Page 3 of From the Noblest Motives
"At least they were together." Damien leaned his head against the window, letting the trails spool out ahead of them.
"You can tell that? Not that they just all came this way?"
"Yes."
Blaze stared out the windshield, fingers still tapping. Finally, he let out a sigh. "Never mind. Maybe if Shudder was here, you'd explain. You liked talking to him."
"I…" Now what was that supposed to mean? "I can't always explain. Not well." Damien shrugged when Blaze glanced over at him. "There are layers to things, I guess would be closest."
"Like chronological layers? Like looking-at-rock layers?"
"Sort of." Damien shifted, half turning toward Blaze. The trails weren't actual layers like geological strata, though. "More like carbon-dating fossils, maybe? Except I just… know when one trail is concurrent with another."
A tiny smile tugged at the corner of Blaze's mouth. "Now there's a good word. Concurrent."
"It's useful." Damien pointed to the right, correcting Blaze's course a few degrees along the trails.
The rest of the day, communication pared down to immediate trail concerns— course corrections as the maglev truck whisked along over sand reed and bottlebrush, warnings about clumps of woody brush coming up, and occasional stops to avoid hitting larger wildlife, like pronghorn and buffalo. Avoidance didn't make anything less tense between them, but the longer Damien put off saying anything, the harder it became to say it.
When they stopped for the evening, Damien slid out of the truck and wandered off to watch the moonrise from a nearby hummock that barely cleared the prairie grasses. He was being a coward. He knew it, and knowing it just tied extra knots in his stomach.
"Come eat something," Blaze called from where he'd opened the back of the truck and was rummaging in their supplies. "I'm not picking your ass up when you pass out."
Though you have before. He kept that to himself, letting the memory merge with the rest of the pain in his gut. One foot at a time, Damien turned and forced himself back to the truck. He clambered up next to Blaze on the tailgate, accepted a pop meal, and forced himself to eat.
Blaze occupied a good portion of his anxious thoughts—hard for him not to, since he sat a mere six inches away—but not all of them. The missing kids occupied the rest. Were they alive? Were they safe? Too many horrible possibilities had occurred to Damien, wandering through his thoughts in an endless loop.
They got through dinner watching a pair of jackrabbit bucks fighting, presumably over a female sensibly hidden in the grass. They stood tall on their hind legs, hopping about and smacking at each other with their forepaws like manic prizefighters. Neither wanted to admit defeat.
"She must be a special rabbit," Blaze murmured around a bite of stew.
"I guess she can't just say she wants them both."
Beside him, Blaze froze in the act of scraping the side of his meal container. It was no more than a hitch, a half second before he moved again, but Damien couldn't shake the feeling that he'd said something wrong or missed a cue.
So talk to him. This isn't going to get better. Scolding himself didn't help. No words came. He'd tried to justify his silence by telling himself once the job was over, they'd go their separate ways again, but that thought made his head ache more with each hour they spent together.
With their bedding spread out in the back of the truck, Blaze lay down and turned his back on Damien. He hadn't even bothered to take his boots off. Now Damien's words decided to start tumbling out. Of course.
"Blaze…"
"Go to sleep, Twitch," Blaze growled.
"I know you don't want me to say it," Damien went on in a rush. "But I'm sorry."
With a put-upon, gusty sigh, Blaze rolled onto his back to stare at the headliner. "Sorry for what?"
"For…" Damien struggled against the tide of words that wanted to burst out, trying for ones that would make the most sense. "For… not waiting. For you."
Blaze folded his hands atop his stomach, obviously waiting for more.
"For, um, running off. I'm sorry… sorry if I hurt you."
The next sigh was soft and weary, matching Blaze's voice when he finally spoke. "I wanna say it wasn't your fault. But that would be stupid. You're an adult, and you make your own decisions, so me saying that would be like taking away your agency or some crap like that."
A little hitch broke up the last word, and Damien sat still, barely breathing, willing to wait as long as it took Blaze to collect himself.
"It's my fault, too," Blaze went on after a few deep breaths. "I pushed too hard. Expected things you… you didn't… you weren't ready to give."
