right.
“No. Fuck no.” Cade sounded paper dry and iron hard. Rusted iron, but still too strong for one man to break. “That’s what you call simple? Lying to them?”
“Saying nothing isn’t telling a lie.”
“It’s a lie of omission.”
“Then what am I omitting?”
“That we’re—” Cade started, then stopped.
Tuck knew what the man refused to let himself finish saying. Suited him fine to take over. “That we’re over, or we’re not over? Tell me, Cade. Which one’s the lie?”
Cade glared at Tuck, but beneath that narrow heat was the kid Tuck remembered from St. Pius, lonely and scared and on the very edge of what he could cope with.
“The way you feel about me, and the way I feel about you?” Tuck gentled his hold on the man he loved, the man who drove him crazy in so many ways. “That’s not over. I’ll say it as many times as I have to until it sinks in.”
Cade shuddered. God, the poor guy was so torn. Anyone could see it.
“You break my heart, you know that?” Tuck asked him.
Too much, damn it. Cade would take anything but a blow to his pride. He met Tuck’s eyes with deadly intent. “Get your hands off of me, now,” he said, each word crisp and clear, “or I swear I’ll get them off for you.”
He meant it too. Perversely enough? Tuck liked it. He’d take mad over sad any day. Mad got things done while Sad sat in a corner crying and let the world pass by. “Go ahead,” Tuck said, not releasing his hold. “You want to take a swing? Do it.”
“Fuck. You. I can’t do this anymore.” Cade covered his face briefly and came up angry. “Happy now?”
“No. Matter of fact, I’m not.” Tuck refused to back down now. “It hurts me to see you hurting. You don’t want to hear it? Doesn’t make it any less true. I swear to you, Cade, if there was any other way—but there isn’t. I need you. I can’t do this on my own.”
“God!” Cade shoved Tuck away, rough as a bear and sharp as the report of a gunshot. “I can’t hear any more of this—I—” He tried to run his hand backward through his hair, as he’d been wont to do when frustrated beyond his limits, and swore under his breath when he encountered nothing but half-inch bristles. “Do what you want with the invitation. The girls. Tell them whatever you like, but leave me out of it.”
“You don’t mean that. I know you don’t. You wouldn’t raise your voice or lose your cool if that were true.”
Cade wouldn’t look at him. “ No . You’ll be enough for them; you don’t need me.” He warded Tuck away with an upraised hand. “I’ve got to go. Don’t follow me.”
Tuck wanted to, but that’d be another thing Cade wouldn’t forgive, and the list was already too long. Even after ten years, when Cade got this worked up he’d damn well lick his wounds in private and to hell with anyone who got in his way. No matter how much he needed them.
Let him go . Tuck would think of some other way to make this work. They weren’t over, and now that Tuck knew that for sure…well. He had a fighting chance, maybe. He’d take it.
Tuck watched Cade walk away, calling after him only once. “If you change your mind, you know where I’ll be.”
Cade looked back over his shoulder. Once. He wanted to come back. Tuck could read it in him as if the wish were words written on a page. Stupid, stubborn, beloved ass . “I know,” Cade said. “But don’t expect me to come.”
And then he was gone, walking away from Tuck. Off the bridge and into the deepening dusk, putting hard distance between them as fast as he could.
Tuck watched until Cade vanished from his line of sight. The cool of the early night seemed far colder without him there.
Yeah, so. That went well.
Chapter Two
Tuck tasted the sauce on the tip of his spoon. Needed something. Pepper, oregano…basil? He had bigger things on his mind, but sometimes it helped to go back to the basics. Food was comfort. Ergo, he should have been comforted by