As long as she was alive, he would find her and bring her home.
He just had to.
He refused to consider any other possibility.
Chapter 5: Disclosures
Cade
Cade opened his eyes the next morning and immediately clocked his sore back and neck. He had slept like shit because of the lumpy sofa, and felt pissy about getting old because, as a kid, he could sleep on the ground and wake up good to go.
His mind had been preoccupied and uneasy the whole night as well. No matter how hard he tried to redirect his thoughts, his brain boomeranged back to the image of Tristan naked.
And lingered there.
His first glimpse of Tristan from behind revealed tanned, unblemished skin and toned muscle, a gorgeous blank canvas Cade wanted to paint. The idea of covering it with bruises and teeth marks had instantly jammed his brain.
And when Tristan had spun around, he had been dumbstruck. More flawless skin, still damp from his shower and glistening in the sunlight. Ginger curls scattered on his chest, down his legs, and around his pretty, perfect cock.
Like Cade's most perverted wet dream.
He had never seen anything so breathtaking in all his life, and his body instantly reacted.
Tristan was too much, too dangerous.
Too tempting.
Fuck, he was doing it again. He needed to get over this infatuation; Tristan was his protectee, his job was to keep himunharmed, and the things he wanted to do to him — Jesus, what he would do to him if he could — were not in his job description.
Sighing pathetically, Cade rose from the sofa and quietly padded to the bathroom past a sleeping Tristan. When he finished, he stretched his muscles and then dropped down between the sofa and the dining table to do pushups and crunches. At home, he used the gym almost every morning, and today he needed to move his body to shake off the ill effects of poor sleep.
Since no weights were available, Cade slipped on his shoes to take a run. Outside, he gauged the size of the clearing and figured he'd have to do about twenty laps around the perimeter to reach two miles.
As he started running, he remembered yesterday's 'perimeter' gaffe and frowned. He had been desperate to escape, to distance himself from the temptation of Tristan's naked body. His brain had been offline, and his blood concentrated somewhere decidedly south of his shoulders, so it wasn't surprising that something dumb came out.
That exchange and his brief fear of made-up rabid squirrels had his ego bristling from mortification. Tristan probably thought he was an idiot. The morbid thoughts spurred him on, as if he could escape the memories or the embarrassment by running faster.
It didn't work.
Cade knew he was good at his job. He excelled at close combat, had superb accuracy with a firearm, and possessed several other skills that allowed him to execute his hits cleanly and efficiently. He had physical prowess, keen instincts, and street smarts, but he wasn't smart-smart, not like Annabeth and Tristan.
As he did his cool-down stretches, he briefly wondered why it mattered to him what Tristan thought. But self-reflection was nothis wheelhouse, so he shut down that nonsense and decided it didn't matter at all.
Tristan was just a job. In another week, he'd never see him again. Cade should not care if the other man thought he was dumb.
He didn't care. He wouldn't care.
He returned to the cabin to find Tristan sitting at the kitchen table eating an apple, with his hair messy from sleep and looking way too cute for Cade's sanity.
"Hey," Tristan said, his voice still scratchy after just waking up.
"Hey."
"Is the perimeter safe?" he asked cheekily.
Cade told himself Tristan was definitely not funny or amusing in any way whatsoever. Instead, he rolled his eyes at him. "I'm going to shower."
Fresh from the shower, Cade found Tristan already tapping away at the computer, his half-eaten apple forgotten on the table. He didn't want to disturb him but literally had nothing to do without a TV or video games. He wasn't a big reader, and there was only so much doom-scrolling a person could endure.
