Make a Right (7 page)

There wasn’t any saying good-bye for them. Cade had to know that too.

Tuck rested on his heels and looked at Cade, who’d struggled to sit upright. He shook his head, not able to speak yet, and reached for Tuck—

And a fucking car out on the street below backfired.
BOOM.

Cade froze.

Time. Stopped.

And then it started again.

“Don’t,” Tuck tried to say, but it was too late. Cade had already fumbled upright on shaking legs and pulled his jeans up too rough, too fast. Had to hurt. The wet denim clung to him, and his lips went white with the effort just to stand tall and proud, proud again,
damn
him for being so stubborn.

“Cade,
stop
.”

Cade wasn’t listening. Hell no, he was all but gone, making for the door. Lashing himself as harshly as if he had a bullwhip in his hand, deaf to Suzie-Q whining and scrabbling after him with her toenails clicking loud as gunshots on the floor. “This—I knew, this—God, I shouldn’t have come, I—”

Tuck twisted about awkwardly and almost fell—then falling in truth when Cade blew past him. “Damn it, Cade, get back here. We can fix—”

Too late. He moved like a whirlwind, Cade did, faster than a man who’d just gotten off that hard should be able to. Tuck reached the door just in time for it to slam into his face and bruise his nose.

Fuck
! Tuck thumped his forehead hard against the wood to give himself a matching set of shocks of pain, and when that wasn’t enough, slammed his fist against the door in a two-knuckle punch that made it rattle in its frame.
Fuck!

One beat of silence. Two.

And then, Tuck listened to—well, nothing.

Nothing at all. He stopped, pressing his ear to the wood. No noise outside of sneakers shuffling down the corridor, and it hadn’t been long enough to have missed running or a second slam of the door to the stairwell.

Cade was still out there.

Maybe it was a good idea. Maybe not. Tuck opened the door anyway.

There Cade stood, head pressed to the facing wall as Tuck had done. He clenched one fist tightly enough to vibrate.

Tuck’s tongue lay still. He couldn’t say anything now. It had to be Cade; he knew it somehow. Again. For once and for a miracle, no neighbors were in the halls and no doors were cracked for eavesdroppers’ convenience.

And so he waited.

Not for long. “There’s a thing I can’t get out of my head,” Cade said without warning or preamble. “Megan called me Dad once. Did you know that?”

Tuck hadn’t.

Cade went on, rushing, wide-eyed with panic as if he wanted to but couldn’t stop. “She’d fallen asleep in the rec room, so I carried her up to bed. She was thirteen. So skinny her bones almost poked out. Carrying her was like carrying air.
Me
. She called
me
—”

“And? You were like a dad to her, sort of.” Tuck raised one shoulder. “Same as I was to Hannah.”

Cade shook his head sharp, hard, no doubt forgetting he didn’t have long hair to whip his cheeks with. “That’s different. You’re different. But me? I fuck up everything I touch.”

Tuck stiffened. “Wait a damn minute. What’s that supposed to mean?”

Cade put his hand up between them to warn Tuck off. “I didn’t deserve—”

“Stop.” Tuck pushed Cade’s barrier away. His head swam with so much to sort through, so many questions jabbing at him like sharp sticks.

Deserve
? Man, that made his head hurt. He had to think about that one. Or approach it from a side angle, maybe, starting with the simplest truth he knew. “Brother or father, what’s it matter? You were better to her than any blood family she had.”

Cade scoffed. “She called me Dad. I can’t stop hearing it.”

It took everything Tuck had not to just grab the man and hug him stupid, or hug the stupid out of him. Whichever. But if he let himself try, Cade would completely lose his shit, and that’d make everything worse in the long run. Loving a proud man? Not easy, not even when times were good.

Tuck had to settle, unwillingly because it wasn’t enough, for a simple “I don’t know. Seems like maybe that means you should listen.”

Cade snorted. No response but for a silence that wanted more words.

Trouble was, Tuck’s well had almost run dry. “You want me to make it easy on you? I can’t. But you want to know what I think?”

He waited for Cade to nod, not sure he would, and loosing a deep breath when, finally, Cade did.

“Way I see it, you wouldn’t be here now if you didn’t want to change your mind. To go with me, to the girls.” For starters, Tuck thought but didn’t say.

Cade closed his eyes. His lips moved. No sound came out, and Tuck couldn’t read lips, but he thought that was Cade saying
yes
and
I know.

How could one man break his heart so many times and still leave enough left over to break yet again?

“I’d make it easy if I could,” Tuck said. “Trust me, I’d like to toss you over my shoulder and haul you down the road.”

Cade laughed. “God. You never change.”

“Made you smile. I’m not sorry about that.” Tuck rubbed his forehead. What he had to offer Cade, no choice, didn’t come any easier the second time around tonight. “You’re the one who has to make the choice. Are you out, or are you in?”

Cade stood so still. “Pathetic,” he said, aiming the word at himself.

“You’re really not.” Tuck stood back and swung the door to his apartment wide open. Couldn’t hurt and might help. If ever a man needed to go home and rest his tired head, that man was Cade. “Come on. We can talk about it, fight about it, whatever you want. And I mean
talk
, not fuck. I’ll be good.”

Sometimes, in rare effervescent moods, Cade had teased Tuck about how he wore his heart on his sleeve.
Speak for yourself
. The only difference between them was the way Cade’s heart hung loose with ripped stitches and frayed edges, and Tuck had learned how to sew his on tight.

He wasn’t the best man in the world. But he wanted to be someone who could be counted on. Cade used to know that.

The way Cade looked at him now, Tuck thought maybe Cade was remembering that. Daring to take a chance on it. He hoped so. “You promise?” Cade asked.

“I’ll promise to try.”

Be damned if that didn’t make Cade smile, the tiniest quirk of his lips. The weirdest fucking things amused that guy. Go figure.

“What?”

“I think I believe you.” Cade sobered as quickly as he’d betrayed a glint of humor. “If you’re promising you’ll try to be good, that means you want to be bad. Doesn’t it?”

“It’s you,” Tuck said. “So yeah. I do. But a promise is a promise. Hands off unless you say so, even if it drives me out of my mind.”

“As if you were ever in your right mind.”

God but Tuck had missed the way his body warmed to Cade’s teasing.

Still, Cade hesitated. “There’s no other way to do this for Hannah and Megan, is there? Not and keep our promise to be there for them.”

“Not that I can think of. No.”

“Then you need to understand something.” Cade lifted his chin, warning Tuck that he wasn’t going to like this. At all. “What happened tonight can’t happen again. You know perfectly well that if we let it, it
will
. I’ll hold it together for the wedding. But after that…” He trailed off, shaking his head.

“After that, what?” Tuck asked quietly, though he already knew. “End of the line. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

Cade didn’t flinch or back down, though he looked paler and the circles under his eyes far darker. “Yes. I want you to promise me that as soon as the wedding’s over, so are we. For good. You walk away. I walk away. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”

Tuck almost never felt tired and never at all without hope. He did now, without another choice in sight but to agree, even if it was as hard and painful as a Saturday night special jammed against his heart. “If you want it to be over after that, then yes.”

Cade let out a shaking breath. “Promise me.”

Tuck propped himself on the wall and rubbed his eyes, speaking behind his hand. “I promise.”

“All right.” Cade flexed his hands reflexively and lifted his head to hold it high. “We need to work out the details and call the girls. It’s best if we do it together. Let me back in.”

Tuck stood aside, leaving the path open. “All I’m doing is waiting for you.”

But not without hope.

“
As soon as the wedding’s over, so are we
,” he’d said, and Tuck had replied, “
If you want it to be over after that, then yes
.”

He’d missed the loophole.

That tiny sliver of hope, Tuck clung to it with nails and teeth. He’d rescued Cade before and brought him back to life. That was what he did. Who he was. He found those who needed a hand and gave them one. Hannah. Megan. Suzie-Q, even. And Cade. They fought, sure, because they didn’t know any other way and didn’t understand why they should be loved.

Cade had forgotten everything he’d learned. Tuck hadn’t. He’d find a way through the cracks in Cade’s armor.

It was like Cade had said. Tuck never did know when to quit. Or maybe it was more that he knew damn well when quitting wasn’t an option, or shouldn’t be, and didn’t they boil down to the same thing?

They’d see. Tuck followed Cade inside, calm as he could, and shut the door behind them.

They’d see.

Chapter Three

The drive from the heart of New York to the farther outskirts of Richmond took ten hours instead of the six over-optimistic maps promised. Partly because dogs needed more breaks than humans, but Tuck thanked God he’d brought Suzie-Q along. With Cade still and silent in the passenger seat, in one of his most remote and unreachable moods—no doubt a reaction to the loss of pride from the last time he’d crossed paths with Tuck—her presence didn’t quite break the ice but at least made it bearable.

He hadn’t seen Cade since that night in his—their—apartment. Total radio silence except for a few short bursts of texts asking when they’d leave and how long they’d stay. Then arguing over and finally agreeing that lending the girls a hand prepping for the wedding they planned to hold at home was a better gift than a random set of throw pillows or a blender.

At least
they’d
been happy to hear from Tuck. He thought their squeals might still be ringing in his ears, but that was okay. Thinking about it made him laugh, and he needed all of those he could get right now.

At the very last, leaving it late enough to make Tuck worry that Cade had changed his mind, all he’d gotten from that one was a terse message with Cade’s new street address.

And not a word had Cade spoken since he got in the car except to Suzie-Q, who swarmed him with puppy kisses the second she saw him and wouldn’t be budged from his lap since.

Tuck tried to reconcile himself to that. He did. At least he got to hear the voice he loved, even if every quiet murmur was directed at a dog.

His mood shifted for the better, finally, when they crossed the state line. Tuck wouldn’t have visited the South on his own—for good or for ill, he was an Empire State guy—and he loved driving, but man, was he glad to spy a “Welcome to Richmond” sign.

Welcome, indeed. Tuck gave it all a good once-over, glad of something to distract him. He had his pick of what to check out. Ritzy shops, bistros, galleries. Same concept as New York. Very different execution. He could smell old money almost everywhere in this suburb, wafting especially strongly from a posh vintage clothing store he checked out while waiting for a stoplight.

“We don’t fit in here,” Cade said, abruptly breaking the silence. He glanced at Tuck, almost daring him to say either yes or no.

Tuck shrugged, travel grit making his eyes burn and his throat dry. “Guess that depends on how you look at it.”

And that was that, until the GPS told Tuck they were almost there.

And holy cats, “there” was “Somewhere,” all right. With a capital S.

Hannah and Megan had told him they were house-sitting for a professor on sabbatical at Oxford. Hence a house big enough for a wedding. Tuck guessed some professors might earn a decent wage or have family money behind them, but for fuck’s sake. Hannah might have mentioned said professor’s connection to King fucking Midas.

Tuck shook his head in wonder. Regardless of what he’d said to Cade, these were
not
Tuck’s kind of stomping grounds. These were supposed to be family homes?
Fuck
. McMansions only dreamed of that kind of style. These were the real thing, from ivy-wrapped columns to gardeners who kept lawns green and as soft as velvet and would take care not to let one leaf on an heirloom rosebush grow at the wrong angle.

Cade’s remoteness gave way to curiosity and then concern. He frowned at the world they’d rumbled into. “This can’t be right. Are we lost?”

Tuck counted to ten. “When’s the last time you knew me to get lost?”

“When’s the last time you were in Virginia?”

Tuck counted to a hundred this time, then sighed. Drives like this got to everyone. Wouldn’t hurt him to cut Cade some slack. “I’ll pull over and ask,” he said, the ultimate sacrifice to a taxi driver’s pride.

Cade blinked. No way he’d have expected that. Tuck wondered if he’d protest, but…no. He almost softened when he nodded.

Go fucking figure, but whatever. Tuck would take it. He’d take another twelve-hour drive for the smile that came out when he grinned at Cade. Be damned and be blessed too.

“I’m sorry,” Cade said, just to top off the trifecta of the unexpected.

Tuck blinked. “What?”

Cade knuckled the back of his own head, probably a learned habit to replace the old-school tugging at his hair. “I make a rotten passenger. I’d meant to…then I couldn’t. This still isn’t easy.”

Tuck shrugged noncommittally. “You’re here. I can deal.”

“I know,” Cade said quietly. And then, softer still, almost as hushed as a small breath, “Thank you.”

Tuck could do nothing but sit silently, stunned.

As if nothing had happened at all, Cade nodded at an upscale version of a fill-up joint just ahead, a tastefully miniature farmer’s-market display of vegetables and fruit out front.