Chapter 2 #2
“Sounds like you’d know me in every sense of the word after that…” Tris whispered, part challenge, part surrender, his lips parting just enough for Cade’s thumb to slip between them.
He shouldn’t have done that. He knew it. But he also knew he’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Cade grinned, the pad of his thumb rubbing over Tris’s tongue just long enough for him to taste the faint salt and heat of skin. Then it was gone. Cade pressed their foreheads together, a small smile tugging at his mouth, like he was delighted by this turn of events.
“You’re such a little fucking tease.”
“I’m not teasing,” Tris promised, leaning forward to kiss him.
Cade ducked away, the movement quick, controlled. “Uh-uh. Not yet. Bad date first, good sex later.”
“Mighty bold of you to assume the sex will be good,” Tris said, trying to bury his disappointment under sarcasm and the residual thrum in his chest.
“Sex is like pizza,” Cade said easily. “Even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.” He stepped back, still holding Tris’s gaze. “Now, let’s go look at some dead people.”
Tris flounced, crossing his arms. “Fine.”
Cade’s grin widened. “You look like a kid who just dropped his ice cream cone.”
Tris fixed him with a flat stare. “I told you. Oral. Fixation.”
Cade chuckled, sliding an arm around him again as he steered him back into the deserted hallway. “I promise I’ll keep your mouth plenty busy later.”
“You say that now,” Tris muttered, “but you haven’t seen what happens when it’s not occupied.”
“I think I’ll live,” Cade said, low and amused.
That was what they all said…at first.
Tris’s gaze drifted down to the name card still in his hand, his anxiety ebbing for the first time since stepping on board. At least now he had something to fidget with besides his tongue and intrusive thoughts.
They entered a large exhibit room just as Tris did a little happy dance—an involuntary twitch of energy more than anything—but he stopped dead when a few guests turned to glare. His stomach dropped. He darted a glance at Cade, half-expecting mockery, but Cade only looked faintly amused.
Without a word, Cade took his hand again, thumb brushing over the back in quiet reassurance, and tugged him toward the first exhibit.
It looked like a real museum: glass cases gleaming under soft light, filled with replicas of the ship, brittle documents pressed behind glass, and delicate trinkets—hairbrushes, jeweled pins, pocket watches—displayed on velvet stands.
The air smelled like salt and old metal, faintly musty, like history that hadn’t fully dried. Tris couldn’t decide if it was beautiful or morbid. Probably both.
“It seems kinda like giving God the middle finger when you build a replica Titanic to memorialize the Titanic,” he said, eyes tracing the massive model before them. “Like you’re just begging fate to make a sequel.”
“Do you believe in God?” Cade asked, tone casual but curious.
“I’m more like a paranoid agnostic,” Tris said.
Cade’s brow quirked. “How so?”
Tris shrugged. “I don’t know what’s out there, but I believe it’s probably out to fuck me in some way.”
Cade’s laugh was low and unrestrained, drawing a few dirty looks from nearby guests. Tris felt their eyes like static under his skin, but Cade didn’t seem to care. He just laughed harder, the sound warm and unbothered.
Something eased in Tris’s chest, like Cade’s amusement made the room tilt back toward safety again.
He turned toward the wall display, eyes catching on a black-and-white photograph of a ballroom: chandeliers glittering, banisters curling like gold vines, people dressed in layers of fabric and money.
Beneath it was a second photo: the same ballroom now, half-consumed by the ocean. Rust and sea life clung to every surface, the gilded banisters faded to green.
And beneath that was a drawing: a woman floating, pale and ethereal, her white gown drifting like fog around her. Her lips were blue. Her eyes empty. The placard read that the water had been twenty-eight degrees that night.
Tris shivered, suddenly aware of how cold his hands were, even tucked in Cade’s. It wasn’t the kind of cold you could shake off; it was the kind that crawled under your skin and stayed there.
Tris shivered, the cold outside somehow working its way into his bloodstream. “Would you rather drown or freeze to death?” he muttered, eyes lingering on the photo of the woman floating in that endless blue.
Cade’s arms came around him from behind, pulling him back against a chest that felt like a furnace.
The contrast made his nerves buzz, cold and warmth colliding under his skin.
Cade was so touchy-feely, but Tris kind of liked it.
When was the last time someone had wanted to hold him, not out of comfort or pity but want?
Also, Jesus, he smelled good, like clean spice and something darker beneath.
“Drown,” Cade said immediately, voice a low rumble against Tris’s ear. “For sure.”
Tris blinked, caught off guard by the certainty. “Why?”
Cade’s chin came to rest on his shoulder, his breath a warm ghost against Tris’s neck.
“Drowning’s quick. At most, what—twelve minutes?
The first part’s the worst. You’re fighting, lungs burning like fire.
You think you can hold out forever, but then you inhale and everything goes white-hot for a second.
” He paused, voice dropping lower. “Then it gets…quiet. Peaceful. You start to hallucinate. Then nothing.”
Tris swallowed. “That doesn’t sound better than freezing to death,” he said, though his voice came out rough, like he’d already lost oxygen.
“Freezing can take hours. Sometimes days,” Cade murmured.
He lifted one arm and pointed toward the photo.
“In water like that night, it probably took an hour, maybe more. But it would be agony. When you hit water that cold, it’s like being stabbed with a thousand needles all at once.
It steals your breath and makes you feel like it’ll never give it back. ”
Tris knew that feeling, the sharp panic, the breathless ache. He was living it right now with Cade whispering death like a bedtime story against his ear.
“And then,” Cade went on, tightening his arms around him, “the shivering starts. Your teeth chatter until you think they’ll crack.
You can feel your organs shake, trying to keep you alive.
One by one, the systems shut down. Until finally, your brain can’t feel anything, and the pain fades.
You go light-headed. Euphoric. Then the world just… blinks out.”
The way he said it—slow, reverent—made Tris’s skin prickle. How did this man make dying sound pornographic?
“That’s…” Tris cleared his throat, pulse pounding. “Descriptive. You sure do know a lot about dying.”
Cade’s laugh was low and dark, vibrating through Tris’s spine. “We all have our hobbies.”
Tris tried to smile, but it came out crooked. There was something off about Cade’s laugh, something too close to truth. But Cade didn’t let go. If anything, he guided Tris forward, still wrapped around him like a blanket.
It should’ve been comforting. It wasn’t. It was possessive in a way that made Tris’s stomach flip for entirely conflicting reasons.
They stopped before a wall of square portraits, faces of passengers from the Titanic, long dead and forever frozen in time. Men in suits, women in pearls, children caught mid-giggle in the grainy stillness.
Tris scanned them until one caught his eye, and he snorted. “They did my man dirty in this photo.”
Cade gripped him tighter, practically folding Tris in half to lean forward for a closer look.
The man in the photo had crooked teeth and one eye noticeably smaller than the other, both appearing to look in opposite directions.
It was clearly a painted-over photograph, and the result was… unfortunate.
“Perhaps the artist took some liberties,” Cade said dryly.
“You’d think if you were gonna take liberties, you’d make them look better, not worse,” Tris muttered. “I’d be so mad if I died and this was the photo people used to remember me by. Like, surely, there was at least one decent pic on file.”
Cade hummed, then—without warning—smacked a kiss to Tris’s cheek. “What does he care? He’s dead.”
Tris froze, blinking, brain short-circuiting from the soft press of lips against his skin.
It was the kind of touch that shorted out logic but left every nerve standing at attention.
After a second, he managed to push back enough to breathe, though Cade’s arms stayed locked around his waist, unbothered.
He wanted to hate it. He really did. But he just…didn’t.
“If anybody uses an ugly photo of me when I die, I’m coming back to haunt them,” Tris declared. “Bet. And not just some low-effort boo-from-the-closet haunting either. I mean full-on poltergeist, flinging dishes, possessing your grandkids, opening a portal to hell in your basement.”
Cade chuckled, low and genuine. “Noted.”
Tris’s pulse hiccupped when Cade’s lips brushed the skin behind his ear, heat blooming there before his brain could catch up.
“For the record,” Cade murmured, his voice like dark velvet, “I can’t imagine there’s a photo where you look ugly.”
“Wow,” Tris said, words tumbling out before his filter could stop them. “Your flirting game is lethal. Are you like this with every guy?”
“Actually, no.” Cade’s tone held a hint of shock, like he’d surprised himself. “But you smell really fucking good, and you’re really warm, and very pretty, and I’ve wanted to drag you into a bathroom and fuck your brains out since you almost barreled into me thirty minutes ago.”
The gasp that followed didn’t come from Tris, but from a woman standing beside them, who was clutching her wineglass. She smirked, lifted it in salute, and walked away.
Tris blinked. “You have zero chill.”
“I just know what I want,” Cade countered, all smug composure again.
Before Tris could fire back something snarky—or, worse, something honest—Cade’s focus shifted. His eyes locked on a man across the room. The guy looked like a cartoon mobster: pinstripe suit, red tie, slicked-back hair, and a face sharp enough to cut glass.
Tris followed his gaze. “Do you know him?”
“Mm.” Cade’s response was noncommittal, but there was a flicker in his eyes that didn’t match the easy tone. “Only in passing.”
Something cold threaded through the moment, gone as quickly as it came. Cade gave Tris’s waist a squeeze. “Come on. Let’s scope out the hors d’oeuvres. I’m suddenly starving.”
Tris wasn’t sure if that hunger had anything to do with food.