"So when were you homeless?"
Another slip he should have known Tristan wouldn't overlook. He pursed his lips. This part was harder to talk about, the memories fresher, harsher, more poignant. He'd had to do things he wasn't proud of: stealing, begging, and worst of all, fighting to protect himself and hurting people who didn't deserve it, people who were just trying to survive like he was.
"I ran away from foster care when I was fifteen. I was on the streets about two years before I met Hamm."
The breath whooshed from Tristan's lungs. "Oh, wow. Two years. That must have been awful."
"It was," he agreed as he forcefully shoved away some of the more horrific, persistent memories.
"How did you meet Hamm?"
He thought back to that night outside the bar, how he'd foolishly marked Hamm as drunk enough to make an easy target, and huffed softly. "I tried to pick his pocket."
"No shit! But you didn't?"
"No. He caught me."
"Then what?"
Hamm tightly gripping his wrist, interrogating him about where he lived, if he wanted the money for drugs, if he was hungry.
"He wouldn't let me go till I answered his questions. When he figured out I was a street kid, he offered me a job."
"After you tried to steal from him?"
"Yeah."
"That's crazy. So, what? You just went with him and became an assassin?"
"Well, he bought me food and explained what they do, then let me choose."
"That's wild."
"I guess."
Tristan didn't speak for several seconds, and Cade wished he knew what he was thinking.
"You've been through a lot," Tristan remarked, his voice gentle.
Cade shrugged in the darkness, not quite sure how to react to the kind words and caring tone.
"I'm sorry you went through all that. It must have been horrible."
"Don't pity me," he said more harshly than he intended. He hated it when people treated him like some charity case, some wounded animal that had overcome insurmountable obstacles, like in those melodramatic Lifetime movies. He was a strong, capable,even intimidating adult; he didn't want to be defined by his tragic past.
"I don't. I think you're a really strong person. A survivor."
Tristan's words weren't condescending or patronizing; they were kind and honest, and when it struck Cade again that this man truly saw him, his throat constricted, and he couldn’t have spoken even if he'd known what to say.
When a soft hand slid over the sheet and covered Cade's, he welcomed it.
As Tristan fell silent, he listened to his soft, even breaths to make sure he was asleep, but his mind was too jumbled for him to follow suit so quickly.
He had revealed so much of himself that he should have felt exposed and anxious, but he didn't, because it was Tristan, and that was unnerving in itself.
It sucked that this bubble they were trapped in was temporary, that this would all be over soon, that he would be alone. Again.
His final thought before drifting off to sleep was that he was stupid for wanting what he couldn't have.
