Page 57 of Loving a Warrior

“I’m sorry. Please…” His words failing him, Matt captured Shane’s mouth with his.

Immediately Shane wrenched away. “You’re sorry, huh? You think just saying that makes it better?”

“Then tell me what to say.” Matt smoothed his thumbs over Shane’s cheeks. “And I’ll say it. Tell me how to fix this.”

“Fix it? You think words will fix anything? A few one-sentence texts?” Shane coiled as if to shove Matt away, but Matt rolled off him before he could. He got to his knees, his hands resting on his thighs as he searched Shane’s face desperately for answers.

Action, not words. You should’ve gone to see him, and you know it.

Shane sat up, too, a remoteness now in his eyes that made Matt’s stomach clench with both fear and regret. He’d bungled this so badly…

Reaching out, Matt laid his palm over Shane’s chest. “I suck. What I did that night was all about me, Shane. It had nothing to do with you.”

Shane’s lips twisted at the “It’s not you, it’s me” line, but at least some of the tension went out of his body.

Matt gulped and went on, “I should’ve come to see you and apologize, but I fucked that up, too.” He let his hand drop away. “I fucked all of it up and I just… All I can say is I’m sorry.”

He gasped as Shane grabbed the front of his T-shirt and hauled him close. “You walked out on me,” he growled, his lips so close to Matt’s he could feel his breath. “You don’t want to be there with me, just say it. You change your mind about something, say that, too. But don’t ever just walk out on me without a word again.”

“I won’t. I’m so—”

Shane stopped the words with his mouth. Wrapping his arms around his neck, Matt poured every ounce of himself into the kiss, letting Shane feel his remorse.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered against his lips. “Please give me another chance to be a better friend.”

For one awful moment Shane didn’t respond, but then his mouth softened and he nipped at Matt’s lower lip. “I’m gonna go.”

He rolled smoothly to his feet. Matt’s stomach dropped as he started to walk away, but after a few steps, he turned back.

“Night, Soup.”

Matt slumped in cautious relief. “Night, clown. See ya?”

With one almost regal nod, Shane disappeared over the berm.

* * *

Matt perched on the edge of the dive boat next to Trey, both of them jocked up in wet suits with pure oxygen rebreathers on their chests. The diving supervisor went over the mission brief again before giving them the “go” sign.

As Matt slipped underneath the surface of the bay, fear surged through him in a sickening wave. He gripped his plexiglass attack board tightly, focusing in on the compass and depth gauge mounted to it.

A thousand yards east, then make a dogleg to the south for two hundred yards, thread between the docking piers…

With a nod toward Trey, Matt dove to a depth of fifteen feet and started swimming east, Trey staying a little above and behind him. Darkness yawed around them in every direction, pitch black below, a lighter gray above.

Fuck your cowardice, it’s just water.

Dark water. Cold water. The thought of adding several tons of steel hull over his head, no escape from the blackness if something went wrong…

Matt fought to control his breathing. It was daunting, confronting an unexpected fear like this when his entire career rode on being able to overcome it. Fail this diving practical again, and he was out.

“Everyone’s afraid of something, right?”

Shane’s voice echoed in his head, along with his advice. With Matt’s fear threatening to choke him, he grasped on to it like a lifeline. What was his three-foot world? No question. It was the attack board he held with the instruments mounted on it, and his swim buddy, tethered to him reassuringly by a dive line.

Pushing away thoughts of the watery gloom around him, Matt focused on his compass, emptying his mind of everything but the navigation he was tasked with and his kick counts. He glanced over his shoulder at Trey, who shot him a quick thumbs-up.

Stay in your three-foot world. You can do this.