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Tuck was frustrated. He was frustrated with the entire situation, and being frustrated made him feel kind of violent. His own malcontent roiled together with Herryk's, and eventually they just sort of fed off of one another's irritation until Tuck felt like he was going to explode.

s**t had gotten too awkward too fast, and while he knew part of the blame was his, he still felt incredibly wronged. He still couldn't wrap his mind around the way that Nevada had gone from not knowing what she wanted - even while knowing he was interested in Heidi - to wanting a relationship with him. She'd even said that she should stop visiting him like she had, and Tuck had thought that that had been the end.

A week had passed before she'd come to him. An entire week - and he'd left her alone because she'd needed to think.

Slamming the door behind him after he stalked into his room, Tuck began to pace. Every muscle felt so rigid that it hurt, and he half-considered taking a jog just to get rid of the tension. He sure as s**t wasn't going to get laid - and immediately after he had that thought he felt a little ashamed of it. No, he felt a lot ashamed.

With a groan he sat in the chair near his desk, planted his elbows on his knees, and then Tuck promptly buried his face in his ******** women.

Tuck didn't glance up at the knock, nor did he look up at Heidi when she entered the room. He wasn't expecting anyone else, and she was the only one that he'd given permission to just.. come in. Not even his sister had that.

Tuck lifted his head when Heidi moved further into the room. When she told him to sit up, he did, and he even went so far as to wrap his arms around her so she didn't fall out of his lap. It also felt good to hold her in his arms. He wanted to deepen the kiss, he wanted it bad, but Tuck didn't. He didn't trust his own self control at the moment. His grasp was already tenuous at best. The last thing he needed to do was break his relationship with Heidi - and he was already intending on being perfectly honest with her about everything, anyway.

"Wasn't expectin' you back so soon," he grunted after breaking the kiss, taking a moment to glance over at the cookies - and cake, from the looks of it.

Tuck cleared his throat and stared at a spot over Heidi's shoulder before he moved his attention back to her.

How did he even ******** begin.

"First of all you gotta believe me when I say I would never, ever cheat on you, and that whatever happened before we started datin' is over n' done with."

Was that the best start? ...Probably not, but he was trying.

Tuck rubbed his jaw.

"Me an' Nevada slept together a few times. She.. at the start, she was seein' someone, and even though I knew that I kept after her - an' then she slept with me when she was seein' someone else. Me an' Roland, we're pretty straight, now - an' apparently so's Nevada and Roland - but it don't make what we did right."

He cleared his throat nervously.

"She's got a twin, too, an' I think she just wanted to feel a connection or whatever with someone else who had a twin. Alaska was podded, but she's awake now."

Tuck shifted on the chair and continued to look incredibly frustrated.

"Anyway, that s**t don't really matter. When we was sick she came to my room."

There may or may not have been a pinkish hue to Tuck's cheeks when he continued.

"She just wanted someone to sleep with, nothin' sexual, an' I sleep better too. An', uh. Then she asked about who you was, an' I told her uh."

More nervous gestures. Clearing his throat, rubbing his jaw, the back of his neck.

"I told her I was interested in you, an' that I wasn't sure if you was interested in me. Told her I wasn't sure how to talk to you about it because I was.. I don't usually get involved with girls like you. She told me she cared about me an' that we was always gonna be friends at the end of the day, an' she needed time to think an' then she left."

"After our day out at the lake Nevada come to me and ask me if I wanted to date. Like. She said she talked to Stormy. Said that the last time she was honest with some dude he went after another girl. An' I told her that I had talked to you about how I felt, an' that you'd felt the same way and now we was datin'. I mean, the last time we talked she said she didn't know what she wanted from me, an' she never came over or even let me know what was goin' on, an' I had already told her that I was interested in you but I didn't know how to approach you."

He cleared his throat and hazarded a glance in Heidi's direction.

"Yeah. Girls like you. Nice girls."

Tuck took a moment to just watch Heidi, drink in the sight of her. He squeezed his fingers against hers and sighed roughly.

"In the beginning she said somethin' like ... like we could have one night an' the next day we'd be friends. Then we went on a little trip together, an' the same thing happened, she kept labelin' me her friend an' so I never pushed. I ain't the type to push. So now she's hurtin' an' I'm angry for reasons I can't even explain."

He closed his eyes.

"Worst part is I don't want neither of you to feel like second choice to me. What me an' Nevada had, it was friends with somethin' on the side. We never discussed otherwise. What you an' me have, it's different."

Tuck calmed slightly when Heidi said that she didn't feel like a second choice. It was important to him that she didn't feel like second best or anything, that he hadn't come to her because he couldn't have Nevada.

"I just don't understand why she'd come to me like that after I was talkin' about you. She'd always been the one to slap a label on whatever we had, an' then to come at me like that, I just felt so angry about it all."

He pressed a kiss against her temple.

"I don't know. It ain't her fault. I don't really know that anyone's to blame. I just don't want to be thought of like the bad guy - like I did the same thing to her that the other dude did. I guess that's why I'm angry. I know she's probably feelin' rejected, an' I hate that. I hate thinkin' that I did that to her. Now she's sayin' she wants to be friends, and I'm cool with that I just."

Tuck shook his head and squeezed Heidi closer.

"I just didn't want you to get hurt is all. I didn't want nobody to ever get hurt."

Heidi wasn't telling him anything he didn't already know when it came to women. A more confusing and mysterious creature had never been, Tuck was more than ******** sure of it.

"I feel better after talkin' about it." He shook his head. "An' I do wanna be friends with her. Just feelin' so frustrated and confused about everything, makes it hard to think things straight." Tuck dipped his head to brush his jaw against Heidi's cheek.

"I can't see not bein' friends with her. She's a good person. You'd like her, I know you would. She knows a lot about me, too, stuff not a lot of people do. I trust her."

There was a stretch of quietude as words tumbled through Tuck's mind, and it took a second for him to figure out what to say.

"She knows about why I can't sleep."