Chapter 5 Disclosures #2
Tristan's breath caught at the end, and he choked down the rest of his sentence. Cade felt an unfamiliar impulse to say or do something comforting, but he was no good with words or affection.
"I'm sorry. That sucks."
Pressing his lips into a flat line, Tristan nodded, but didn't speak, and Cade stood there awkwardly for several seconds, wondering what the fuck he should say or do. When Tristan started walking again, he trailed behind, debating whether it was better to stay silent or change the subject.
God, why was he so bad at conversation?
They had hiked about a half mile when Tristan motioned to a hollowed-out tree trunk. "Look carefully," he whispered. "There's a possum in that tree cavity."
Squinting, Cade could just make out a small, gray snout and pink nose. "I thought possums only came out at night."
"They sometimes search for food during the day. We might have scared him."
Cade studied Tristan's back — and okay fine, his ass too — as they continued walking. "How do you know so much about animals? Or are you just making this shit up?" he asked suspiciously.
Chuckling, Tristan said, "No, I'm not making it up. When I was young, I learned a lot about animals in general, not just butterflies. I wanted to be a zoologist."
"Yeah? What made you change your mind?"
"When I took my first journalism class in college, I kind of got hooked on that, and the idea of a zoology career faded away.
Journalism lit me up, excited me. Until recently, I had dreams of being a famous investigative journalist who broke huge stories about corporate fraud or government cover-ups.
You know, someone who would fight for the little people, for justice, try to right wrongs. "
"Kind of like what we do," Cade observed.
Tristan considered for a moment before agreeing, "Yeah, I guess so."
"You don't want that anymore?"
"I don't know. I didn't realize it was so dangerous, I guess," he answered with a small huff.
"Dangerous?"
With his face angled away, Cade could only see Tristan's profile. He seemed to be thinking, and Cade didn't dare interrupt.
"I think my mentor was killed," he finally said.
"What?"
Tristan's eyes skittered away, staring off into the distance.
"My mentor, Sebastian Donnally. I interned for him at the television station.
He was investigating missing girls, and I think he was onto something.
He told me his theory about trafficking, then said some weird things, like not to trust the local police.
I didn't believe him at first. He was old, maybe seventy, and to be honest, I thought he was losing it. "
The redhead paused and finally faced Cade, his features drawn and sad.
"But about six months ago, he seemed off, jumpy, disheveled.
He wouldn't talk to me anymore, just shooed me off, closed himself in his office.
He turned up dead shortly after that. His car went off the road into a pond, and he drowned.
The police called it an accident. The station gave me his job when he died," he laughed bitterly.
"Anyway, I wondered if he found something important, if he got too close to figuring out who took the girls, and they, you know …"
He wanted to tell Tristan it wasn't true, but he knew all too well it could be. "It's possible."
"Yeah," Tristan agreed, turning away from him again. "Anyway, so when Natalie disappeared, that was my first thought. That they'd trafficked her."
Cade nodded. He would have come to the same conclusion.
"So yeah, I'm not really sure I want to do it anymore." Tristan's face morphed into a sad smile. "I think I just want simple stuff now. I'd give anything to have Natalie back, even if I had to go to some crappy job and be an absolute nobody with a boring life."
Tristan's melancholy blanketed him, and again, Cade lacked the words of comfort that others might offer, so he stayed silent.
The walk back was quiet and contemplative, and the only sounds were the animals and the branches that splintered under their feet. Back at the cabin, Cade toed off his shoes and sank into the sofa.
Checking his phone, he told Tristan, "Annabeth texted."
"What's up? Did they find something?" Tristan sat beside him, his eyes wide with hope.
"Yeah. Annabeth was able to access surveillance video from the warehouse, and Hamm assigned two guys to review it. But she's still working on breaking the encryption."
Throwing himself against the back of the sofa, Tristan let out a frustrated growl. "That's good, I guess, but I want to help. Ask Annabeth if there's anything else I can do to help."
Tossing him a skeptical look, Cade typed out a brief text.
When Annabeth replied curtly with 'not right now,' he was almost afraid to relay the message.
When he did, Tristan glared at him so intensely that he felt guilty even though he hadn't done anything.
He muttered, "Sorry," and tucked his phone back into his pocket.
Tristan sat unmoving, his face drawn into a frown, seemingly gathering his thoughts. When he pulled the laptop to him and started typing on the computer, Cade asked, "What are you looking for now?"
"I figured I'd look for sex trafficking research to see if there's anything about how rings were found and broken up. Maybe I'll find something useful. I don't know. It's all I can think of right now."
Cade's heart squeezed a little at Tristan's quiet, flat tone.
For the next few hours, he scrolled on his phone and covertly tracked the other man's expressions.
Every emotion, from frustration to annoyance to disillusionment, played out on Tristan's face, and it was fascinating.
He was definitely getting way too invested in Tristan's emotional state.
He found himself empathizing with Tristan's situation far more than he had with any other victim. Maybe it was the proximity, the prolonged exposure, or because he found him attractive. Regardless of the reason, the case would be over soon, and these feelings would go away.
In theory.
When he found himself dozing off from pure boredom, Cade took a walk around the cabin.
He returned and searched the kitchen for something to do, settling on neatly arranging the cans of soup alphabetically in the cabinets.
At one point, he dropped to do pushups. He was focused on counting when Tristan squeaked, "Wh. . what are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?"
He glanced over and found Tristan's head peeking over the back of the sofa. His eyes were a little too wide, his gaze a tad too intense, his cheeks a bit too pink.
"Why are you doing pushups now?"
"Because I'm bored."
"Do you do this a lot?"
"Yeah, most days."
"Oh." Tristan's eyes were fixed on him, and Cade started to feel self-conscious, but he disregarded the feeling and focused on counting. When he got to one hundred, he stopped and stood.
Tristan was still gaping at him, his face flushed as if he had been the one exercising.
"Are you okay?"
"Yep!" the redhead chirped before he turned back to the computer, leaving Cade scowling in confusion.
What the fuck was that about? Could it be … had Tristan been checking him out? Was Tristan attracted to him? Jesus, that would not be good. He had to shut down those thoughts immediately, or his stupid urges might give him ideas.
This was a job, and Tristan was under his protection. Even if he disregarded those very important factors and they both wanted to get naked, Tristan would probably balk at Cade's preferences.
Cade managed to avoid thinking about Tristan in the nude for the next hour or so, mostly anyway, and when the other man finally tore himself from the laptop around dinner time, he stretched and declared himself famished.
Anxious to have something to keep him occupied, Cade offered to cook dinner.
He plopped a bag of rice on the counter and asked Tristan to make it as he prepared to sear two slabs of steak in a pan.
When he was met with silence, he turned to find Tristan looking sheepish with his cheeks and the tips of his ears stained red.
"What?"
"I, um, don't exactly know how to do that."
Gawking incredulously, Cade declared, "It's literally just boiling water."
"I usually use the instant kind!"
Cade blinked.
"Can you walk me through it?" Tristan pleaded, and Cade turned back to the stove so he wouldn't have to look at this blushy-cute version of Tristan.
Clearing his throat, he explained the steps as he cooked the steaks. He didn't react when the other man's arm grazed against his (seven times to be exact) and refused to admit how adorable it was that Tristan hummed softly and mumbled to himself as he concentrated on his task.
Nope. Nothing to see here.
They sat down to the simple meal, and Tristan practically moaned with satisfaction when he took a bite of steak.
Cade was not going to think about that sound at all.
"Oh my god, this is so good."
"Thanks, I guess."
"You're a good cook."
Curious why these simple dinners seemed so fantastic to the other man, Cade asked, "What do you usually eat?"
Tristan finished chewing and said, "I don't know. Pasta, frozen pizzas, ramen. But we have salad and frozen vegetables too."
"Processed food is bad for you."
The other man's mouth turned down. "I know. I want to do better for Natalie, but she's so busy with school and activities, and I work late a lot. I never learned to cook, and it seems like it would be hard."
When Cade snorted, Tristan's head snapped up.
"If you went to college, you could learn to cook simple meals."
Gazing at him thoughtfully, Tristan relented, "You're probably right. Maybe when Nat and I get home, I'll cook more."
The talk about Natalie seemed to drain Tristan's energy and good mood, and Cade felt responsible. They finished their meal in silence, and when Tristan offered to wash the dishes, he didn't argue. Standing close to him at the sink probably wasn't the best idea anyway.
After cleaning up the kitchen, Tristan approached the sofa where Cade relaxed.
"Do you want to play backgammon again?"
"Nah."
"Stream a movie?"
"No."
"Tell me your life story?"
"No!"
The redhead crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. His annoyed expression and determined attitude were so sassy and appealing that Cade's heart tripped over itself. He admired this version of Tristan, the one who knew what he wanted and went after it with no apologies.
The thought of kissing those pursed lips and shaking that confidence filled Cade's mind, blinding him to the fact that he should respond.
"Well, do you have any ideas then?" Tristan's surly tone brought him back to the present.
He clearly had no sense of the depth of depravity of Cade's broken mind.
Oh, yeah, I've got lots of ideas. Dirty ones.
"Well," Cade answered, eager to quash his lewd thoughts. "There is a baseball game tonight I thought about watching."
Tristan's face softened. "Oh, okay. We can stream it." He plopped onto the sofa and opened the laptop. "Do you want to pull it up or should I?"
"I'll do it," Cade said, eager to prove that he wasn't completely incompetent with technology. Granted, streaming games was about all he could do besides email, searches for nearby food and online shopping, but he didn't need to share those details with Tristan.
He pulled up the game and centered the laptop between them on the coffee table.
Tristan arranged himself right next to him so that their shoulders were touching, but he reasoned it was only because of the small screen.
The other man leaned back and kicked his feet up next to the computer, and Cade tried to concentrate on the laptop rather than how close Tristan's legs were to his own, how his hand sat idly in his lap, near enough to reach out and grab, how his hair smelled like something sweet, maybe coconut?
"So, are you a Yankees or a Red Sox fan?"
"What?"
"Yankees or Red Sox?" the redhead asked, eying him warily.
Flustered, he answered, "Oh, um, Yankees."
"How long have you followed them?"
"Since I was a kid."
"Cool."
He watched the pitcher shake off a sign from the catcher as Tristan asked, "Did you ever play baseball?"
God, he asked so many personal questions. "Yeah. For a year."
"Why'd you stop? Did you not like it?"
Cade's heart squeezed at the memories of Marshall, a foster dad and Yankees fan who signed him up for Little League when he was ten.
"I moved."
"You couldn't play at your new house?"
After Marshall and his wife divorced, he'd been sent to a foster home with some creepy asshole who leered at him and tried to touch him inappropriately. He must have made a face because Tristan looked at him curiously.
"No," was all he offered, his eyes transfixed on the laptop.
"Why not?"
He could feel Tristan's gaze on him, burning, probing. Shrugging, he stared at the screen, forcing himself to stay still and silent, hoping the other man would just let it go. If he pushed again, asked questions that Cade was unwilling to answer, he would deflect.
Finally, Tristan commented, "You don't like to talk about yourself, do you?"
"I'm not very interesting."
Cade resisted the urge to squirm as the other man studied him with amber eyes and said, "I doubt that."
When he didn't respond, Tristan's attention slipped back to the screen, and the tension slowly seeped from Cade's body.
He focused on the game, answering Tristan's questions about the teams and players, rules and calls, explaining as clearly as he could for a new fan.
He lost himself in the sport, allowing its familiarity and slow pace to calm him like it always did.
He breathed a silent sigh of relief that Tristan dropped the inquisition about his childhood. The reporter was too curious, pushed too far, prodded at subjects Cade would just as soon forget. He looked too closely, and Cade was terrified he would see too much.
Cade had spent his whole life keeping people at arm's length and avoiding attachments. But being here with Tristan in this tiny cabin was testing his limits, making it way too difficult, both physically and emotionally, to keep his distance.
The tiny voice in his head was getting louder, telling him to drop his barriers, let Tristan see the real him, and answer questions truthfully instead of deflecting. It insisted that it would be safe, that the other man wouldn't judge, would be kind and understanding.
It was getting harder to ignore that voice.
And that was the scariest thing of all.