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Chapter Six

Martin was thrown; Tyler specifically said he had an ex-boyfriend. Not that it mattered. After all, there wasn’t any reason that he would find Martin attractive. Not to mention that Martin wasn’t ever letting his guard down with a man again.

Not after Levi.

Levi with his bright blue eyes and long dark hair and the softest kisses. Levi, who had stolen his heart and wound up dead. The only person Martin had ever truly loved.

Levi had been a long time ago now, and Martin forced aside the insistent push of memories and instead focused on Tyler.

The main thing Martin knew about him was that Tyler didn’t stop talking. It seemed as if he was intent on filling the silence, and that implied he thought Martin’s stillness was a bad thing. Martin craved silence and hadn’t come to terms with the fact that he was even on this expedition with the smiling, loud, confident Tyler Colby.

Not that he’d had a choice about going. It was either work with Nate and the horses or spend a week in a tent on a remote part of the ranch with a total stranger. Given the way Nate was still in the wary-of-him stage, he was happy to be volunteered. He was here to be a packhorse, lift, carry, arrange, put up tents, help with the digging, and apparently there was a wage at the end of it, funded by the Earthquake Study Center, or whatever it was called. Maybe it would be enough to put away so he could move on from Crooked Tree. After all he only needed bus fare and maybe enough cash to get a couple of rooms on the way to the ocean.

Sam had been another person to avoid. He’d gone from hostile and worried to being overly interested in Martin’s life; the parts that Martin didn’t want to talk about: the pain, the hardship, the abuse, the murders. He couldn’t understand why Sam wanted to know what it had been like for Martin growing up; it wasn’t as if Sam needed that information for any practical reason. Unless understanding young-Martin would allow Sam to come to terms with what teenage-Martin had become and how it had affected Justin. Maybe it was a messed-up need to understand Martin, but there was honestly nothing left inside him that could ever make things right.

He was so lost in thought, lulled by the rhythm of the tires on the grass, and so tangled up in the mess in his head that he hadn’t even realized the vehicle had stopped.

“I just need to get my bearings,” Tyler explained and left the car with what looked like an iPad. He stood outside, turning three-sixty and then nodding. “It’s okay. We’re heading in the right direction. Now, come look at this.”

Martin didn’t want to get out of the car. Whatever Tyler was going to show him wasn’t going to be as cool as Tyler expected it to be. Unless it was to explain the navigation system and the mapping that would reveal their final destination. Because at the end of this drive was the lure of regular hard work and then sleeping in his own tent or maybe right out under the stars. May brought slightly warmer weather. At least the ground snow had gone for now, but sleeping outside was not going to be likely. A man can hope.

“Come on,” Tyler called, and finally Martin couldn’t avoid it any longer. He clambered down from the high seat and walked to the back of the vehicle, where Tyler was messing about inside one of his cases. “This is the drone we use I want to show you…” He picked it up carefully, did what seemed like preflight checks, and then, using a control on the iPad, he shot the small gray drone directly into the air. He tutted and murmured and pushed back the errant hair that fell on his forehead before finally beaming widely.

Jesus, that smile was incendiary.

“Look,” he demanded and held the iPad a little away from himself. Martin reached for it, but Tyler shook his head. “You need to come closer. I can’t let this go.”

The drone whined away above them, and Martin finally leaned in. Tyler traced the pattern with a finger. The screen showed what the drone’s camera was seeing, and he could see the top of the Jeep, but not them; they were too small. What he could see were what looked like ripples, and actually they were exactly as Tyler told him they would be.

“Where the giant dropped his stone,” Tyler said and moved the drone behind them until it hovered in a particular spot, and right there was the epicenter of the ripples.

Martin wanted to make a comment, but this close-proximity thing was messing with his head. Up close, he could feel the warmth of Tyler, smell the citrusy freshness of his scent, and see the start of stubble darkening his jawline. Up this close, it was too much, and he stepped back and away when it became more than he could handle.

Tyler shot him a puzzled glance, and at this point, Martin knew he should say something. Anything.

“That’s interesting,” he offered and then headed back to the Jeep.

When Tyler climbed back in, he sighed. “Sorry, I know I get carried away.”

Make him feel better, tell Tyler it’s all okay, and that you moved away because you are completely fucked up, and that you have no idea to handle social interactions like this.

Instead, Martin shrugged because yet again, words failed him. He was coming across as a rude asshole who couldn’t be bothered with anything real, and he hated himself so badly for being that person. What was he going to say? What was the point in starting a conversation with someone when he knew nothing about the subject?

Best off keeping ya’ mouth shut, boy.

His dad’s words were never far away; they formed the soundtrack to his entire damned life.

They completed the rest of the journey without talking, although Tyler selected music and sang along to it. Clearly he needed noise as much as Martin didn’t.

When they neared the site, the terrain became more treacherous, less undulating prairie and more boulders and cliff edges. The Jeep made good work of crunching over most things, and Tyler was more than competent when it came to driving; another thing to envy about the put-together man.

The going was slow, and Tyler turned down the music, concentrating on the track and every so often checking the satellite system, looking for their geo-tag and ensuring they were heading in the right direction.

Martin just held on for the ride.

Finally, the dot that was them loosely managed to match up to the location they needed, and that was as far as they could get with the Jeep. The remainder was maybe four hundred yards up the hill, over the creek, and into the hollow of the mountain. That was why Martin was here. He was the one tasked with trekking everything up there. But not tonight. They were an hour from darkness, and pitching the tents down here and setting a base camp was priority number one.

At least he knew how to set up a tent.

Not only was it a mathematical issue to get corners right, but he’d grown up learning how to survive in the wilderness, and that included the skill of putting up a tent.

His dad lived by the conviction that one day the US would descend into an anarchy that he himself had created. It would be him who destroyed the government, undermined society, and restarted the United States as something very different. He’d expected there to be a loss of electrical supply, of vital supplies—in fact he’d counted on it—and had known hunting and survival skills were vital.

Then one day he’d had thrown his five-year-old son, Jamie, out of the cabin with a pup tent and nothing else.

You’ll live or die, I ain’t got no time for sickly useless kids.

Martin remembered each syllable that his dad spat at him; they revisited him in his nightmares.

Martin had survived that night in the tangled wilds of Colorado, and his dad had been so proud of him, said he was a champ, praised him to the others who were part of Martin’s extended family. There was no sign of his mom or baby sister when he got home, but he’d never questioned that, and soon it became the norm that it was just him, Dad, and the other survivalists. Some of the other men had girlfriends; none of them lasted long, but some of them tried to be a mom to Martin for as long as they’d stayed.

He’d soon realized he didn’t need a mom and that he wanted to be left alone. Only in therapy did he come to terms with that the night Martin survived outside was the same night he’d misplaced part of his humanity and lost the only family that might have saved him.

“Where do we start?” Tyler prompted, and Martin shook himself back to the here and now.

“I got this,” he said and began to unload the Jeep of the camping items, the tents, bedrolls, camping stove, the gas until he had a methodical pile of things in the center of a clear area.

“I can do my own tent.” Tyler began to lay out what he needed, and in silence, they erected each tent, maybe six feet apart, sideways on the hill in a hollow so they were protected and also on level ground. A third tent would be used to house the scientific work that Tyler was undertaking, and a fourth for the bathroom.

Martin collected small rocks, piling them into a circle, realizing he was testing each one for strength after the explanation of what rock flour was. Then he made a fire and set up the small generator, ready to cook some of their supplies. Something else he was good at was foraging, but the only scavenging he’d be doing here was to rummage through the dinners that Sam had sent them off with.

Tonight was stew, beef, one packet, and biscuits that would only stay fresh for today and possibly tomorrow.

“Wow, look at that view,” Tyler stood, hands on hips, staring out from the camp. Sunset was nearing its end, the pinks and oranges fading into the gray smudge of night, and Tyler was right. It was beautiful. Tyler zipped up his coat and joined Martin, opening the small chair in the place that would be their home by the fire for the next week.

They ate in silence, but Martin knew it wouldn’t last long.

“So, how long have you been a cowboy?” Tyler asked, scooping out the last of the stew in his bowl.

“I’m not a cowboy. I just haul things around.”

“Oh, okay,” Tyler said and then looked around him. “Do you enjoy your work?”

“It’s work,” Martin replied. Then before Tyler could ask him any more damn questions, he held out a hand for Tyler’s plate and headed toward the noise of water. He’d seen the stream when they’d arrived; it ran maybe twenty feet from the tents and widened around boulders before narrowing and then vanishing underground lower down the hill. Plates in one hand, flashlight in the other, he picked his way over the uneven ground, and finally, blessedly, he reached the water and a rock he could sit on.

Cold out here in the more exposed ground, he buried his face in his scarf and listened to the bubbling of water. More than once today he’d wanted to continue a conversation with Tyler, maybe ask a question, but what was the point? He’d likely ask the wrong thing or make a fool of himself. He had a degree, one he’d earned with blood, sweat and tears from night classes, but he wasn’t a doctor of a subject like Doctor Tyler Colby, and who the hell would want to hear about Martin’s love of math? Math might well inspire Martin, but it was a dry subject, not sexy like geology and earthquakes and freaking ripples left by glaciers.

Tyler was a nice guy. Interesting. Sexy and easy on the eyes and all the things that Martin thought he should have been attracted to if he was normal .

Which he wasn’t. The last time he’d been normal, he was five. The only time he’d acted on his impulses, he’d been thirteen, and that was never happening again.

Maybe what he needed to do was go back to the tents and explain that he didn’t want to talk about geology, only because he was tired and had too much crap in his head right now to remember how to be normal. So much for finding peace and keeping all his demons at bay. This enforced proximity with Tyler was dangerous.

Okay, one more minute , and then I’ll go back and try to interact without coming off as a fucking idiot.

“What if he asks me questions? If I talk to him, he’ll ask me things I can’t answer. Things I don’t want to answer.”

His whisper vanished into the cold, swallowed by the noise of the water, and he slumped where he sat, his dad’s voice a devious creeping pain in his head.

No one wants to hear your crap, boy, none of your fucking nonsense. Get my belt.

“Fuck my life.”