Cold Shadow (Cold Country #2)(99)

School started in August that year. They'd never gone to school in August before. The days were so hot that August. But by August, Nate smiled again. He still couldn't go swimming off the dock or chase fireflies at dusk. But he smiled and he ate food and he left the blanket. He went back to school and he got better.

Quinn could smell that summer like it was happening again. He opened his eyes and stared up at the leaves that should be as familiar as the back of his eyelids. The sound of a splash brought him to full wakefulness. He sat up in the seat of his car. There was no blanket on the bank. There was flesh sticking to leather and the scent of sex and sweat and fear. His fear. And he was alone. Just like another summer when he'd awakened all alone out here surrounded by trees and water and memories that would become demons.

He opened the car door and stepped out. Pine needles stabbed the soles of his feet. The remains of a pine cone made him wince. He stood beside the car shielding his eyes from the glare from the sparkling lake surface. There was a pair of jeans on the old dock that jutted out past the clearing. The house was up the shore a ways. This dock had been there for as long as Quinn could remember, half-rotted, probably more rotted now. He and Nate had slipped away from the house so many nights to swim naked to this dock. They'd kissed and done so many other things to each other on that dock, out of the supervision of overprotective parents and other prying eyes.



       
         
       
        

This was their secret place. Maybe it wasn't so secret, but no one had ever asked why they went there. They fished there and swam there and made love there.

He could make out a dark head bobbing in the water. Tanned arms swept in and out of view. A bare ass. Nate was alive.

Quinn didn't bother looking for the scrub pants he'd worn from the hospital. He had clothes in the trunk that he could wear. Right now, clothes didn't matter. He walked down the pine-needle-strewn path to the dock and stood on the end as if he were a king surveying his lands. He didn't care that he was stark naked either. Anyone out on the lake could boat by and find him waving in the breeze. He watched Nate reach the old raft that had floated out there for years. He pulled himself out of the water and swung himself around to sit on the edge. His bronze body seemed to gleam in the sunlight as if he were absorbing every ray.

Nate's birthday was coming. He'd be thirty-seven soon. The first time Quinn had seen him pull himself up on that raft had been that summer thirty years ago. He'd struggled to make it from the dock at the cabin while Quinn swam around him trying to encourage him, but mostly to keep him from drowning if he'd gotten too tired. Nate raised his arms and waved them over his head just like he'd done that summer when he'd finally made his first and only trip out to the raft that summer. He waved to his mother on the shore. The next day they went back to school.

Quinn didn't hesitate, he dove from the dock into the cold water and swam the distance. There was so much to talk about now. Like that summer when he almost lost Nate the first time. This summer felt like an ending. And Quinn would be damned if was going to let Nate walk away from him again.

He swam the distance. The water was so fucking cold. He'd forgotten what it was like to swim in a mountain lake. Even one in Tennessee was still so much colder than swimming in a pool or the ocean. He'd forgotten how far away the raft was from the old dock. It was so much closer to the cabin than their secret place. They'd slipped out of the house when they were twelve for the first time after Nate's mother had gone to bed and swam from the dock at the cabin. Nate had dared him to swim to the old dock. He'd half convinced Quinn that there were alligators in the lake they'd been swimming in for years.

Quinn had nearly drowned on the way to the old dock. He'd gotten a cramp in his side and Nate had almost drowned helping him to shore. They'd lain on the dock laughing until they couldn't anymore. Laughing turned to kissing. Kissing lead to touching.

"There are no alligators in this fucking lake," Quinn said when he pulled himself up to sit on the raft beside Nate. Nate grinned at him like it was the funniest fucking thing he'd ever said. 

"Took you long enough." Nate laughed, his eyes shimmering as if he were happy, or as if Quinn had caught him in a private moment.

"Are we talking about the alligators or getting to the raft?" Quinn stretched his arms over his head. The sun beating down on his back felt delicious after the cold water. He tried not to yawn. He didn't succeed.

"Both, probably." The laughter was still there. Nate shook his head, flinging water droplets from his long hair like some dog shaking off a bath. He reached out for Quinn and dragged him back. They flopped on the rough wood in the middle of the lake. Bare-assed naked. Quinn found Nate's hand and linked their fingers. "I killed my wife," Nate said after a moment. There was no emotion in his voice. "I put two bullets into a woman I loved enough to marry. Do you know how that feels?"