Make a Right (11 page)

Cade broke away with a shock of breath. “Don’t ask me questions like the ones you just did,” he said, his lips reddened from heat and pressure. “I do know what it’s like to love without hope.”

That? That felt like being slapped. “And you called me cruel,” Tuck said.

Cade took a step back and lapsed into silence. But if he looked now with fresh eyes, Tuck could see the same kind of helpless tangle inside his chest behind the blank mask Cade wore.

He could still feel Cade’s warm skin ghosting next to his, and he burned for more.

Least he wasn’t alone. Cade’s breathing remained shallow, and he looked at Tuck’s lips as if he were starving for them.

“Why?” Tuck asked, all he could manage. “If it could be better, why’s it got to be like this between us now?” None of it made sense, not a bit, but it
did
make Tuck’s head ache to bursting. He rubbed his eyes, grimly pleased to see sparks burst through the blackness behind his lids when he pressed too hard.

When he looked up, Cade had turned away. “We can’t stay up here any longer. They’ll get suspicious. You know I’m right.”

“Even Thomas,” Tuck said.

Cade inclined his head once.

“Goddamnit, Cade…” Tuck gave in. Thomas could go fuck himself, but the girls were a different matter. They’d worry. Maybe even come after them, and he knew he couldn’t take the chance of being caught off guard.

What was a man supposed to do? Supposed to think?

But there was no more time. Tuck gave up the battle for the sake of the war. “Okay. I’m going. But just so you know? We’re not done with this.”

“Trust me,” Cade said, walking away. “I never doubted that for a second.”

* * *

“You okay?”

Shit
. Startled, Tuck’s heart lolloped up into his throat. Hannah had intercepted them at the foot of the stairs, glancing past him to Cade and then back at him. She hadn’t changed. Still sun-and-freckle dusted, still plain and sweet-natured and dressed in gardener’s tee and jeans dirty at the knees.

“I forgot you don’t get along with Thomas,” she said, quiet and firm, “but this is my wedding. Try and get along with him for me. Okay?”

Just as he’d figured, but Tuck borrowed Cade’s stillness for his own to keep his cool, and trust him, it took all of that plus a tiny reserve he hadn’t even known he possessed. Even then, all he could do was nod and wonder if he was really choking from the pressure or just imagining that.

“Tuck?”

Damn it; now he’d gone and tripped her Spidey senses. Should have known she’d be smarter than him too. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day.” That she’d have to believe, because it was true. “Puts a guy more on edge than usual, you know?” Among other things, but those she didn’t need to know about. That was the whole point.

She swatted him, but affectionately and with no small amount of relief. “Thank you. We’re eating outside, on the veranda. Come get some before it’s too late. Megan decimates plums like you wouldn’t believe. Oh—was the bedroom okay?”

“The what now?”

She frowned. “Megan didn’t show you? Wait, no. She took Cade up there alone. I had you.” She linked her arm through Tuck’s. “It’s not the best-best, but I didn’t think you’d want the professor’s room. So I gave you the second-biggest guest room. It even has a bed big enough for two biggish men.”

Shit on a shingle
. They’d be sharing a bed, he and Cade. He hadn’t thought of that before and wondered why the hell not.

Cade had known. And hadn’t said a word. Had he given Cade a chance to, though? Tuck couldn’t remember.

Talk fast. Think fast
. “Second-best guest room in a place like this? How will we ever cope?” He put his arm around her shoulders in a loose hug. “We’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?” Hannah peered up at him. “Cade?”

Christ on a cracker! Tuck had thought Cade would be long gone downstairs by now, but no, there he stood halfway down the steps, waiting. No doubt he’d heard it all, especially what hadn’t been spoken out loud.

“You’re good with the room?” Tuck asked, deliberately putting it out there. And yeah, he knew it was cruel this time. Regret sank her teeth in right away, and for more than one reason.

Hannah glanced from Tuck to Cade and back again, frowning the smallest bit. “Is everything all right?”

“What, with us?” Tuck spoke too loudly, and he knew it.

Cade stepped in to play salvage worker. “We’re just tired, Hannah. And hungry.”

Tuck butted in, trying to help, more relieved than he could say at Cade’s taking the initiative. “Go snatch some dinner for us before it’s all gone. And before I turn you over my knee for being a brat. Brat.”

“You never would.” Hannah poked him, then kissed him on the cheek. She reached over his to squeeze Cade’s shoulder. “I’ll do my best, but you’d still better hurry.”

“Be there in a sec.” Tuck’s stomach knotted and unknotted and knotted again as he watched her leave. Maybe she hadn’t noticed. He and Cade
had
bitched at each other back in the day. Every now and then. Rarely.

Still. They’d always made it up. She wouldn’t think the worst now. It was believe that or give up, and Tuck? No way he’d quit after coming this far.

Only…

As soon as Tuck judged Hannah to be out of earshot, he stopped three steps above Cade, watching him carefully. “I’m going to ask you something, and you need to answer me.”

Cade stood as still as a statue, but that didn’t reach all the way to his eyes. He inclined his head.

“One bed,” Tuck said. “Was it just for the girls, saying so, or are you really okay with that?”

Cade didn’t say anything, not at first. But he touched his lips, still slightly red from being kissed. He swallowed hard enough for Tuck to see the jerk of his throat. “I don’t know.”

He meant it. Even if he did turn fast and thump down the stairs in too much of a hurry for the narrow treads, that’d been the truth.

Tuck stayed behind, his head busy. That, what’d just happened, that was…enough to make a man wonder.

Enough to make him hope.

He’d started to doubt, hadn’t he? Thomas throwing him for a loop sure hadn’t helped.

But there was that kiss. That one good moment when they hit Richmond. What’d happened in his apartment, the night Cade said yes.

They weren’t over. He wasn’t the only one thinking that now, was he? Or had he ever been?

And you know what? Maybe it’s smart, maybe it’s not, but it’s about damn time I got busy doing something about that again.

Starting now.

Chapter Seven

Tuck was pleased to see Cade, Hannah, and Megan deep into chatter when he carried drink refills for all outside on the veranda. Suzie-Q had draped herself contentedly just below the broad steps and fallen asleep in the grass, paddling her legs and dreaming of chasing cars. Did his heart good to see these things. He could almost even overlook Thomas’s presence.

Better still for Tuck to see Cade nod at him as he joined them, no prompting needed.

“We now join your regularly scheduled conversation already in progress?” Tuck leaned over Cade to pass the glasses of iced tea. “What did I miss?”

“Nosy,” Megan said. She and Cade fingered cubes of ice out of their drinks at the same time and crunched down.

Tuck shared a look with Hannah, filled with mirth between the two of them.

“You look better,” she remarked out loud. “If dunking your head in the sink is that much of a pause that refreshes, I should try.”

“Eh,” Tuck said, neither confirming nor denying. The fresh start did more for him, but he’d keep that to himself. He sat slightly behind and to Cade’s side. “Come on. You know I’m a buttinski. Fill a guy in.”

Megan pretended to groan like a woman in serious pain drawing on her last scraps of stoicism. “We’re talking wedding crap. What do you think?”

“I think you’re living proof that romance is dead,” Hannah said.

“I think you’ve got a winner who’s actually willing to marry you, and you ought to treat her like one,” Tuck shot back.

Megan made a face. “Stop being rational. I’m in a mood.” She laid her head on Hannah’s lap. “Sorry, babe.”

Tuck reached over Cade, even if it was an awkward angle, to snag a chip of ice to crunch on. Even odds whether Cade would turn to frown at him or shake his head in wry amusement and let it pass.

Didn’t matter. The point was to remind Cade he was there and staying.

“Define wedding crap,” he directed the girls.

A flicker of a smile ghosted across Cade’s lips. “You always did have a silver tongue,” he murmured, and hey, that wasn’t bad at all. Tuck would take banter.

“Born a charmer and I’ll be a charmer till the day I die.” Tuck made a second stretch to snag another piece of ice. “Seriously. Anything I can help with, ladies?”

“Not unless you know any good private eyes.”

Jeez
. Tuck refused to react. “How come?”

Hannah bit at her thumbnail. “We wanted to see if Father Michael would come.”

A Catholic priest at a lesbian wedding? Not usually a recipe for success. But Father Michael… He’d been different. Worlds away from other men of the cloth and a good guy all on his own.

“So what’s the problem?” Tuck asked.

“He left the church,” Thomas said in that low baritone of his. “Not long after Hannah and Megan came of age and left St. Pius.”

Tuck blinked at him. This was news enough to make him put aside, just for the moment, his issues with Tommy-boy. “You’re shitting me.”

“Silver,” Cade murmured.

Was he easing up? Tuck thought maybe so. Subtlety, not one of his strengths, but he was giving serious thought to learning the art.

“Yeah, yeah.” Tuck kneaded his shoulder as if it were still natural between them. “When? Why?”

“I don’t know,” Megan answered instead of Thomas. “But when he left, he left
good
. I tried to track him down, but I’d have better luck bagging and tagging Jason Bourne. Mmm. Jason Bourne.”

Hannah swatted her. “So now you have a crush on a man?”

“I’m bisexual, not blind.” Megan crunched ice. “And I’m marrying you, aren’t I? Damon’s some sweet eye candy, yes, but otherwise? Bourne, schmourne.”

Tuck hid a chuckle behind his hand.

“I think we should leave him in peace,” Cade said gently but firmly. “He might not appreciate the past coming back to the present.”

“Yeah, well.” Megan sat upright and resettled the chopsticks in her hair. “I sent an invitation to his last known address. We could get lucky again. And besides, even if he doesn’t want to come, he’ll know we still care. He’d fit here. Like peanut butter and jelly.”

“If you like PB&J,” Cade said.

“Who doesn’t? Unless you’re allergic to peanuts. That’s got to suck,” Tuck mused. “There’s other examples. BLTs. Ice cream sundaes with cherries on top…”

There. He’d set the two girls off on discussions about what did and didn’t go together. Tuck listened long enough to hear Megan launch into an old-school argument for ketchup on ice cream and for Cade to shudder before he bent and whispered next to Cade’s ear, “Ice cream with ketchup isn’t bad. Try it sometime.”

Cade stilled. “What are you doing?”

“Just proving a point.”

“And that is?”

Tuck tweaked Cade’s collar back. “That if you give me an inch, I’m going to take a mile.”

Now
. Tuck dropped the chunk of ice, concealed in his palm for just this occasion, down Cade’s back and jumped away before Cade could finish convulsing and smack him.

That would’ve been good. What happened was even better: Cade
laughed
, a real laugh, even if it held more than a thin edge of surprise. He twisted his shoulders and swiveled his hips. “You—little—shit!” He pivoted fully in his chair and stood to untuck his shirt and shake out the melting, freezing ice.

“Champion!” Tuck raised his arms in the victor’s salute while Megan and Hannah rocked with laughter.

“Oh God,” Megan said, tears in her eyes. “Cade, you should have seen your face!”

“You think that’s funny, do you?”

“I really do.”

Cade scowled. He bent to pick up the ice and dropped it down Tuck’s shirt front. He pressed his hand to the ice and rubbed hard, sending Tuck yelping and wriggling to and fro.

Tuck grinned up at Cade, as cheeky as he could possibly be.

“You,” Cade said, the rest of the world and all fading out around them, leaving nothing but Cade in his line of sight. “You’re unbelievable. You do know that.” He drew his thumb over Tuck’s cheekbone. “And you never do change.”

“I am what I am,” Tuck said. “Don’t be surprised when I prove it.” He loosely encircled Cade’s waist and coaxed the man back down on the step beside him. Sitting thus, they mirrored the pose Hannah and Megan had subsided into. “So. How pissed are you?”

Cade’s glare was so clearly feigned that it delighted Tuck. “I’m still deciding.”

Pure instinct moved Tuck to brush Cade’s lips with his own. Not much of a kiss, more of a tease, but the way Cade reacted couldn’t have been better: a quick smile he couldn’t hide and that
did
reach his eyes.

It must have looked as cozy as it felt, being in Cade’s arms. Like lovers ought to be. Funny, that, when Cade was saying, “You never change. Can anyone? Really? I mean, I try, and I try, but—” He shut his mouth with a snap, shook his head, and subsided into the thoughtfulness of a tangled mind.

Tuck told himself it didn’t matter, as long as he had Cade in his arms; he’d take what came next as it came.

Thomas sat just beyond them. Part of the crowd but not at the heart of it. Tuck nodded at him, once.

Thomas did the same, but with eyes for Cade and Cade alone, not Tuck.

Ten years past time he did something about that too, Tuck thought. But later. Right now, Megan squirmed out of Hannah’s arms and turned around to kneel on one of the veranda steps. Best pay attention.

“Now?” she asked Hannah.

“No patience,” Hannah chided her. She kissed Megan’s temple. “Okay, okay. For starters, and since we all have fine crystal at hand—” Hannah lifted her glass. “I wanted to say thank you.”

Tuck glanced at Cade and found Cade glancing back; Cade’s forehead was furrowed the way Tuck’s felt to be. “For what?”