Clay #2
I left him to wrap his head around what probably felt like an odd conversation, but it was a system I’d developed long before I came to Arete.
Like I’d told him, I wasn’t the dating type, and hadn’t been for a while.
I wasn’t planning on changing that. If he was the sort to get hung up, which, yeah, happened a lot more with men hiding the truth than with guys who were comfortable with themselves, he needed to stay away from me.
I wasn’t going to try to break his heart, but I wasn’t going to hold his hand if he was stupid enough to catch feelings, either.
Finally dressed, I walked toward the main hallway.
The Arete Resort was built into a mountainside, and yet it felt like any other building, albeit one where the designer incorporated some of the environment.
There were walls of stone in some places, and others were glass that looked out onto the Rockies.
There were rooms for activities all over the place, a canteen that served surprisingly good food, and on the opposite end of the resort, were the private rooms.
It was those I was headed for, as I wanted to drop off my gym bag and then consider the canteen for a late dinner.
Reaching the door to my room, I frowned when I saw someone had entered and hadn’t left.
The guy who ran the place for the most part, Reggie, was proud of the security system in the resort.
It used AI or something, and it apparently kept track of a lot of things.
Which didn’t mean much to the rest of us. It did mean that I knew when someone was in my room, however, and that was not something I wanted to see as I tapped my pass to let myself in.
I stopped when I saw someone sprawled across the bed in the corner and blinked when I saw familiar red hair peeking out from under the pillow. Sighing, I closed the door behind me. “Cade!”
I winced when the large man jerked up from the bed, his hand shoving under my pillow as though he were searching for something that wasn’t there. That something, I suspected, was a weapon, and I immediately regretted startling him.
“It’s just me,” I told him softly, not moving as he looked around with quick snaps of his head, the muscles in his arms tightening. “Cade.”
He blinked, then light entered his eyes and with it, understanding. Cade let out a little laugh, ran his hand through his tightly shorn hair, and huffed in embarrassment. “Sorry about that. Musta been havin’ one of my dreams again.”
“That’s fine,” I told him as I dropped the bag onto the chair. “I should have known better than to wake you up like that. Sorry.”
“Nah, you’re fine. Just bein’ a big baby, I guess,” he snorted, twisting so he could hang his legs, one real and one a hi-tech example of metal design.
It was apparently built to work far more smoothly than a ‘regular’ prosthetic, meaning the part of his leg where it connected didn’t get overly stressed when he was walking or even running.
His shirt had ridden up to show the ugly scars on his torso and hip after being blown out of a helicopter, and he absently tugged it down when he felt the air on the unscarred skin.
“It’s kinda funny. All those head doctors like to tell me I’m safe now, and that one day I’ll figure it out.
Can’t quite get ’em to figure out that I know I’m safe.
It’s whatever’s in my head that doesn’t know. ”
“Or maybe that part of your brain knows the world really isn’t safe,” I said with a twist of my lips. “What are you doing here anyway? I thought you weren’t supposed to be back until November, and last I checked, it’s the end of August.”
“Ugh, yeah, I... family is going on vacation and I, uh...wasn’t goin’,” he said, looking away as I sat down in one of the comfortable chairs and watched him fidget.
I waited a moment before realizing what was wrong. “They were flying, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“You couldn’t drive there?”
“Can’t really drive across an ocean, now can ya?”
“I guess that’s true.”
“They were worried about me,” he said, his usually bright smile turning into a scowl. “Like I was gonna do somethin’ while they were gone. I ain’t gonna do somethin’ like that.”
“Hey,” I said softly. “I know that. And they probably do too. They’re just worried about you, is all.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, and then, as if he didn’t know how to finish, he shrugged.
“I told ’em I’d come here. Not like I don’t have money still stuffed away, and the guys, some of their families, well, they don’t mind forkin’ over for it even though I told ’em not to worry about me.
Won’t even let me pay for my own stuff half the time. ”
Right, of course, his guys. The men he had led for months—years in some cases.
Brothers in arms was the truest way to describe them.
And then, on what should have been their last outing, one that shouldn’t have been that dangerous compared to what they’d done before, everything had gone wrong.
I didn’t know the full details, but I knew they’d come under fire, and then the helicopter that was supposed to get them out of danger had been shot down.
Somewhere in the fighting, the crash and fire that followed, Cade had been the only one to survive, albeit with parts of him left behind.
“I know how you feel,” I said grimly. I knew all too well what it was like to have people who shouldn’t, in all good conscience, give a shit about you, but refused to let you go, even though it was stupid, even though it wasn’t asked for, even though it was unwanted.
“But I guess there’s not much you can do to change their minds, huh? ”
“Nah,” he said with a laugh, and his bright smile came back.
That was Cade for you; it was easy to forget he had once led a group of highly trained, dangerous men.
“They’re who they are, I guess. Don’t know why they keep tryin’, but I ain’t the one to be judgin’ since there ain’t too much right in this head of mine. ”
“There’s not a whole lot right in mine either,” I said, cocking my head. “What’re you doing in my room if you’re staying early?”
“Not early. Just for a couple of weeks,” he said with a shrug. “And I was roamin’ around, and I met a couple of new guys.”
“There’s new guys?” I wondered.
He eyed me, chuckling. “Calm it down. Let ’em get settled before you start your dick hunt.”
I scoffed. “I was just asking.”
“Sure you were.”
“Just tell me how you ended up in my room instead of yours.”
“Well, I didn’t meet one of ’em, just saw ’em as I was coming in. Seemed kinda quiet, but he was talkin’ to Reggie, and the only ones who don’t seem quiet next to Reggie are people like you and me.”
“Cute?”
“Hell, I don’t know, Clay. Ya know I don’t swing that way.”
“You can still say whether he was good-looking or not. You have eyes.”
“Well, I don’t know if he was cute, but he was pretty good-lookin’, I guess. Other one was too, uh, Joseph was his name. The one I actually got to meet.”
“Cute?”
“Jesus, Clay,” he tried to complain, but burst into his booming laugh. “I knew guys straight outta boot who weren’t as horny as you, and they were locked up without nothin’ to do the whole time.”
“Nothing but each other.”
“I meant the straight ones, not whatever horny bisexual you are.”
I grinned; my dirty jokes were getting him to relax because whatever had happened that led him to my room gave me the feeling something had gone wrong.
People looked at Cade and saw big, loud, and friendly, but that was about it.
What they didn’t understand was that there was something fragile that he did his best to hide from others.
He would sooner chop off his other leg with a rusty butter knife than tell someone who didn’t know any better that they had accidentally hit one of his buttons, but I had seen it happen on occasion.
“What’d the new guy, Joseph, right?”
“Yeah?”
“What did he say or do?”
Cade huffed, giving me an unhappy look. “It wasn’t his fault, he didn’t know no better, alright?”
I narrowed my eyes. “That tells me he was being an idiot.”
“He just...he found out I lost my leg, knew I served, and started askin’ questions, was all. They’re normal questions; people ask them all the time.”
“Cade.”
“Look, he was just askin’ stuff like if I ever had to kill anyone, or if I saw people get killed.
When I didn’t answer, he pushed, and I, well, I don’t know, I just kinda left.
And then I couldn’t remember where my new room was ’cause it’s not the same one as my normal visits.
And I got lost, and I kept wanderin’ around, but then I saw your room, and ya weren’t in, and I took a nap. I couldn’t find ya to ask and I just—”
I grimaced, repressing the urge to snap and demand to know where that dipshit was to remind him some things weren’t any of his business.
More importantly, though, I could see the tension coming back into Cade’s shoulders, and his hands gripped his pants a little too tightly.
He was probably embarrassed by his reaction and confusion after getting lost, which usually happened whenever that switch in his head flipped.
“First of all, you’re the only man in this place I’d let sleep in my bed, you know that,” I said, dropping onto the bed next to him, wrapping my arm around his back, and squeezing.
He chuckled. “With ya too.”
“Damn straight,” I said, giving him another squeeze. “So long as I have a room here and you’re here, you have a place with me, alright? So don’t go thinking you have to ask to stay whenever you want, I’ve told you that.”
“I know,” he said, grabbing my knee and giving it a wiggle before drawing away. “Just think what the guys would say if they knew.”
“I don’t give a fuck what anyone says. I’ve told people to mind their own business and that they’re just mad because they wish they were spending time in my room with me,” I said with a snort, looking him over.