Thanks for the reviews. Glad you all liked the flirting – I wanted to speed their relationship up a bit, to what it was at this point on the show. ("The Brig" is on in an hour, so we're lucky -- we've still got a few new episodes to look forward to!)

Chapter 8. Goodnight

They walked on until sunset; by then Locke's compass had begun to malfunction, spinning around wildly before settling back the way they'd come; with no way of determining whether or not they were still headed in the right direction, they decided to call it a night.

"I don't think we're gonna find a better spot than this," Kate said, setting her pack down in a clearing not far from the stream they'd been following. "We've got water, and enough tree cover to keep the wind out."

"Sounds good," Jack agreed, depositing his own bag next to hers while he helped her collect wood for a fire.

Once they had enough for a decent sized blaze, she dug a shallow pit in the jungle floor and assembled the kindling the way her father taught her when she was a kid. She was still trying to remember how to light it without a match when Jack tossed her a small, silver object the size of her thumb. "Here."

Catching it, she saw that it was a cigarette lighter, almost identical to the one Wayne had used to light his last cigarette.

"I swiped it from that redneck jerk," Jack explained with a grin that was half impish, half embarrassed. "Thought it might come in handy."

Forcing back the memories it stirred up, she flicked the catch and set it to the wood, turning away from him so that he couldn't see the expression on her face. "Quite the survivalist there, aren't you, Jack?"

She looked up again in time to see him offer her a self-deprecating grin, holding his hands up in front of himself as he perched on a log a few feet away. "Hey, I never said I was a boy scout."

"Really?" She fed another handful of sticks into the pit before sitting back on her heels to examine her work. "'Cause you seem to have the 'Always Prepared' thing down."

He laughed again, and looking over at him, she blushed when she saw that he was studying her movements intently. "I've been camping exactly once in my life, when I was ten," he confessed, shifting his eyes away to the fire when he caught her watching him watch her. "Not an experience I've cared to repeat."

Returning her own attention to the fire, she added a few more branches, settling back on the log beside him when she was satisfied that it wasn't going to sputter out. "It's not that bad," she teased him, reaching into her pack for a warmer shirt. "What happened?"

"Poison ivy." When she raised a dubious eyebrow at him, he added, embarrassed, "On my ass. I couldn't sit down for a week." He laughed good-naturedly along with her, smiling at her when they both stopped.

"So what? You're scarred for life now?" she asked, surprised at how much she enjoyed spending time with him. It was never this easy with Kevin; she was always afraid she was going to slip up.

"Basically." He laughed again, running his fingers over his hair; watching him, she couldn't help wondering what it would feel like, if it would be soft and fine, or bristly like the hairs of a brush.

"Pretty brave of you to come on this hike then," she told him, shaking this thought off by reminding herself of the reason they were in the middle of the jungle together, "given that it was always gonna involve camping."

She expected him to crack another joke, but he flashed her a weak, but altogether serious, smile, refusing to give her a clue as to his motivation. "So how does a housewife get so good at building fires?" he asked, deflecting her comment.

"How does a spinal surgeon get so good at changing the subject?" she countered, annoyed by the one eighty degree turn he'd made in the conversation, but he shrugged, pulling a foil wrapped package out of his bag. "Hungry?"

She was, so she took it from him, deciding to try another tactic. "Tell me about her – your wife," she said as she peeled back the cover, poking at the airplane meal with her fork. At at least three days old, it was going to be pretty rancid whether or not she tried to reheat it.

"There's not much to tell," he said as he dug into his own meal, keeping his expression neutral. "Her name was Sarah. She taught kindergarten at an Elementary school just outside of Bevery Hills."

"How did you meet?" she asked, curious as to how a surgeon managed to hook up with a school teacher. Somehow she'd pictured him marrying a nurse, or another doctor. From what he'd said, he didn't spend much time away from the hospital.

He poked at his food, avoiding her eyes as he explained, "She blew out a tyre – flipped her SUV over the divider, into oncoming traffic. She was paralysed from the waist down, but I fixed her."

Kate gave him what she thought must have been an incredulous look, unable to keep the surprise from her voice as she said, "You were one of those doctors."

He looked up at her sharply, his brow furrowed into an unhappy frown "What doctors?"

"The ones who date their patients," she finished softly, afraid she'd offended him when he looked away into the fire, his voice defensive.

"She was the only one, and believe me, I learnt my lesson." He didn't seem to want to talk about it anymore, so he said, "What about you? How did you meet Kevin?"

Kate couldn't help feeling guilty at the sound of her husband's name. Somehow, in the time she'd been talking to Jack, she'd managed to forget about him, but now that he was back at the front of her thoughts, she wondered if she should be letting Jack get so close. Not sure one way or the other, she decided that it couldn't hurt to talk about Kevin, even if it was only to remind them both that she was spoken for.

"Now there's a romantic story," she said with a sarcastic laugh, setting her food down, her appetite gone. There wasn't a lot she could tell him, not without giving too much away, so she added, "The short version is – I was in a bar in Miami, passing through on my way south. He was there with some work friends – he told me I looked familiar, asked if we'd met before." She'd almost had a heart attack when she saw his uniform, wondering if he'd seen the APB the marshal put out on her, but as it turned out, it was just a line, the same one he always used.

"I let him buy me a drink, but somehow he managed to sweet talk me into dinner, and before I knew it, he was asking me to marry him. I turned him down the first six or seven times, but he kept on asking, until I ran out of reasons to say no." Bitter tears burned her eyes at the memory, and she wondered, not for the first time, if she should have held out longer. If she had, she'd be somewhere like Cuba by now, and he'd be safe at home where he belonged.

Jack had been watching her carefully throughout her story; he glanced back at the fire when it was over, his expression unreadable as he said, "Sounds like a man who knows what he wants."

"Yeah," she agreed with a wistful smile. Monica. Too bad she doesn't exist.

As with every time Kevin had been mentioned in the past, the atmosphere between them had changed, the easy intimacy gone, leaving them both unsure of what to say.

"Sun's gonna be up early tomorrow," Jack said finally, clearing his throat. "We should turn in, get some rest while we can."

Kate nodded, covering the blush that crept into her cheeks by digging her blanket out of her bag. She didn't trust herself to be near him; somehow the idea of sleeping next to a man she knew she was attracted to felt like a betrayal of Kevin, so she set it down on the opposite side of the fire where she couldn't hear the sound of his breathing, or feel the warmth his body generated.

"I'm a gentleman, Kate – I promise to keep my hands to myself," he said as he laid out his own blanket, seemingly offended by the purposeful distance she'd put between them.

She knew it would be impossible to convince him that it was her own hands she was worried about, so she tried to lighten the mood by saying, "I bet you are, but I'm a pretty violent sleeper, so unless you wanna get kicked…" but she could tell that he didn't believe her. She slept with Kevin, after all.

"Well, goodnight," he said as he crawled into his blanket, turning his back on her.

"Yeah, goodnight," she agreed, staring out into the dark jungle, but it was a long time before she could sleep.

Next chapter: Day two of the trek, then, in chapter 10, ol' smokey!