by Willa Okati
“Couple of weeks?” Tuck had forgotten he had a dishtowel tucked through one belt loop. He wiped his face good and clean, glad of the second it gave him to get his bearings.
Not quite enough to be on an even keel when Cade asked, halfway between looking at him and looking at Suzie-Q, the mat, his feet, “Can I come in?”
There wouldn’t ever be enough time to process that and come out swinging witty. “Why?”
“Ten years,” Cade said. “I owe you ten minutes.”
God. Okay. Last thing Tuck had been prepared for, but he’d take it. Now if his heart could stop hammering like cannon fire so he could hear himself think. Sure, that’d happen. He gave up and let the door swing open wide. “Okay. Don’t trip on the mutt.”
Tuck turned his back on Cade, not to give him the cold shoulder but to give Cade a second of his own, the one he knew Cade would need before he set foot in the apartment he’d left with a bang.
He heard Cade take a deep breath and waited for the shuffle of Cade’s step from outside to in before he asked casually, “Have you eaten yet? Spaghetti’s halfway to done.” Halfway done getting crispy, he meant. He could smell tomatoes beginning to scorch.
“Not hungry.”
“You sure? I can hear your stomach grumbling.”
“Not hungry,” Cade said. Above the rumbling noise.
Tuck let that one go for now. Cade never could eat when he was worked up, and after seeing him today—now—he’d buy a ball cap to eat for himself with no salt if Cade had done more than nibble for a few days.
“So, uh.” Fuck but he was smooth. Tuck waved as casually as he could toward the den-slash-everything-but-the-bedroom room and swore at the need to rush to the kitchenette. “I’ve got to tend to this before it burns.” Tuck wished he’d ordered pizza instead of cooking. Then he could have tossed a delivery boy a twenty at the door and not wasted one spare second of the unexpected time he had now with Cade. “Sit down. I’ll be with you fast as I can, promise.”
Easy does it. No one’s going to hurt you.
Cade made a noncommittal noise. Curious, Tuck watched his man out of the corner of his eye. Cade didn’t take a seat but circled the room in a few paces. Really, the place was almost too small for two with everything jammed into the front room. He stopped here and there to brush a framed photo or the edge of a bookshelf.
Suzie-Q followed in his every step. She’d hate it when—if—Cade left again. Talk about love at first sight.
“Looking for something in particular?” Tuck asked, just to have something to say.
“Memories,” Cade replied. He crouched to pet Suzie-Q. “Why did you get a dog?”
Tuck cleared away the remnants of spices and stuffed the dried pasta box haphazardly in a cupboard. “You know me better than to need to ask,” he said. “Being alone gets to me.”
Cade rubbed Suzie-Q’s silky ears. “You picked a good one. She’s sweet.”
“All mutt, all heart.” Enough. One more inane scrap of small talk and Tuck would explode. And he’d forgotten to turn off the stove. He pushed the spaghetti pot off the burner. “If this is payback for before, fine. I deserve that. If it’s not, you want to tell me what you’re doing here before I accidentally burn the place down?”
Cade snorted softly. Not quite a laugh. “Would it help if I said I didn’t know?” He let go of the dog and looked down at his empty hands. “I didn’t think it’d rattle your cage this hard.”
“And then some.”
“You weren’t jumpy before.”
“Things change.” The churning in his gut, jeez. Tuck couldn’t take it much longer. “You coming back here, it’s—you honestly thought that seeing you here, home, with no warning, wouldn’t blow my mind to pieces?”
Cade nodded, silently at first, then said, “I guess that makes us even.”
“Jesus Christ.” Tuck slid to the floor near Cade, six degrees of separation between them still. “Even when you say things like that to me, you know what? I still miss you.”
“Tuck.”
“It’s true.” In for a penny, in for a couple of Benjamin bills, and if the gloves were off, Tuck wasn’t taking the words back. “Come home, babe. For real. You look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want to, and I’ll back off. You’ll never see me again if you tell me that’s what you really want. But, Cade, I’m going to know if you’re lying. So look at me and tell me the truth.”
Cade watched Suzie-Q trot away in search of who knew what. “It’s not that easy.”
Yeah. “Can you blame me for trying?”
“You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t.” Cade stood.
Tuck stayed where he was, watching Cade rove restlessly about the room. Not much space to pace through, and what there was brought him to the edge of the bed with its rumpled sheets and dark blue blanket mostly cast onto the floor. Two pillows, not one, bunched together. “You moved this out of the bedroom?”
“Memories,” Tuck said shortly. “Hey, you remember how we had the furniture set up in our first place?”
“God, don’t I?” Cade toyed with an old key chain he found on the bookcase. Just idle movement, keeping his hands busy. “We had to jump over the back of the couch to get to the bathroom.”
“Sucked when we really needed to get in there, but I could probably have beaten some serious challengers at the pole vault after a while.” Thinking back on that made Tuck laugh. Felt good. He kept talking fast, not willing to let that glimmer of pleasure slip through his fingers. “You remember that tiny table at the foot of the bed? Night after night you’d be sitting there fucking buried in papers and maybe half a foot from the kitchenette. You—”
Cade had fallen too silent. The air rushed out of Tuck in a long sigh. “You want to know where I got Suzie-Q?”
One of Cade’s shoulders lifted. “Yes. Tell me?” He was listening. That was a start.
“Found her out back,” Tuck said, jerking a nod toward the rear of the apartment building. “Starving and scared shitless, with a collar still around her neck. Guess someone didn’t want to take her when they moved.”
Cade winced. Sorry he’d asked, wasn’t he?
Tuck went on because he had to. “She kept trying to lead me to this one door. Trying to go home. You ever hear a dog cry? They do, you know. She got loose once, and I found her on the third floor, trying to dig under a door. Nearly scraped her paws raw, she was so crazy to find the person she loved who just walked away. Fucking broke my heart.”
Cade covered his eyes with his hands. “Tuck, stop. It’s cruel.”
“So is all of this.” Tuck nailed Cade with a stare that demanded returning, but with a little begging he wasn’t too proud to be ashamed of. “She missed them the way I miss you. I’m tired of dancing around the elephant in the apartment; fuck knows there’s no room for one. I’m sick of fighting, Cade. Talk to me. Just talk.”
Cade nodded. Tuck watched him gathering up everything he had inside him. Not much strength left to draw on, but stubborn enough to milk it to the last drop. “I couldn’t forget what you said. Earlier. Literally. I can’t get it out of my head.”
The purple smudges under his eyes had darkened until they looked like bruises; Tuck saw that plainly when he rubbed beneath them. God, he wanted to take care of Cade. Wrap him up in a blanket and make sure he got a good meal, a decent night’s sleep, and someone warm to wake up with. Cade was falling to pieces by himself—and though he saw it happening, he wouldn’t stop it.
Unless this was the start of stopping. Fuck help him if he knew if he was doing the right thing, but Tuck nodded and let Cade go on.
“I should say ‘no,’ full stop, to what you’re asking of me, even if it’s just for the girls. It’s wrong. There are so many ways it could go nuclear. I’d need extra hands to tick off the reasons.”
Tuck could tell he wasn’t done. “What else?”
Give Cade his due for looking Tuck in the eye when he said this, even if the deep-down hurt and denied longing in thos
e eyes would shred a man to pieces. “And I’d have to be with you twenty-four seven for days, pretending I still love you.”
Tuck shut his eyes and breathed. He didn’t believe Cade; he could tell when Cade was lying even when Cade believed what he said.
But that was the bitch about this kind of love, wasn’t it? It went hand in hand with understanding what made a guy tick both inside and out. It gave them both sure and certain knowledge of just where to stick the knife when they wanted. “You know how to hurt me like no one else, I’ll tell you that much.”
“As do you.”
They sat in silence.
Cade broke first. “So why can’t I stop thinking about it and wanting to say yes?” He let his hands fall open, palms up, on his knees. “Why is that?”
Tuck bit at his lip and raised one shoulder.
“Talk me out of it.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
Fair enough, and as easy to answer as it was hard. “Okay,” Tuck said; he knew he’d never known when to stop. “I won’t.”
“Why?”
“You won’t like hearing it,” Tuck warned.
Cade hadn’t broken the two-way stare yet, though he’d gone—almost—cold and still. Not entirely. Tuck could see the flickers of more than immobility deep inside him, lashing themselves down one by one. “Let me have it anyway.” Like he wanted to be hurt.
So be it. “You’re not wrong. There’s a thousand different ways this could go wrong.”
Cade nodded, listening intently.
“The girls would be okay. Eventually,” Tuck said. He shrugged. “They’re tough. They might even forgive us. But see, here’s the thing. Back at Pius, we promised them we’d be there when they needed us. Always. Shit happened, and we dropped the ball with them too, these past couple of years. I’ve fucked myself over with one person. I don’t want to up the count to three. Not if I can do something about it.”
The invitation must have caught a rogue breeze. It fluttered, threatening to slip loose of the magnet.
Cade said nothing. Did nothing. There was a world of trouble in his hush, a whirling tide pool in his breathing that’d suck him down or spit him out.
“Your ten minutes were up five minutes ago,” Tuck said. It was harder than he’d anticipated—and he’d counted on it being about as easy as slicing into his flesh—to say this next: “Your call. Are you leaving or staying?”
The slanted glance Cade shot at Tuck confused the hell out of him before it warmed unexpectedly into a lopsided smile. “Ten more minutes?”
Tuck laughed, surprised. He’d heard that more than a few times, back when Cade could sleep peacefully through the night. “You never did wake up gracefully. Sleeping Beauty.”
Suzie-Q got tired of being ignored and bounced back to Cade. Sheesh. “I think she likes you better than I do.” Tuck leaned over to pet her too, rubbing her belly. “She’s got good taste.”
“You really do never know when to stop, do you?”
Tuck considered that as Suzie-Q wallowed between them. “Not usually, no.”
“Mmm,” Cade said. “You know the super’s going to kick you out if he finds her here.”
Deep-breath time, though the act didn’t quite match the intent and Tuck was the one to focus his all on the dog. “She’s worth it. I can’t be alone, Cade. I can’t. I need something that needs me. That I can help. I am who I am. You used to like that.”
Cade’s chest moved as his throat worked. Tuck could barely hear him when he said, “I know.”
Silence.
Then—a touch. One that almost knocked Tuck on his ass, because it was Cade stroking the curls that had slipped out from where he’d tucked them behind his ears. Just for a second, but it was enough. “I miss you too.”
God. Tuck could barely breathe for all the feelings, confusion and anger and want, swirling around and choking him. But he did know one thing for sure. Still. “You love me. Don’t try to tell me you don’t, not when I know you inside and out.”
“You don’t know everything,” Cade murmured.
“But I know that.” Tuck refused to stop now. “Look at me, Cade, and tell me. I gotta hear you say it. You still love me.”
“No,” Cade murmured. “God, all right, that’s a lie. Yes. I do love you.”
“Then why can’t we fix this?” Tuck let out a long sigh. He didn’t want to fight. Not when he could still feel the phantom of a gentle touch on his jaw, his nape, and taste Cade’s kisses. “Forget I asked. You want to know something?”
Cade tilted his head, curious obviously despite himself.
“You’re here.” He jostled Cade’s knee. “That’s enough for now. I’ll be good as long as you’re here tonight, or at least I’ll try. Deal?”
Cade’s smile warmed him like nothing else, and even more so when it faded naturally slowly, not into a scowl or into unreadable flatness. He still had to work up some oomph, but he nodded. “Like a truce?”
Tuck whipped the dishcloth out again and waved it. “Not exactly a white flag, this, but yeah.”
That smile threatened to return.
Being with Cade tonight was like riding a roller coaster. Zoom high, swoop low, and just when you thought you were coasting back into the station and disappointed as hell that the ride was over, back you went, doing an upside-down loop-the-loop. Sunshine in a bag with the top folding open.
He offered Cade his hand. Just his hand. “Truce?”
Cade bit his lip and took his time to answer, but finally he nodded. His smile left his mouth, but Tuck thought he saw an echo of it in Cade’s eyes, and his mouth was still so much softer than it had been just minutes before when he took Tuck’s hand and said, “Truce.”
Tuck had to get up and move. The touch of Cade’s hand in his crackled like static electricity, lightning tingles that were going to make him do something stupid, soon, if he didn’t put some space between them.
Tuck wondered if that was what life felt like to Cade inside his troubled head.
“Tuck?” Cade craned his neck back to watch Tuck stand. He too rose to his feet.
“We’re cool.” Tuck found a grin and forced it out. “I’ve got a show of good faith.”
Cade’s eyebrow lifted. “Really?”
“You did leave some things here. I just now remembered where I saved them for you.”
Cade’s mouth quirked at a different angle. “That’s your idea of truce?”
“It’s my way of trying.”
Cade shifted from smiling on the inside to thoughtful, but the end result seemed so close to the same as made no difference. Tuck’s natural good cheer bubbled up as effervescent as champagne; weird, when he’d had fucking nightmares about this moment. Even if he hadn’t had those bad dreams, this should have sucked.
Maybe it was being this close to Cade that did the trick. Either way, he’d take it.
“Under here,” Tuck said, dropping to a kneel and then his hands and knees to dig beneath the bed. His abrupt movement knocked Cade back down on the mattress, the man only just catching himself. “Sorry. It’s just I had to keep them somewhere, and the bedroom’s empty.”
Did he imagine Cade brushing ever so lightly across the top of his head, almost but not quite sifting his hair? It felt like a silent acknowledgment. A little sorrowful.
He jabbed Cade in the ankle. “Truce, remember?” Where were they—ah, there. He could just reach the corner of the dusty box with his fingertips and coaxed it toward him. Wasn’t as heavy as it looked. “Mostly pictures.”
Cade shifted with what seemed like interest. “From when?”
“St. Pius’s. That first apartment in Queens. A few of those cards they used to give us, with the pictures of the saints on them.”
“Icons.”
“Right.” Still hunkered down low, Tuck blew a cloud of dust bunnies off the box and sneezed when they flew straight back in his face. And sneezed again. He jarred into Cade’s legs with the force of the
sneezes and grimaced. “Sorry.”
He meant to jostle Cade’s calf, but it didn’t quite come out that way. Once he’d laid hands on Cade… It was too good…better than good, to touch Cade and for Cade to let it happen. Tuck couldn’t stop.
He didn’t want to, fuck no, but a promise was a promise. Tuck drew on all the willpower he could muster and let go of Cade. “Here.” He wiped the rest of the dust off with his sleeve. Eh, the T-shirt had to go at one point or another. “They’re all jumbled together. I—”
He stopped. No. That wasn’t his imagination. That was Cade, taking breaths soft but audible, and that was Cade touching his head again as lightly as Tuck caressed Cade’s leg.
The box of photos slid from Tuck’s mind. He looked up. Cade looked down.
Time stopped again, and this time the ticking of the clock stayed silent.
Slowly, so slowly, Tuck raised himself from hands and knees to just knees, and no, he hadn’t imagined where he’d end up: between Cade’s knees, spread just far enough apart to make room for Tuck. Cade’s cheeks were flushed, a pink that spread down his neck and disappeared beneath the collar of his shirt.
Cade drew one strand of Tuck’s hair through shaking fingers. “I remember other things,” he said, though Tuck could tell he didn’t want to. Some things just forced themselves out of a man sometimes. “I remember sitting like this, with you on your knees. I can’t forget.”
Tuck sat still, very still. This mattered more than anything. More, even, than the girls. His mouth was dry when he asked, “Can’t or won’t?”
“I don’t know.”
Tuck rose higher. He touched Cade’s stomach, moving his fingertips in a slow circle and then resting his palm across the taut skin. God himself couldn’t have made him look away from that dark drowning in Cade’s eyes, in his parted lips and in that look of please yes/please no.
He laid his hands on Cade’s thighs, thumbs brushing over the inseam of his jeans, their denim laundered so many times they were thin and soft as cotton. They couldn’t hide a shadow, much less the outline of Cade’s half-hard cock or the shaking of his thighs.
