Chapter 3 Cade #3
Except…except I knew that kind of anger didn’t help anyone, least of all him.
I didn’t know what had happened to him since I’d last seen him, but it was obviously something he had been carrying around for a long time.
I was no different, except where there might have been anger and rage, there was only a hollow feeling, the absence of the people who meant more to me than I would ever have the words to explain.
Here was someone who had also experienced loss, one that I didn’t know and might not understand, but I knew what it meant to lose something so vital to who you were that you become someone you never dreamed you could be.
“Hey,” I whispered, reaching out and touching his back carefully. He flinched, and I quickly added. “Sorry.”
“No,” he said, his shoulders releasing their tension, and he sighed, looking at his mangled coffee cup.
“I’m the one that should be sorry. You’re not the one who deserves my anger.
You’re not the reason I’m so pissed off.
I’m sorry, Ser…Cade. I guess maybe I belong here, even if I don’t actually believe that for a minute. ”
“I guess a lot has happened for both of us,” I said softly, reaching out to touch him again now that I realized I wasn’t going to risk losing another limb.
He huffed, letting out a laugh that, while not the happiest sound on the planet, didn’t sound completely bitter. “I think that’s an understatement.”
“Yeah, well, I was never good at sayin’ things the right way,” I chuckled, rubbing his back and feeling him loosening up a little.
It was funny because I remembered how wary he was of people touching him back in the day.
I could never figure out if it was because he simply hated being touched or if he was confused by it, at least with our team anyway.
It had taken him longer than anyone else to get used to having someone touch him, which struck me as funny.
This was the man whose job was to put his hands on us to deal with our injuries, which he did expertly and without hesitation, but if one of us tried to give him a hug or even draped an arm over his shoulder, he acted as if you were asking him to promise you his first-born child.
“You’ve never had a problem saying what you needed to say,” Walker said with a roll of his eyes. “I never quite figured out who told you that you can’t fucking talk, but every one of them deserves a swift kick in whatever sensitive place they have.”
I snorted. “I guess that’s inclusive.”
“That’s me, a regular progressive guy,” he said and then made a face about something only he was aware of. “Ugh.”
“C’mon,” I said, taking a cue from him and sliding my arm across his back to grasp his shoulder and give it a little shake. “You’re only on, like, what, day four here? There’s no need to get all upset; that’s what the gym is for, and I guess the group or private therapy sessions.”
“You guess,” he said dryly, not quite leaning into my touch but not pulling away or tensing either.
“And I guess you’ve gotten better about people touching you,” I noted with a raise of my brow, hoping that changing the subject might help him a little.
He blinked, looked back at my arm, and rolled his eyes. “You know why I was always weird about you guys touching me, right?”
“Mmm, no,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “Kinda figured it was ’cause you didn’t like bein’ touched and had to get used to it with us, or that ya didn’t have it happen much and it was just…I dunno, an adjustment?”
Walker stared at me before letting out a laugh that sounded a lot more enthusiastic than before. “God, I just…really?”
“Now, see? I went and said somethin’ wrong, so that meant I was right a second ago,” I told him with a snort.
“No, I bet this has nothing to do with your belief that you’re an idiot who doesn’t know how to talk and more to do with the fact that you’ve never…had to worry about certain things.”
“I’m, uh…not sure what you’re talkin’ about.”
“I’m sure,” he said, pulling away from my arm and dumping his coffee cup into a trash can.
“You remember what I told you guys that one time, right? We’d been working together for about a year.
We were having a few drinks because we had a few days free for once.
You guys were so hell-bent on getting me drunk that night, and since we had time ahead of us, I thought, why not? ”
I thought about it for a minute, letting my mind drift back, careful to skip the part where everything had gone to hell. A year in would have been… “Oh…right. When ya told us you’re gay?”
“Yes,” he said, clearly amused, but I couldn’t see what was so funny.
Okay, I remembered. We’d taken one of the larger tents at the base for ourselves that night, and although alcohol wasn’t in high supply, though definitely high demand, we had got our hands on a few bottles that would rot your insides and leave you regretting your life the next day.
We had definitely been trying to get Walker to dive as deep as we could into one of those bottles, and it had taken a team effort to get him to take more than a few drinks.
There had been some side bets between Bassey and Morrow, one arguing that it was because Walker was just a goody two shoes, the other arguing it was because Walker just didn’t want to risk being drunk if something happened.
Morrow had been the winner because once we got a few drinks into Walker to loosen him up, he had become a regular boozer.
Even I’d been surprised at the way he had put the drinks away, drunk and yet completely in control right until the last couple of hours.
It had been right before that point of no return where he’d confessed, both drunkenly confident and quietly nervous that he was, in fact, gay.
The looks from the team after that quiet confession had said everything, mostly because everyone was trying not to laugh their asses off, but we all knew it was a big deal and we shouldn’t laugh at the poor guy for what we had pretty much already figured.
“Ya were so confused when we just shrugged and told ya we already knew. I can’t remember who it was that said they’d seen ya sneak off a few times with someone on base at the last place we were at,” I said with a chuckle.
Walker rolled his eyes. “Clark. The man could keep a secret like he could keep his silence. He was the first one to laugh at me because he’d seen me sneaking off and knew I thought I had been so careful when I was apparently not that subtle.”
“I mean, I figured just ’cause you never talked about bein’ with anyone,” I said with a shrug.
“Not like I expected ya to start talkin’ like Bassey did, or pine after the girl left behind like Kines, but ya never mentioned anyone.
I figured that if ya weren’t going to share, it was ’cause you felt ya had a reason not to.
The only thing I figured would make ya not feel like sharing was that ya liked guys.
Bassey wanted to bring it up to ya a couple of times, but I told ’em it wasn’t none of our business unless ya wanted to tell us. ”
“And again, you try to make yourself out to be this big idiot, and yet you figured it out just fine on your own,” Walker said with a shake of his head.
I frowned. “Wait, did you think you bein’ gay was gonna make things weird? For, like, touchin’ ya and huggin’ ya and all that? Or, uh, was it weird for ya ’cause you like…well—”
Something flickered in his gaze, but was gone in an instant. “I wasn’t worried I was going to want to jump Kines or Bassey…or whatever.”
I watched him for a moment because it felt like he wanted to say more, but when he didn’t, I snorted. “So ya thought we’d be weird about it.”
“It wasn’t because I thought you would; I was afraid it would happen,” he said with a shrug.
“You spend your life living in the closet. Even if it’s not because of yourself, you still worry how other people are going to react.
That’s just how it goes, Cade. And I guess, yeah, it was a little weird to have a bunch of guys touching me all the time.
I didn’t get any, like…sexual feelings or romantic ones from it, but I was always afraid something in my brain would betray me.
And then after I told you, and I remembered the next day in the midst of what has to be the worst hangover in the history of mankind, I was…
yeah, afraid something was going to change. ”
I smirked. “But nothin’ did, because we already knew, and weren’t shy about bein’ around you.”
“Which I figured out, eventually. It helps to make clearer judgements when it doesn’t feel like your stomach is going to crawl up out of your throat or your head feels like Ragnarok is going on.”
I stared at him. “Really?”
He frowned. “What?”
I rolled my eyes. “Ya literally ended up sharing a bunk with me that night. That didn’t stick out?”
From the look on his face, he hadn’t thought of that. “Well—”
“Wow, I show ya in the most direct way that I don’t care about that, and you don’t even remember it,” I said with a weary sigh, grinning as I shook my head. “I’m hurt.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d bunked with a member of my team, and about the third time I’d bunked with Walker, who always seemed to bunk with someone else.
It had been perfectly normal, though I’d learned that a sober and sleeping Walker was polite and quiet, while a drunken sleeping Walker spread out, so he lay on me rather than with me most of the night.
Not that I minded, though it had caused some…
strange feelings, having him pressing his body against mine, drunk or not.
The feeling wasn’t uncomfortable, but was certainly different from anything I’d felt bunking with anyone else.
So, I had to guess there was something to my joke that I was bothered he didn’t remember it, drunk or not.
Not that it made sense for me to be bothered, but since when had emotions ever made sense?
I was most assuredly straight; there were enough women, both short-term and longer, to prove it.
And yet that one night had left me with feelings I couldn’t explain as I’d laid there with him sprawled over me, snoring heavily, but also stuck with me for years.
It wasn’t being attracted to him, but it wasn’t not being attracted to him.
Yeah, it still made little sense to me, even years later.
Walker didn’t notice that my thoughts had gone a little strange, thankfully. “Yes, I’m sure you are deeply wounded. I don’t know how you’re going to recover from this horrible blow.”
I grinned. “I’m sure I’ll find a way; it’s gonna take me a while, though.”
“Well, it’s a good thing you’re here where being healed is the whole point,” he said with a snort.
I didn’t miss the tone of bitter irony in his voice; he obviously wasn’t a believer in the resort, but…
it wasn’t the time to make him believe either.
Earlier this year, there had been a guest who hadn’t believed in the results of Arete either, but through the work of the newest Guide who was chosen properly and given the right training, which could have only happened if the resort was running properly, he changed his mind.
This place hadn’t done a lot for me, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t do what it said.
I didn’t know why Walker was here, but I knew something significant had to have happened, maybe repeatedly.
I could only hope that in the end, he opened himself up to the help Arete could offer him.
In fact, maybe there was a way for me to help him.
I didn’t know how that was possible when I wasn’t exactly in a place to help anyone, but it had to be worth a try.
He might not have been with my team at the beginning, or the end, but that didn’t take away from the fact that he had once been one of ours.
My entire team and I had thought that even after he was gone, and I wasn’t going to stop thinking of him that way.
“So,” I said, glancing at him, “wanna see a better view of this place?”
Walker raised a brow. “Sure.”
For now, I could start by being his friend.