Make a Right (18 page)

“Tuck.”

One word, softly spoken but laced with warning as a field with mines.

Tuck tried to keep it concise, he really did. He just hadn’t been built that way. Cade used to be okay with it. “Little stuff,” he said again. “When she walked up on us at the tail end of all that…” He waved a hand. “The way we were last night on the veranda. This morning when you were out of bed before me and out running. It’s not all my fault. None of this is, come to think about it.”

Cade’s jaw worked, but in silence.

Tuck couldn’t seem to stop now that he’d started, only he wasn’t going in the direction he’d intended. Unfortunately. “Then…this morning. We slipped up, scrapping like that outside.” Tuck scratched the back of his head. “Then Thomas walked through. That didn’t help.”

“Why?”

Tuck blinked. “Come again?”

“I asked you why.”

Tuck’s temper rose a notch higher. “The guy’s a dick.”

Now Cade was pissed off too. Might be they’d have some yelling after all. Good. “What’s he ever done to you?”

He bit back, just barely, the
he pays too much attention to you
that wanted to come out and let fly with a different truth. “He bothers me. Always has. So damn peaceful and quiet. Stick a robe on him and cut off a circle of hair on the top of his head and he’d fit right in with a crowd of monks. Not down in the dirt with the rest of us. He never wondered where his next meal was coming from or what he’d have to do to earn it. He isn’t like you. Or me.”

Now why the fuck did
that
make Cade go a whiter shade of pale? It made the silence between his finish and Cade’s start prickly hot with the kind of tension Tuck hated.

“I wondered,” Cade said. “I always wondered. You hate him because he’s a decent man. God, Tuck.”

“What good would it have done if I’d dragged it up before? He was out of our lives for ten years.”

“Gone, but for you, not forgotten. Was he?” Cade was withdrawing, inch by inch and breath by breath. Going so far away.

“Yes,” Tuck said, coming pretty damn close to the tail end of the fire himself. Cade exhausted him sometimes. Most times, lately. “And no. I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”

“You make me talk about things I’d rather leave behind.”

“For God’s sake!” Tuck rubbed his forehead, kneading back the ache that’d sprung up. “Save it for later, then. How did we even get to Thomas, anyway? We’re talking about Hannah now.”

“Hannah, who knows,” Cade said slowly. He’d retreated behind his wall, where Tuck couldn’t reach him. “What do we do about it?”

At least he hadn’t said “you.” Small comfort, that. Not enough for Tuck to content himself with.

“Any suggestions? I’m open. What do
you
want to do about it? Tell Megan as well? ‘Hey, Sis, got a funny story to tell you, but don’t let it fuck up your dissertation. No, seriously.’” He scoffed.

Cade turned from Tuck to grip the back of a chair that looked far too frail for his tight hold. “What does Hannah want?”

Tuck’s lip curled. It felt sour and bitchy, even to him. “She’s not sure. It’s not that easy.”

That
got a reaction. Cade ground his teeth. “You’re a real jackass sometimes, Tuck.”

“So I’ve been told. About Megan, I don’t know. I’ll do what Hannah says. When she says. Until then, I keep my mouth shut.” Tuck lifted his chin in challenge. “What about you?”

Cade didn’t answer that question. He straightened up the way he might when he was eighty and sore in every joint. “And after the wedding? Is it over, the way we said, or are you going to keep chasing me until the day we both die?”

This was cruel, and Tuck knew it. He said it anyway. “Are you the one who’s going to keep running away?”

If he’d thought Cade was pale before, it was nothing compared to him right now. White dents at either side of his nose and white lines carved at the side of his mouth. “That’s how it is, then,” Cade said. “That’s what you’re laying on me.”

“I guess I am.” Tuck stood his ground. “Tell me no. That offer’s still open.”

“As if you’d listen? You never have.”

“You never really wanted me to.”

Cade laughed, and it was as absolutely far from humor as a laugh could get, caustic as lye. “God, Tuck. You’ll never—I won’t—” He tried to collect himself. Didn’t work, not in Tuck’s eyes. “It’s Hannah’s choice now. I’ll pretend as long as she asks us to.
If
she asks us to. But every second that you can otherwise, keep your distance.”

“So you can spend your time with Thomas?”

“What would you do if I said, ‘Yes, I will’?” When Cade finally did look back at Tuck, Tuck wished like hell that he hadn’t. “You made your bed,” he said. “Lie in it, and leave Thomas alone.”

“Give me one good reason why.”

Cade’s jaw worked. “One reason? Fine. As much as you hate him, did it ever occur to you that maybe he was as lonely as we were?”

It never had. Not once, and thinking of it now yanked the rug out from beneath Tuck’s feet. Knocked him square on his ass.

“Don’t—don’t apologize. I can see it on your lips before you say a word. And it’s just a word. ‘Sorry’ stopped being good enough for both of us.” Cade rubbed his face. “That and other words.”

“Cade…”

“‘I love you’ doesn’t fix everything, Tuck. It doesn’t.”

“I’m starting to see that.”

“I keep asking you why you can’t let it go,” Cade said. “You answer me with what you want to hear. You keep telling me I don’t mean what I say. Why don’t you believe me?”

Tuck had wondered, but now he knew. Clear and bright as a flash of faceted crystal. He crossed his arms and said quietly, “Because two people who aren’t still in love with each other can’t tear each other apart the way we do.”

Cade’s knuckles went white. Tuck figured Cade was just about ready to pop him one.
Let him take his best shot. I deserve that too.

But what happened, that was something else altogether.

Chapter Thirteen

Tuck knew what was coming
only
half a second before it happened, when Cade lost control, body yielding to his broken thoughts, and pinned Tuck to the wall. No finesse here. Nothing gentle about it. Just Cade’s breath rasping hot in his ear, stubble rasping his face, and shoving one leg between Tuck’s and grinding. Had to hurt him, the rough steel of a zipper scraping against his dick.

Didn’t stop Tuck from wanting
more
. He shoved Cade and took the second that cost Cade to figure out what was going on to hitch his leg around the back of Cade’s, knee hooked over his hip.

“God, you make me crazy,” he said, groaning before and after the words. “Every time, it’s not enough. Need all of you. Every bit.” He slid his hands roughly down Cade’s sides and around to his ass, kneading the tight muscle. “And I know you need me the same.”

“
Fuck
.” Cade lost the last thread he had left to him. His mouth crashed into Tuck’s, and then he took back the reins Tuck offered him freely. He crushed Tuck between himself and the wall, grinding and swallowing Tuck’s hiss in his groan.

Tuck arched when Cade thrust a hand down the front of his jeans and took him in one hard hand. Stripping him without mercy. It would have been too much, too rough, if Cade hadn’t buried his face against Tuck’s shoulder and spoken without sound, words that weren’t quite words, only what pure thought would have felt like breaking across a man’s lips.

Tuck loved it, this time and place where both of them were too worked up to talk. Half-formed scraps of want and need and
take it, take all of it
breathed hot on one another.

Even better,
love
. Tuck knew how that word felt spoken on his skin, and he recognized it now as Cade settled into a chant that sped in time with his hand.
Love, love, love…

He spoke it back as best as he could this way, aloud, chin atop Cade’s head and hands gripping Cade’s ass, thrusting back as best as he could. Cade’s hand became trapped between them, stroking himself off as much as he did Tuck.

Tuck dragged his nails from the curve of Cade’s ass up his back and sank them too deep when Cade gasped, swore, and came with what sounded almost like a sob expelled at the base of Tuck’s throat. He held Cade through it, staving off his own climax with gritted teeth.

But when Cade pressed his lips clumsily to Tuck’s and dragged the pad of his thumb over Tuck’s cock, Tuck couldn’t hold off. He arched his neck and let his mouth fall open in a silent shout that still seemed somehow to echo.

The room smelled of sex now. The good professor would get back from Europe someday, and even if that were years in the future, she’d stand in the middle of this room, sniff, and wonder in wide-eyed alarm what kind of licentious orgies they’d had here.

That thought made Tuck laugh. He smoothed the rumble out on the top of Cade’s head, kissing him, holding Cade as if he’d never let go—and like always, he never wanted to.

Cade shivered and pressed himself as hard against Tuck as if they were fucking—no, making love—still on the edge of coming and not catching their breath.

“All I want to do is help.” Tuck lifted Cade’s chin and brushed his mouth over Cade’s. “Let me in, babe. Or tell me why you won’t. Maybe I’ll break a thumb with a hammer, but I can fix you, if you let me. Stop running.”

He’d thought Cade might shake his head. Hoped Cade wouldn’t lock up and go silent.

Cade did neither. “This can’t keep happening.” He scrubbed uselessly at the stain on his cargos. Good luck with that. He’d come hard and long and looked just as he was in truth: fucked out, wrung dry, and loved, even if he wouldn’t admit it and wouldn’t say why not.

Even if he brought his head up as stubborn and implacable as a statue with ice-chip eyes and said, “This
isn’t
happening again. Once trust is broken, it’s broken, and that’s all there is to it. No going back.”

“Bullshit, and you know it.” Like he’d said before, mad got things done. Moping didn’t. Tuck was almost there. Almost through the cracks in the walls erected around his man’s heart. “Let me
in
, Cade. Let me in.”

“No.” Cade gave up on his pants and thrust one arm out to ward Tuck away. “No more, Tuck.”

“Why?” Tuck pushed himself off the wall. “As good as it can be between us, and if that’s what you want, then you tell me why you won’t let us have it. Give me that much, at least.”

Cade stopped, paling. “I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

Flaring red spots filled in the white hollows beneath Cade’s cheekbones. “You want the truth? You break my heart. Every time I’m with you, another piece crumbles off, and I can’t—” He backed off, hard as stone, and no sculptor’s chisel could get near him now. “Get away from me. If you won’t leave, I will.”

Tuck shook his head. “No. It’s like I said before. Sort of. I couldn’t break your heart if you didn’t give a damn and if all you wanted from me was for me to be gone.”

“That’s what you think, and you go ahead and think it if it helps you sleep at night.”

Before Tuck could stop Cade, he was out the door, slamming it behind him. Leaving Tuck with a cooling mess of cum drying sticky on his thighs and wondering what he’d done wrong
this
time.

Loving Cade? No one could ever say it was easy. Not in the past, not in the present.

But be damned if they wouldn’t have a future. Tuck hadn’t given up so far, and so help him, whatever it took, he wasn’t giving up now.

See, he’d caught one last thing as Cade left. Cade, glancing back over his shoulder. A yearning that tore Cade to pieces.

Stubborn ass. Stubborn,
stubborn
ass. Why say no when his heart said yes?

Chapter Fourteen

It took Tuck a good twenty minutes to make his way back to the lived-in part of the house. Would have taken five at the most, only he waited five to give Cade time to get far enough ahead. Who knew what he’d say if they collided now? Five more to stare at an old painting on the wall and wonder why the artist had given whoever this was a sorrowful, faraway look. She made him think of the Mary icons back at St. Pius. He never had understood why someone supposed to be the most blessed of all women always looked like her heart was halfway to breaking.

Five and five made ten.

And then.

Then were was the five lost when Tuck looked away from the painting, down the hall in the opposite direction they’d used as an approach, and seen, of all the fucking people, Thomas. Thomas, fresh from a shower and watching him, his shirt slung over one sturdy, steady shoulder made broad from hard work.

Not a wiry shoulder like Tuck’s. Thomas’s was a shoulder wide enough to rest any head on.

Tuck ground his teeth. “Something you want to say to me?”

“No,” Thomas said. Watching him. Still.

“Bullshit.”

“Is it?” Thomas walked past Tuck, no alpha shoulder-check, no concern at all in him. “If you can find your way out, do it.”

“If you want him, then you give me an honest fight for him,” Tuck called after Thomas. No one else was around to hear, so why spare the effort for pleasantries? “You stare me in the eye and tell me so, like a man.”

Thomas turned. The look he gave Tuck was long, level, and said nothing at all.

And then, he was gone, back to Tuck, walking casually and silently away.

He got Thomas’s point. Didn’t think he could put up a fight worth fighting, huh?

Fuck that. They’re not pushing me out
. Tuck stalked after Thomas, crushing the footprints he’d left in the plush carpet, and went to play captain of his fate.

Or to try, at least.

* * *

Tuck had cooled down by the time he reached the kitchen. Almost. Good thing too. Megan was back at her books, up to her eyeballs in theorems and equations, and Hannah—
whoa
. Hannah might be somewhere underneath a heaped-up mess of white satin and lace, but he’d need GPS to pinpoint her exact location.

Tuck gaped at her. “What happened to you?”

Hannah’s head emerged from a collar even Tuck could tell was badly sewn and didn’t fit. She gestured down at herself in true despair. “Wedding dress fittings.”