Make a Right by Willa Okati Read Free Book Online Page A

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.
    “Tuck…” Cade stopped himself.
    He thought Cade meant yes; he worried that Cade meant no. “Talk to me.”
    “You get your wish. Did you think? I didn’t.” Cade shut his eyes tighter than tight and laughed, though it wasn’t funny at all. “Help me.”
    Tuck could not say no to that. Not when Cade asked it of him and meant it. “You’re sure?”
    “Don’t talk. Don’t ask. I don’t know what I’m