“If I’d known that, I would’ve made you stop sooner,” he chuckled as I sat up, trying to be covert about doing it as quickly as possible. “You’re gonna be feelin’ that one later.”
“Probably,” I admitted, not regretting it in the slightest. There were plenty of ways to deal with the mess that filled my head sometimes, and I’d found out a long time ago that physical exertion was one of the more effective. Not that it made it go away. Oh no, I could never quite shut up the awful voices in my head. I could take some of their strength, though, and that was what I really wanted. “But it was totally worth it.”
“Ya say that now.”
“And when I’m laid up later, regretting my life choices, I might say I regret doing this. That won’t stop me from doing it again, though.”
“Heh, ya sound like Clay.”
“Do I?” I asked as I got off the bench to retrieve a towel.
“He was bad about workin’ out when he was bothered by stuff,” Cade said, then looked uncomfortable. “Not that ya were bothered or nothin’.”
I snorted. “I’d forgotten you were like this.”
“Like what?” he asked with a frown.
I busied myself wiping down the bench and the bar for good measure. “Just…I remember being prepared for you to be a hardass. It wouldn’t be unheard of for a team leader to come down hard on their team, especially someone new. Just a way to keep everyone in line and test the new guy. But you weren’t like that at all, and the only time you ever came down on anyone was when it was really necessary. From the start, you were happy to have me join you guys, and I remember how much that confused me. And now you’re worrying that you upset me because I, someone in a place whose selling point is to help people with issues, might be bothered that you suggested I was bothered by my problems.”
He wrinkled his nose. “I knew some guys like that; I never liked most of ’em. Some were good guys who thought bein’ hardwas the best way to keep their men in line, but I never got that. That’s what boot was for, not bein’ with a team.”
“I’m not disagreeing,” I said as I tossed the paper towel into the trash. “I’m just saying it wasn’t what I expected. And it’s been years, so I guess I kind of forgot how, I don’t know, nervous you can be by the idea of upsetting someone.”
“Not always,” he said with a grin.
No, I had to admit that was true. Despite how friendly and warm he was, there were times when he wasn’t worried about upsetting people. Usually, he wasn’t worried if someone thought he was weird or too friendly, because he’d always been comfortable with who he was. Other times, though, when someone pissed him off, he didn’t care if he said something that pissed someone else off. That was even truer when someone hurt someone he cared about. Then the lovable Care Bear went right out the window, and a furious grizzly took its place.
“But usually,” I said with a chuckle, grabbing my bottle of water and taking a deep drink. “I won’t lie. If it weren’t for the fact that I know what happened, I’d wonder why you were even here.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Huh, dunno why.”
I rolled my eyes and threw the bottle away. “Probably because you’re basically the same person I met years ago. I guess it doesn’t hurt that I know you well enough, or at least the guy you were back then, that you also use your warm fuzziness to bury shit.”
“I do not,” he protested, but there was no actual heart in it.
“Uh-huh. I remember when that girl you had after I joined the team ended things,” I said and then snorted. “Alright,youended things, but only because you found out she wasn’t willing to wait and found someone else while you were still dating.”
“That’s a nice way of not sayin’ she cheated on me.”
“Well, that was a pretty sore subject for a while there,” I said, remembering how much Cade talked about anything but his ex-girlfriend. Usually that involved telling a joke to pass it off as less painful than it obviously was, but sometimes it was just him shrugging it off. “But I remember after that, you were even more. I don’t know, you, for a while.”
“More me?”
“You know, loud, friendly, talking to people, trying to keep a smile on your face. I thought it was your way of dealing with things, like if you didn’t act sad, then you didn’t have tobesad. It wasn’t until later that I realized you didn’t want the rest of us to worry about you. I just never figured out if that was because you didn’t want anyone to worry about you, or if it was because you didn’t want your team to.”
“Kinda both,” he admitted with a weak shrug.
“Knowing the other guys, it’s probably a good thing you didn’t tell them that,” I said with a snort. “They would have ripped you a new one.”
“Probably.”
“To be fair, they would have killed for the chance to be there for you if you’d let them. No one was going to question your leadership because you were heartbroken, especially over something every single one of us would have been just as hurt over.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
