and not just because he loved the man. It was the past, the present, the inside and the outside, that hidden darkness and the rare glints of joy all blended together—those parts he could recognize—but something new too. Not quite sad. Not quite hopeful.
Resigned. Like he’d been shown a puppy in the window, been told he could take it home, and the promise shrugged away when the cost was too high.
Yet when he tried to pull away, Cade wouldn’t let him. Cade had already moved them into the dance.
“It wasn’t the worst thing about me,” Cade said.
“Christ.” Every man had his limits. Tuck was good at bouncing back, but for right now he’d just reached his maximum saturation point. “Hannah, enough. Rain check, I promise.”
He took Cade by the wrist before Cade would have let him go. “I know what you’re thinking, and stop it. I’m not leaving you. Just taking a minute to process.”
Cade’s frustration rose higher. “Why aren’t you—”
“Because I promised you I wouldn’t, and I keep my promises.” He yanked Cade’s sleeve to keep him there. “It’ll be okay if you let it. Don’t run away on me now. Just—”
“Give you some time,” Cade said, mouth twisting on one side. “Yeah. I guess I deserve that, don’t I?”
Chapter Twenty-one
Megan found Tuck outside after the sun went down. He’d hunkered down alone in the grass, leaning against the side of the house. Wasn’t often that Tuck went for the quiet places. He acted first and regretted it later.
But even so, every so often a guy had to stop and think.
Ask a sister to give that guy space and time he needed to do the job right. Seriously, go ahead and ask. Tuck was only half-surprised it’d taken more than an hour for one of the girls to track him down. The other half came from seeing Megan, not Hannah.
“Any point in me telling you not to worry about this and you believing me?”
“Not really.” Megan stood over him, hands on her hips, tapping one foot. He could see the professor she’d be
come once she had her doctorate. She’d scare the shit out of her students.
She’d make any man proud to be her brother, blood or no. “Sit down,” Tuck said, shifting over even though he didn’t have to. Making the gesture was the whole point.
Megan folded into a more graceful seat than he had, tucking her legs up beneath her. She picked a blade of grass from the lawn and nibbled on it.
“Pesticides?” Tuck asked.
She shrugged. “Live dangerously or lie down and die.”
“Cute. And about as subtle as an anvil with ACME written across the side.”
“If you want tea and sympathy, go find Hannah. Who, by the way, is flipping out over cupcakes unbaked and tapas untapped.”
“I’ll finish them later. Promise.” Tuck crossed his heart like a kid.
“Eh. Leave the recipe books on the counter. Just in case.”
“Brat.” Tuck could see she wanted to sit closer, and the man who took care of everything was who they kept telling him he was. He made a space for Megan and let her slide under his arm.
She tucked her head on his shoulder. “You remember what I asked you, when I first found out,” she said slowly. “Where you were now. You and Cade both said ‘better.’”
“I thought we were.” Tuck turned his hand palm up. “But every time I think I know the guy, where his head’s at, he turns it upside down on me.” He scoffed. “And Cade calls me the wild card.”
“Transference. You’re steady as a rock. Cade’s the one who—” Megan waved tornado-style.
“That’s loving.”
“Gonna tell me it’s not true? He’s messed up, Tuck. I love him. He’s my brother as much as you are, but there’s always been shitstorms going on inside his head.”
“I never—”
“You never saw it before because you loved him,” Megan said. “Then you loved him mostly out of it. Then, flip. As you said.”
“And here we are.” Tuck sighed. “And then there’s Thomas. Fucking Thomas. I can’t look at the guy without wanting to punch him in the face.” He studied the old scars on his knuckles. “Behold.”