by Willa Okati
“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.
“You know something?” Tuck said. “You were wrong. That wasn’t the ‘worst of all.’ Not what you did to survive. Not your lying to me, making me think of all the ‘worst’ there could be out there. Hating myself. Blaming myself. You want to know what the worst is? Do you?” He didn’t relent when Cade stilled, fear slinking back in his eyes. “The worst of all is that I still love you. You fucking asshole. Get away from me.” Tuck pushed past Cade and made for the steps. He needed to—he didn’t know. He had to be somewhere that was else, or Cade did.
“Tuck!” Cade called.
Too late. “Don’t.” Tuck kept his back turned, and he walked. He didn’t know where. Just away.
And for all those brave words he’d spouted…Cade didn’t follow him.
* * *
The stroke of midnight, chimed out on a grandfather clock somewhere in the house, had gone past before Tuck went back inside. Who knew how long he’d stalked around that yard? How many times had he reached for his keys, just wanting to go?
And he came back here. Drawn, no matter what.
But be damned if he could go up to that room where Cade would be. Tuck knew that as sure as he knew the streets of New York, the ones he could drive almost blindfolded. Like the back of his hand, scarred knuckles and stiffening old breaks and all.
Like he knew what Cade would look like if he’d fallen asleep waiting for Tuck, and Tuck knew he’d have done that too. Curled on his side, arms drawn tight to his chest and knees tucked up until dreams took him. The peaceful dreams, anyway. Then he’d ease out, stretching his limbs, his toes pointed and his arms lying halfway to open in front of him.
But asleep and so sound nothing would wake him. Anytime something big happened, Cade’s body took over, and it dragged him into sleep. Hiding, the way he’d done after the first night he and Cade had—
There was nothing left in Tuck’s stomach to come up, not even bile, but it did its best. He gritted his teeth around a dry heave and refused to let it happen.
He couldn’t go upstairs. Call him a coward, call him a stubborn asshole—just call him confused and hurt and angry and a hundred other things—but he couldn’t.
Tuck’s legs weren’t going to hold him. That pissed him off almost as much as everything else. Now he got weak, when Cade had gotten strong? How the fuck was that right, how was that fair? Tuck was the strong one. That was his job.
And now, with the world tur
ned upside down…
The room they’d practiced dancing in like a pair of fools had a couch deep and old enough to be, if not comfortable, at least bearable. Tuck let himself fall into the deepness of the thing, cheap foam squares instead of cushions covered over with quilts made a hundred years ago. He kept quiet. He had to. Upstairs, Megan and Hannah didn’t know a thing. They mattered. They were the only things left that did.
Wrong. Liar, liar. Even now, wishing he didn’t—one thing remained true. He loved Cade, and he always would. A fool for love? He scoffed at himself. Always and forever, a fool for Cade.
So where did that leave him—them—now?
God, his eyes were dry, sore, scratchy, as if someone had thrown a handful of sawdust in his face. He closed them. Just for a second. Then he’d get up, and he’d figure out what to do. He’d go to Cade. Shake him, punch him, argue till his throat was numb. Say good-bye.
He’d get up.
In a second, he’d get up, and…
Chapter Twenty-three
Tuck woke too warm from the blanket tossed over him, its summer-weight wool still hot and heavy, sticking to him with sweat. Perspiration made his hair stick to his face and neck in slick curls. Suzie-Q had draped herself across his ankles and snored gently.
He blinked once, twice, and again, the fuzzy world not focusing. Dawn? Only just barely. Enough light for the room to shade from black to gray.
He didn’t remember the blanket. Or falling asleep, for that matter. Last thing Tuck could recall was leaning back into the cushions and closing his eyes. Sitting up, not lying down.
Sometime during the night, someone had laid him down. Put a pillow beneath his head, one that left ridged corduroy marks on his face, and taken off his shoes. Covered—draped—tucked a blanket around him. Like he was a kid having bad dreams.
Tuck couldn’t remember those dreams, if he’d had any at all. They faded from shapes and thought and memories of shouting to a distant echo in the back of his head, and then they were gone.
Too warm or not, he curled in against himself and bit down on his cheek to stifle a shiver. Probably a good thing those dreams weren’t coming to mind.
And that he didn’t know for sure who’d taken care of him.
Though he was almost certain he did know, after all.
Tuck pushed the blanket off, heaping it in a messy pile on the floor, and sat upright. His back protested, as did his neck, and his head throbbed. See, that was why he hated crying. Not for the shame of it, but for the morning after.
Really, that was why.
He pinched his nose. A shower. That was what he needed. A shower, a cup of strong coffee, a handful of aspirin. Clean clothes, soapsuds, caffeine. He was sticky from sleep and not so much rested that cool water wouldn’t be a blessing.
God almighty, the wedding was today.
Tuck dug his nails into his thighs for the shock of pain to help him keep it the fuck together just a little longer.
Stand up. Get to it; do what you’ve gotta do.
Tuck stood and pushed himself toward the servants’ stairs. A shower. God, he needed a shower. Cade would still be asleep. Should be. He could sneak in and out, and Cade would never be the wiser. Once he’d shaken off the brain fog, surely he’d know what to do then.
Or not. The stairs echoed underfoot, warped and bent, as he took them up one step at a time.
* * *
Cade lay on his side on the bed they’d shared the past few days. Christ, had it only been less than a handful? Seemed more like weeks, not days.
Tuck meant to scoot past him without more than a passing glance.
Only he couldn’t. Cade had tucked one arm under a pillow and rolled free of all but a cotton sheet wound around him. Not naked, though close, wearing only a snow-white muscle shirt and, from the one glimpse Tuck had of a long leg slipped out from the under sheet, a pair of running shorts that rode high toward his hip.
How was it fair that even after what’d happened, when Tuck looked at Cade, all he could do was want to climb in beside him?
“Love bears all things,” he remembered Thomas saying not too long ago, despair only just hidden beneath the words.
Thomas could go get bitten.
Only…
Shower. Get it done. Tuck searched the floor for his duffel. His soap and stuff should still be in there; he’d used Cade’s without thinking, wanting the smell of him. Where was the thing? He’d kept it toed just to the inside of the closet, and though the door had been left open, the bag was nowhere to be found. He bent to search the corners just in case, and as he did, he caught sight of the sack out of the corner of his eye.
He tried not to laugh or even snort, because be damned if he didn’t see it now, clear as the slow-lightening day, tucked up behind Cade, pinned between body and wall. “Sneaky son of a bitch,” he said under his breath. Admiring the shrewdness despite himself. “Gonna make sure I didn’t give you the slip?”
Cade’s eyes opened. Maybe he’d actually been asleep. Maybe not. Maybe he’d woken sometime between when Tuck had padded as silently as he could into the bedroom and now, but however it’d gone down, those eyes were dark and lucid, his gaze clear and fixed on Tuck. “You’d have done the same thing.”
Tuck could recall a time or two when he had. He stood where he’d been planted, hands spread in a silent question.
“You know why.”
“I really don’t.”
Cade slid free of the sheet that looked blessedly cool and smooth where he hadn’t rumpled it about his body, and sat on the edge of the bed. His toes curled against the cold of the hardwood floor. Either planned or a trick of the light, but he moved into the patch of sun coming through the gap between the shutters outside.
No circles under his eyes. No paleness to his cheeks.
Tuck wanted that to piss him off more than it did.
“You look like you had a bad night,” Cade said, heavy on the dryness. When he sat up, the loose shorts he’d slept in rode high, baring long stretches of leg, then slid down, revealing a hard stomach and the wings of his hip bones. Too thin from not eating. He needed someone to take care of him even now.
God, the things he did to Tuck on the inside. Still. Made the ache worse and the need to be comforted a sharper thorn in his side.
Cade slid farther forward. Near enough to reach out and touch, if Tuck wanted, and God help him if he knew whether it was “yes” or “no.” He was sleep-rumpled and bed-warm, the covers turned back far enough to leave room for a second person to crawl in.
If they chose to.
He rested his hand on the top of Tuck’s leg, just above his knee. Not quite holding Tuck. More making his presence known. Real. Close enough to see the curve of his smile. “You look like hell.”
“And you call me a charmer,” Tuck said, his tongue thick in his mouth. When had he dropped his hand to the nape of Cade’s neck and let it rest lightly there?
Cade bent his head, leaning into Tuck’s touch. Not asking for more. Simply taking. Reminding Tuck now of not an alley cat crouched at the end, behind a cardboard box with nothing showing but claws and dark lights, but of one that’d been tamed. One that’d bump his head against a guy’s legs to say—different things.
People said that the wheel of the world kept turning, turning, turning. Tuck thought maybe they were wrong, and it didn’t go in a circle, but from front to back. Flipping a guy about, faceup looking at the stars. Facedown in an alley.
Lions to feral starveling cats. The cards turning over and over until their edges frayed or tore.
“Want to tell me something?” Tuck ran his fingertips against the grain of Cade’s half-inch hair. “How do you do this to me just by being you?”
Cade took his hand, easy as breathing, past the point where Tuck might have freed himself, and pressed it between both of his. “There are still some things I need to tell you.”
“Jesus Christ. More?” Tuck’s head pounded.
“Not like that.” Cade k
neaded his hand.
“Can we not do this right now?” Tuck nodded backward, at the sounds of a household slowly waking. The sense of action building behind them, below stairs. “It’s their wedding morning. I didn’t go through all this to fuck up the day itself.”
Cade didn’t let go. “There’s time.”
Tuck flexed his fingers. “Let go. I need a shower.”
“No.” Cade stroked their joined hands. “If I do, you won’t come back.” He caught Tuck with that look of his. Wasn’t one Tuck had seen in a long, long time. Clear. No shadows.
Had he seen that look before, ever? Maybe once in a while. Driving away from St. Pius toward the city. Breathing deep in the campus garden. Watching the sun move across the sky.
“Then you’ve gotta tell me why,” Tuck said, a whisper that emerged hoarse and raw around the edges. “How are you better now? How is that fair?”
“It’s not.” Cade lifted one shoulder. “You’re the one who always told me that. Life isn’t fair. Bad things happen to everyone.”
“Don’t throw my words back at me. Don’t you do that.”
Cade held on tight, his wrists like steel, and didn’t let go. “Then let me use my own.”
Tuck wanted to give in. He did. Only—“I can’t stop you. Can I?”
“Do you want the truth?”
Yes. No.
Cade pulled at Tuck’s arm, winding him down onto the bed, and he used that as a fulcrum to lever himself to the floor at Tuck’s feet. “We said everything that needed to be said last night. That’s true. But I didn’t say it all. I want you to hear the rest.”
Tuck found a thread of strength. One of the last, and he had to guard those carefully to make it through this day without screwing over the ceremony. “Talk. I’ll listen. More than that, I can’t promise.”
Cade took Tuck’s hand. It was instinctive, Tuck thought. As was his letting Cade do it. Clasping Cade’s in return.
Waiting and listening for what Cade would share.
“Do you know,” Cade said, pulling each word out like bad teeth, “what it’s like when you don’t know what love means?” He waited for Tuck’s confused pause to end in a small noise that said it all. “You don’t, because you were born in a gutter, but you were born with a heart that never quits. No matter what. When I looked at you, once upon a time, I didn’t understand that. For years I didn’t.”