by Zoe Dawson
“It’s probably no surprise that I’ve been struggling with what happened to you.”
Blue had moved to a different place. Even a week ago, he would probably have walked away from Wicked, but he understood now. It wasn’t that Wicked didn’t respect him, it was because he hurt for Blue and didn’t know how to express it.
“If someone’s sense of trust has been broken, and they’ve been hurt, they can sometimes get into excessive control as a way to try and make sure they don’t experience hurt again,” Wicked said.
“True.” Wicked was obviously talking about himself, and Blue had to wonder what had happened between Kat Harrington, that tough redheaded spook, and the never-give-an-inch warrior. Blue responded, “The need to be in control can lead anyone to put undue pressure on themselves, to close down and isolate themselves further or to try to ruthlessly control the immediate environment and their lives. But it’s out of fear, not enlightenment.”
“In your case, it was about having control and choice taken away. This could be about control over your body and how it reacted to the torture, or how you react to memories of the torture now. But I was pissed and reacting to the control that was taken away from us, as a team, to be able to get to you and save you. We all feel like we failed you. That’s on us and something we can work out.” He grabbed Blue by the back of the neck and his fingers tightened with his next words, shaking Blue slightly. “But don’t for one minute think I don’t respect you. That’s just not true and will never be true.” He looked Blue straight in the eyes and the rest of his worry just dissipated. “You are one of the best men I have ever met, and I mean that in the deepest meaning about being a man, not in this macho bullshit we all perpetuate to keep ourselves in fighting form. That’s necessary. But I’m lucky to be in the presence of such warriors. Hooyah!”
Blue smiled as Wicked said hooyah. Every one of them stopped their bickering about chocolate, and the sound of it once again echoed against the walls. It was the most Wicked had ever said to him, and Blue had no doubt he’d go back to his stoic self. Blue was okay with that. He’d jumped out of his comfort zone to make sure Blue knew the score. That was more than enough.
After that, they all sat, talked, and shared the bounty, even the 3 Musketeers, until it got quiet, then before Blue knew it, he’d fallen asleep. He dreamed of Charlie warm and curled against him. But when Blue opened his eyes, there was nothing but wall to wall SEALs. The doctor was talking to Ruckus, but the other guys were out cold. Ruckus nodded, and Blue rose and went over there. “Scarecrow?”
“He’s conscious. He’s asking for you. Why don’t you go in before these knuckleheads wake up and it’s a free for all?”
“Thanks, LT.” He walked into the room, and Scarecrow was lying there, bandages around his shoulder and across his chest, IVs and heart monitor going.
“Hey, man,” Scarecrow said.
Blue walked over, and they clasped hands. Blue sat down, and Scarecrow said, “Thanks for patching me up. Felt like old times.”
Blue smiled, and it felt good. “Yeah, well, it’s my job to keep all the blood inside the body.”
“You took a hit for me.” He looked away. “I appreciate that.”
“What are brothers for?”
Scarecrow nodded. “Look, Blue. About before you left.”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“I’m sorry. I reacted badly to how we found you. I just got pissed.”
“At me?”
“No. Hell no. More self-directed. We were so close to getting you back. I thought if I could have been just a little bit faster…I could have spared you that situation.” He looked away again, his voice a little uneven. “Instead it was like abandoning you all over again.”
“You didn’t abandon me, Crow. None of you did. It was the way the shit went down, out of our control.” He smiled as a quote from Zen Master Suzuki Roshi came to him. “To control your cow, give it a bigger pasture.”
Crow laughed. “I’ve missed your out-of-left-field shit, man.”
“Stick with Kid and you’ll get plenty of random,” Cowboy said from the door. They looked toward the entrance to the room where six brothers stood, all trying to peer in.
“What kind of random crap, Kid?” Blue asked.
“Our bodies are made up of sixty-five percent water.” He glanced at Hollywood. “Well, all except Hollywood.”
“Sixty-five percent bullshit,” Wicked said, and Kid laughed while Hollywood shrugged with a smart-ass grin. The laugher felt good.
Hollywood said, “Did you know, Kid, that the tongue is the strongest muscle in the human body? I bet yours could lift a freaking car.”
“Two words, one finger, Hollywood.”
Blue glanced over at Ruckus, who was leaning against the doorframe, a satisfied look on his face. Blue smiled. Damn, he had some stuff to still figure out, but this…this was everything.
* * *
Three Weeks Later Maui, Hawaii
He watched the sun come up over the big waves as he sat in the sand, his eyes closed and his senses open. Getting back to meditating had been a journey. He wasn’t quite all the way there, but he was progressing. He sensed it the moment the sun inched up over the horizon, the light touching his face, the warmth flowing through him. A breeze blew across his bare chest and upturned face.
“It’s going to be another gorgeous day,” Kanye said. The “therapist” he’d chosen was an employee of his dad’s, Kanye, which in Hawaiian meant free. He was an old dude who had always been influential in Blue’s life. He could shape a surfboard by touch, and every one of Blue’s boards had been enhanced by this man. He might not be trained in psychotherapy, but he had a degree in life that Blue had discovered to be much more profound. Along with his dad, this man had shaped his life.
Blue rose, the waves speaking to him, and he grabbed his board for another lesson. Surfing was an escape, there was no doubt about it, a natural high and an adrenaline rush. But the whole nature versus man thing, pitting himself against the ocean, appealed to him at a base, competitive level. It was here, where he searched himself so deep and long, that he had found the path back to inner peace.
Almost. The nightmares and the flashbacks were fewer, but they were still part of his struggle. He needed Charlie. Needed her to make him whole.
He hadn’t heard from her in all this time, not even a text. He’d let her be. No two waves were the same, and they crashed and rolled to their own rhythm. That’s the one thing Kanye had said to hammer it home to him that he and Charlie might have had a very deep connection, but what she had experienced was different from his own. Like a surfboard, Blue couldn’t rush perfection.
He raced to the water, his body honed and strong from so much wave riding. He’d pushed himself at the gym to get back into top SEAL condition. His brothers were waiting for him to return.
Kanye had taken him back to his roots, had talked to him about life and the principles that Blue had been raised to embrace. It was why he’d had such a hard time with witnessing Rory’s sexual molestation and been unable to affect any change in that area, even when he knew he was right. When he’d come home, he’d had a long talk with his parents about what happened. They apologized and said that the moment the camp counselor had been arrested on charges of molestation, they realized he had been telling the truth. But they did it out of love for him and to protect him. He’d come to terms with the way they had treated him and forgave them for shunting his feelings aside.
But that incident, along with what had happened in his past, including his torture at the hands of Natasha, were really behind him. He’d relearned Hawaiian philosophy. Seven tenets that were so deep and profound that the moment he reconnected with them, he’d found pieces of his inner balance that needed to be woven into a whole. Pono stipulated that effectiveness was the measure of truth. There wasn’t just one way to do something, and that had given him the impetus to seek out Kanye and ask for his help. Ike, Makia, and Manawa opened up his mind.
>
Ike was about knowing what he believed was what was real to him. Ideas created reality in everything. It was his basis for understanding what needed to be done in SEAL training. Makia’s tenet was energy flows where attention goes. By focusing on his torture, he’d only made it worse. Kanye had told Blue in simple terms. He could change his focus. It was up to him, and daily surfing had helped with that. It was immediate, and he had to live in the moment. Then there was Manawa. The present was the most powerful moment. The here and now. Not the future, not the past, but now. That’s where Blue needed to live: in the immediate present.
Mana. The stuff of life. It lived in everything—plants, people, the earth. Hawaiians believed it was the source of all power in the universe. It fueled Blue, and he felt the power of it every time he took a wave.
Kala. No limits. Nothing stood in his way that he didn’t perceive as an obstacle. It was so close to what it meant to have the mental toughness to be a SEAL. There were no boundaries, no complications, nothing but open water.
Then the last, the most beautiful. Aloha. The word had many meanings to Hawaiians, and it defined their culture, but to him, Aloha was love. It’s what he felt for Charlie, and it radiated out of him.
Feeling refreshed after his surf therapy session, he headed up to his sister’s house. She lived there with her doctor husband and their four-year-old daughter, Sophia.
After showering, his Sophia enticed him to color with her on the lanai. His sister was busy with redecorating the bathroom. He sat on the floor with his niece. She pushed too hard on the crayon she was using, and it snapped. She drew a happy face with one of her broken crayons, then smiled.
“I’m sorry, Soph. You want me to find one that isn’t broken?”
“No, Uncle Ocean. Don’t you know that broken crayons still color and there’s two of them now?”
He blinked. His heart turned over, and he felt his eyes fill. Out of the mouth of babes. He pulled her up onto his lap and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you, sweetheart. You are a little life savior.”
“You got any?”
“What?”
“Life Savers. I like the cheery ones.”
“Do you mean cherry?”
“Yeah.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s what I said, cheery.”
Something that had been knotted from the moment he’d walked away from Charlie loosened and fell away. He’d been such a fool to let her go without a fight. He rose as his sister came into the room. She looked at him. “You’re leaving.”
“Yeah, I have something I need to do.” He embraced her, holding her close. Reconnecting with family had been the next to last piece of the whole. “Tell Mom and Dad I love them.”
15
Off the Coast of Hawaii Near Midway Island
Charlie painstakingly followed the line of the door, being careful not to do any damage to the body of the pilot inside. Pretty blue and yellow fish darted around her as she worked, this time in scuba gear. She was currently in the South Pacific, not far from the famous little island of Midway, where one of the defining battles of World War II took place, changing the tide of war to the American side.
These men deserved to be recovered and laid to rest. A lump formed in her throat, and she swallowed to push it back down. She was still getting over it. Getting over him.
Blue. Ocean Beckett.
She had to stop because her mask was fogging, and her hands were shaking.
She wasn’t there yet. She blinked to clear her eyes, focusing once again on the job. Would she ever get there?
After all that they had shared, after everything they had done for each other, after all the rules they’d broken and the personal sacrifices they had made… She turned off the torch, and Steve said through the comm, “You okay, ace?”
She pushed back her tears and turned on the torch again. “I’m good, partner.” She finished the job, and very carefully, with reverence, they removed the remains of Airman Walter Osgood, Captain in the Army Air Forces who had flown in defense of the United States of America back in 1942 just before the Battle of Midway.
After they surfaced, and the body was taken from them, Charlie sat on the deck, staring out to sea. Steve sat down next to her. “What’s up? You look like shit, and I know something is heavy on your mind. Best to sort that before we go down again. Don’t you have some leave coming to you?”
She looked down at the bottle of water he’d placed in her hands. “I’ve been in the navy for a long time. You know what happened to my family.”
“Sure, I do.”
“Well, I consider the navy my family. They rescued me out of the ocean. I thought I was going to die out in the water like my dad, mom, and sister. My body floating to feed the fishes, and no one would ever miss me.” Her throat got tight. “There wasn’t anyone left to even care enough to search.”
“Aw, Coventry. You get me every time, kid. So what’s eating at you? The Navy SEAL…Blue?”
She unscrewed the top of the bottle and took a drink, looking away without answering.
“That’s a yes,” he said, taking a gulp of his own.
She sighed and closed her eyes. “The navy is everything to me. I don’t know what would have happened to me if that ship hadn’t discovered me.”
“You think you owe the navy your loyalty.” He laughed and shrugged. “It’s true. We do feel connected to what we do and who we do it with. But in this case, ace, you’re scared shitless to go after what you want here.”
She grimaced and gave him a sidelong glance. “You have such a way of cutting through my bullshit, partner.”
He laughed again. “Look, the navy can be your family, but sweetie, it ain’t going to keep you warm at night, wrap its arms around you when you need a hug, and give you children when you’re ready. Can the SEAL do all that?”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. God, she missed him every stinking second of every freaking day.
She looked at Steve, and he smiled at the expression on her face. “Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.” He rose and chucked her under the chin. Go for what you want, ace.” The affection in his voice made her eyes tear. “You deserve it. This job is a job. Whatever you feel for it, that’s all it’s going to be at the end. But a man you love and who loves you…well, kid, that’s everything.”
Before she even realized what she was going to do, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held him tight. His arms went around here. “Thank you, Steve, for being there for me. My dad would have been proud to have such a man fill in for him. You’ve done that for me, and I just wanted you to know.”
He patted her back awkwardly and chuckled. “It’s been an honor and privilege, Charlie.” Someone called his name and they separated. She kissed him on his bristly cheek and he smiled at her. Then he rose. “Go get what you want, Charlie. Everything else is just not important.”
She remembered with quiet clarity one of her reoccurring dreams. The one where she was flotsam in the ocean, carried across the vast waves and swells, up and down without purpose, a prisoner of the currents. There was no way for her to navigate to go anywhere except where the water demanded. It terrified her so badly because she sometimes felt the need to hold onto something solid, so she would be anchored, so she couldn’t be carried under and disappear as if she’d never existed.
The navy had been her anchor. When her parents and sister had died, floating away from her on the currents like flotsam caught in the power of wind and tide, her loss had been so complete, she wasn’t sure she would even survive the agony or the fear. But then they’d come. Those wonderful sailors who had pulled her from the water, taken care of her, kept in touch with her and made her their honorary swabbie. They had taught her everything she knew, and they had given her what she needed, her first real home, a place where she belonged, and, in time, recognition and respectability. She was no longer flotsam. She belonged to something powerful and vital. She was a navy diver with a decorated career, a person with roots and
self-esteem.
But Ocean “Blue” Beckett was her nemesis. He had been, right from the very first. He had tempted her and teased her and taught her how to swim with the sharks. She wanted a life with him more than anything, but she was afraid to let go. He thought it was because she didn’t trust him—and maybe, on one level, she hadn’t. Maybe she was afraid he would disappear like her family had, and she would be caught bobbing with no anchor, lost forever.
Looking back out to sea, Charlie wiped her face and stared blindly at the great expanse of her “office,” every barrier she had ever erected in pieces at her feet. She had convinced herself that she couldn’t handle any change because she owed the navy everything. But that had been her protective cover, her excuse, something to hide behind.
She couldn’t use that as an excuse any longer. She had kept her heart guarded because she was afraid of exposing it to the kind of love Blue had offered her. Unconditional, beautiful, theirs and only theirs.
Now all she could see was Blue’s transformation from the damaged man he had been to the confident man she’d helped him to find inside. Helped him see past his shame and humiliation to his courage and defiance, to his resistance to the twisted coercion. Helped him sort out his parents’ well-meaning disregard for him and his word, his need for justice and how that buried wound to his honor had started the damage that had almost destroyed him.
Her chest expanded, and the tears she’d been holding back for weeks slid down her cheeks. As the boat docked, she swiped at them with nothing but understanding in her. She’d worked through the anger, overcome the bitterness, and now…now the fear was gone.
She gathered her gear and walked down the gangplank, preoccupied with what she wanted to do. She stopped to adjust her backpack, and someone touched her shoulder. It was Steve. “Looks like your boy had the same idea.”
Her head snapped up. She drew a deep, stabilizing breath, her heart squeezing so hard she thought she was going to faint. Suddenly face-to-face with the man she desperately wanted to talk to, her body moved seemingly of his own accord. Her running feet tapped on the metal. He stood just to the side of the path of exiting personnel. He looked completely exhausted. He had on a pair of jeans and a dark blue T-shirt with NAVY in yellow across the front, a wrinkled yellow shirt, loose and unbuttoned. He had that dark, dangerous gunslinger look, his jaw rigid and unshaven. On the surface, he looked as hard as nails and almost threatening, but the expression on his face eased as she raced toward him. His eyes were so open. After launching herself at him, she hit him, their bodies colliding just as their souls had already done. She had just been too blind and scared to see it.