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  Nate pulled back and spoke close to his ear in a low voice. "Christ, I'd like to suck you," he said. "Take your cock into my mouth, taste you..."

  That did it. Carter's hips snapped violently forward a few more times and then he came, groaning into Nate's mouth as Nate kissed him again, feeling the warm splash of his own pleasure as it bounced back against his stomach. A few seconds later Nate stiffened and his cock throbbed in Carter's hand, and Carter felt Nate shooting out over his fingers, hot spunk mixing with his own come on his belly.

  They leaned together, panting as they recovered both their breath and themselves, slowly kissing again. The smell of smoke and wood ash still lay heavy in the air, surrounding them like a thick blanket. Carter wondered for the first time since the ambulance pulled away how Robin was, and thought for the first time about Julie.

  "She's dead," he said dully, and pressed his mouth to Nate's harder, letting Nate's teeth scrape against his lips.

  Nate pulled back, one hand on the back of Carter's neck. "Yeah," he agreed.

  "It was... she didn't deserve to die."

  Nate kissed him again, more gently. "Shit happens. Accidents happen."

  Carter moved away from Nate, refastened his pants and picked his shirt up off the ground. He shook it off, brushed at the dust and leaf bits that clung to it, and pulled it back on. "It wasn't an accident," he said, thinking that Nate of all people should be able to grasp onto that concept. "They did it on purpose."

  "They didn't get caught in it on purpose," Nate said.

  "No." Carter looked down at his front, where crumpled pieces of leaf were still stuck to his shirt. He picked at them carefully, not sure why he felt the need for his shirt to be clean, but feeling compulsive about it anyway. "She didn't know."

  "Didn't know they were going to do it? Set the fire?" Nate sounded confused, but Carter knew Nate was sitting there naked, still, and didn't want to look at him.

  Carter shook his head. "No -- I think it's pretty safe to say she knew they were going to do that. I don't know... maybe she didn't know that it was going to burn so fast? She seemed... confused, surprised. She and Robin, they didn't know the rest of them were going to leave."

  Nate still sounded confused, but Carter could see him moving around in his peripheral vision and chanced a look in his direction. He'd pulled his pants up, but his shirt must have been on the seat behind him where Carter had dropped it. "But they must have been planning on all of them leaving together, right? I mean, otherwise the ones who stayed behind would get caught, and take the fall for..."

  "Yeah," Carter said. "But I don't think... I mean, from what she said, it sounded like she and Robin decided to stay behind, not like the others planned to leave them."

  Nate found his shirt and yanked it on, wincing, and started to button it back up. "You're talking in circles."

  "Am I?" Carter sighed and rubbed his forehead. The smell of the burnt wood and the chemical scent of the lighter fluid were making his head ache. It had to be that simple. If he wasn't making sense, it had to be because... He couldn't even finish a thought in his own head. Crap.

  "C'mon," Nate said. "Let's go back. Get some sleep. We'll deal with it in the morning."

  Sighing and wondering when Nate had gotten so sensible, Carter got into the car.

  11.

  His third cup of coffee had done wonders for Nate's state of awareness, but not much for his stomach. Stuff did a number on him every time -- too acidic or something. It helped to put milk or cream into it, seemed to cut the burn, but since it also made it taste like shit, Nate had determined it was better to suffer and at least have the coffee taste right. Even when it already tasted bad, which in this case it did. Police station coffee wasn't high on his list of favorites.

  "Hey," said Carter.

  Nate looked up from the somewhat less than comfortable wooden chair he'd been sitting on for the past half hour. "Hey. How'd it go?"

  Carter shrugged and fidgeted, continuing to stand there even though there was a perfectly good -- though probably equally uncomfortable -- chair next to Nate's. "Okay. They just wanted to know what I knew, which wasn't much. It would have taken about five minutes if they hadn't felt it necessary to ask every question three or four times."

  "Guess they think you might remember something extra that way."

  "I guess so. It probably works," Carter admitted, looking like he was trying to be fair. "If you have to keep repeating yourself, you're bound to add in new stuff every once in a while." He fidgeted again.

  "Looks like you're ready to get out of here," Nate said, hauling himself to his feet and throwing his mostly-empty coffee cup into the nearest trash bin. "Not too fond of these places, are you."

  Carter gave him a look that said very, very clearly that Carter had every right not to be, and Christ could Nate be any more stupid. Well, possibly not with the "Christ" added in, since that was one of Nate's favorite words, but still.

  "Kid's gonna be okay," Nate offered, once they were on the road again.

  "Robin?" Carter was fiddling with the bottom button on his shirt, and his left knee was bouncing up and down. "Yeah, I know, they told me, too. You were right about his arm being broken."

  Nate just grunted. Not that he didn't hope the kid would be okay -- he was young and stupid and had gotten in way over his head -- but Nate didn't have a hell of a lot of sympathy for his injuries. He knew Carter did, though. "What about the girl?"

  Carter looked down at his hands, his knee still jiggling up and down in a way that drove Nate absolutely nuts. "They, um... they said she died instantly."

  "Nothing we could have done, then."

  "No."

  "You don't sound like that makes you feel better."

  "It doesn't. She died. She was, like, twenty years old or something, and she died because she made a bad choice."

  "You'd think somebody would have cared about her enough to talk her out of getting involved with something like that in the first place," Nate said, and then kicked himself mentally for opening his mouth before thinking how that was going to sound.

  Carter stopped with the knee thing, at least. "Yeah, you'd think." He turned his head to look out the side window.

  Nate let it ride. He didn't need to throw himself into it, didn't need to jump-start a conversation that was just taking a little detour. It'd come back, in its own time. No map required.

  "Maybe those other kids, maybe they were the ones who cared about her," Carter said, three or four minutes later.

  Nate waited some more. He wasn't sure Carter was looking for a response -- wasn't sure

  Carter was ready for one -- and he damned well wasn't sure that he was capable of saying whatever it was Carter needed to hear.

  "Maybe they didn't want to leave her there. Maybe they just didn't realize she and Robin weren't with them. Maybe..." Carter's knee started up with the bouncing thing again.

  Nate took a deep breath and tried to be patient, which in general was something he really sucked at.

  Carter sighed heavily and his knee stopped again. "Maybe I'm reliving my own issues here," he said.

  "S'possible," Nate muttered, figuring that saying less was better than saying more in this situation.

  "What about you?" Carter asked.

  "What about me?"

  "Aren't you going to have a big fit about how this is all my fault?"

  Nate was genuinely stunned. "Your fault?"

  "If I'd let you call the police when they first showed up, this wouldn't have happened," Carter pointed out. "No fire, no exploding Cat, no one hurt, including Don, which I'd think would be enough for you even without the kids, since you probably don't care what happens to them anyway..." Carter's knee started up again, and Nate shot his hand out and clamped down on it.

  "Would you just fucking calm down for a minute?" he said harshly. "You're driving me nuts."

  "Sorry. I'm sorry," Carter said, and Nate understood that Carter was apologizing for everything, not just the knee th
ing.

  "It's okay."

  "No, it's not." Carter took a shuddering breath. "I should have let you do it. I shouldn't have -- "

  Now Nate had to cut him off -- there was no other option. "Stop it. Enough. You want to beat yourself up, you do it in your own head. I don't want to hear it."

  Carter stopped, and Nate was in the middle of congratulating himself for having said the right thing at the right time when he heard the sound of Carter's seat belt unfastening and then the sound of the door handle pulling the door open.

  "Pull over," Carter said.

  "What the fuck are you -- "

  "Pull the fucking car over!" Carter said, loudly, as he pushed the door open.

  Nate jerked the wheel toward the side of the road and stepped on the brake hard, bringing the SUV to a shuddering stop and noticing to his relief that Carter waited until it had stopped before jumping out into the soft dirt on the shoulder. He threw his own door open and stalked around the front of the vehicle to where Carter was standing with his arms crossed and a look of searing anger on his face.

  "What the hell is your problem?"

  "Oh that's rich," Carter spat out. "What's my problem? I'm trying to fucking apologize here and you're telling me you don't want to hear it?"

  "Actually, I said that I didn't want to listen to you beat yourself up about what happened," Nate said, thinking that he was being pretty reasonable, but, given his track record for the last ten minutes, starting to wonder if he had as good a grasp of the situation as he thought he did.

  "But it was my fault." Carter shouted.

  "It wasn't!" Nate shouted back. "It wasn't your fault that I didn't kick them the hell out of there, and it wasn't your fault that they were so stupid that they set a fire using a whole case of lighter fluid, and it sure the hell wasn't your fault that the Cat blew up. Next thing you're gonna start blaming yourself for lighter fluid being flammable!"

  Carter dismissed the last sentence with a shake of his head. "Cut it out. I can't -- just get out of here. I'll walk back."

  Nate stared at him. "It's like ten miles."

  "So? You've never walked ten miles before? I thought you were all tough. Guess I was wrong."

  "Fuck you."

  "You already did," Carter said, like he thought Nate needed reminding. "Twice, in fact. Sorry it was so unmemorable that you forgot about it already."

  Nate wanted to punch Carter. He took a deep breath and a step back, trying to give himself enough distance to cool down. "You're trying to pick a fight with me."

  "You're pissing me off!"

  "By telling you it wasn't your fault? Sorry, Carter, but where I come from that's called being honest. Being nice, even."

  "If you're trying to be nice, you're doing a shitty job," Carter said.

  "It's not nice to tell you not to blame yourself?"

  "Not when it isn't true! It was my fault."

  Nate clenched his fists. He didn't want to hit Carter now so much as shake some sense into the man. "It wasn't your fault," he said, in as calm a voice as he could manage, which wasn't very, to his own ears.

  "It was! That guy..." Carter trailed off, looking confused.

  And suddenly what they had been arguing about was crystal clear to Nate in a way it hadn't been before. "That wasn't your fault, either," he said.

  Carter took a step backward and frowned. He was looking at the ground like he was trying to puzzle it all out. Nate thought that, for a smart guy, Carter could be amazingly dim when it came to himself.

  "It feels like it was," Carter said.

  "Doesn't make it so." Nate took a step closer, not deliberately but instinctively, and then crossed his arms. "Not your fault."

  Carter moved over to the SUV and leaned against the hood like someone had hit him. He looked sort of like someone had. Nate thought that if Carter was going to look it and act it, it was too bad he hadn't just gotten it out of his system and hit the guy. Would have made him feel better.

  "I'm still going to walk back," Carter said. "I can't -- I just have to."

  "I get that," Nate answered. He took another two steps closer, despite himself.

  Carter sighed. "I know you were trying to help."

  Nate wasn't completely convinced of that himself, but no point in destroying the illusion. "Yeah."

  "So -- thanks."

  Nate moved another step closer, and Carter reached out and took Nate's chin in his hand. Turned a little bit. Kissed him. Hot. Heavy.

  Just the once, and then released him.

  "Get out of here," Carter said. "I'll see you later on."

  Feeling a little bit like he was the one who'd gotten punched, Nate went.

  * * * * *

  As Carter started walking, trying not to think about whether or not he'd remember where to make the turn, he wondered why Nate had gone without saying anything more. Not that he was the world's biggest talker, obviously, but he certainly seemed keen on getting Carter to talk, even when Carter wasn't in the mood. He also seemed to have a strange ability to make Carter realize things that he'd obviously been successfully hiding from himself for a long time.

  Carter hadn't even realized how much guilt he'd been carrying around about that guy being raped -- if that was even the right word for it; he thought it was, but he'd been afraid to look and he'd certainly never asked -- in jail. He'd known it was still sitting there somewhere in his brain, and he'd tried to think around it as best he could. But he hadn't realized it went so deep, or that he'd felt so responsible.

  Carter thought it was possible that he would have come to this realization on his own, under the current circumstances, without Nate having to drill it out of him by yelling at him and acting like an overbearing ass. (At least Nate was good at being an overbearing ass. Everyone needed to have a talent.) But it might have taken longer. Or maybe it wouldn't have happened at all. There was no way to know, really, and even though thinking about it now wasn't pleasant, he thought things like this were best acknowledged.

  He wondered where Julie's family was. If they'd known what she had gotten herself into. How they'd reacted to the news of her death. Poor kid -- she'd seemed so nice, and he found it hard to believe that she'd actually thought things through. Maybe the group of them had gotten in over their heads together, or maybe Julie had been following Robin, or maybe one of the other kids had been the ringleader and instigated all of the plans.

  Robin had given the police the names of the other people who were involved. The police chief, who Carter had been able to talk with briefly, had said they weren't sure where the kids had been headed next, but that there were a few leads and it was hoped they'd be in custody within a few days. He wasn't sure how they'd feel when they found out that Julie was dead -- although if it had been on the news, they might know already. He didn't know if they'd actually been her friends, or if they'd just been using her. He didn't want to believe that they had abandoned her and Robin deliberately, but the end result was the same.

  Carter tried not to think anymore; he tried to put his concentration into the walking, the way his feet felt inside the boots that were, on inspection, starting to look a little bit more raggedy than he'd previously noticed. He hated to give up on comfortable shoes. The last time he'd had to throw a pair away, they'd had three holes between them and the upper had been pulling away from the sole on the left one. The left ones always wore out first.

  He definitely tried not to think about Nate, or Nate's ability to make him see things that he didn't want to see. Or the way Nate walked, all rolling, like his joints fit together better than other people's. Or the way Nate's hands felt. Or the... okay, this wasn't working out so well. Maybe instead of trying not to think about Nate, he should try to think about something else.

  Like what?

  What the hell else was there to think about, really?

  Shit.

  The book. Carter could have smacked himself. He was being totally blind and stupid, and letting himself get off the track that he'd been wor
king on since... well, since college, basically, even though he hadn't known it then. The whole purpose of him being here was to write the book, to get the dirt on what the loggers' real opinions were. Not to start liking them and understanding their viewpoint, although ethically that was a better path to tread than the one he was being paid to walk. Certainly not to start... whatever, with Nate.

  And see the clever way his brain had circled right back to the one topic he was trying to avoid thinking about? He was either way too smart for his own good, or far stupider than he wanted to admit.