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“Stop talking in the past tense. We don’t know anything yet. You getting all sappy isn’t going to help.”
“Sorry.” Canaan relaxed again, but Renzo couldn’t. Bile rose in his throat. If Damian was alive, was Canaan’s sentimentality going to result in them reuniting? God, he hoped not. And it totally sucked to be hoping the guy was alive and unharmed but also hoping he didn’t get his claws back in Canaan.
Who wasn’t Renzo’s, not really, but it got harder and harder to remember that, especially with him in his arms, warm and vital and alive and possibly the only thing keeping Renzo from being the one freaking out. Needing to be strong for Canaan had him in SEAL mode, determined to get Canaan out of this thing alive. He’d promised Canaan’s grandfather that he’d keep him safe, and he took that promise seriously.
They sat quietly, Canaan’s head on his shoulder, sky still gray and ominous, until Renzo’s watch beeped.
“Drink a sip of water,” he said.
“You set alarms for eating and drinking?”
“Yup. Dehydration’s a real risk, one we’re probably not going to completely avoid, but water rationing will help. Staying still like this is good too—we’re not using up too much energy.”
“So now you’re saying our cuddling is both medically advised and SEAL approved?” Canaan laughed, further sagging against Renzo.
“Yup.” Renzo held him a little tighter until Canaan turned slightly and pressed a kiss into his neck “Hey now. Fooling around—that would be wasting energy.”
“I’m not trying to start sex.” Sounding wounded, Canaan kissed him again. “Just saying thank you. I would have died had I been with anyone else in that canyon. And I’m really glad I’m not alone right now.”
“Me too.” Renzo leaned down enough to kiss him properly on the mouth, careful to keep it chaste even as his body stirred, newly interested in the proceedings despite the direness of their situation.
“We don’t have to have sex, but we could talk about it.” Canaan’s eyes sparkled in the fading afternoon light. “Like planning for what we’ll do when we’re rescued...”
“Oh hells no.” Renzo’s self-restraint was good, but not that good. “We talk about sex enough, we’re going to end up fooling around and dehydrating way faster.”
“Spunk is a fluid right?”
“You’re a goofball.” Renzo lightly bit his ear. “No sex talk.”
“But we will have it again though, right? After we’re rescued?” Canaan sounded unusually worried about this point.
“Babe, I will get you off until your eyes roll back in your head as soon as we’re safe, but don’t ask me to describe it, okay?”
“Okay.” Canaan sounded much happier now. “So no sex talk. And you can’t tell me too much about your missions, but what’s your favorite part of being a SEAL?”
“Parachuting is the easy answer because I love it when we jump, but I also just like when things go according to plan. I work with explosives a lot, and there’s a certain satisfaction when things blow up the way they’re supposed to. And when the team comes together, everyone doing their job and the mission is a success, that’s an awesome feeling.”
“I bet. But why become a SEAL anyway? I mean it’s not like there’s a ton of navy bases in Philly.” Apparently if they weren’t going to fool around, Canaan was determined to play twenty questions. But Canaan talking was Canaan not freaking out, so he wasn’t going to complain.
“I...” Renzo opened his mouth, prepared to give a glib answer, but something about being here on this ledge, clinging to survival, made the truth tumble out. “I wanted to be a hero.”
“Yeah, I get that impulse. But you could have been a firefighter or EMT or police officer, something like that.”
“It was my brother.” He’d never told this story to anyone other than family who already knew it. “When he was in fifth grade, he wrote a report on SEALs and became obsessed. Started putting himself through mock obstacle courses in the living room, telling everyone who would listen that he was going to be a SEAL. And I was only a year younger, so I played along too. We spent hours pretending to be SEALs on missions.”
“So he’s in the military too?” Canaan’s tone was merely curious, but the question still hit Renzo like a punch to the chest.
“No. He...he...”
“Hey. It’s okay.” Canaan rubbed his thigh. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
But for the first time in his life, Renzo found that he did want to talk about Joe. “He’s not dead,” he said quickly, figuring that was the conclusion Canaan would come to. “But when he was fourteen and I was thirteen, he was injured—brain damage.”
Canaan stayed quiet, like he wanted to know the story but wasn’t going to push, so Renzo continued.
“It was the summer before Joe’s freshman year of high school. We were at the neighborhood rec center pool. It was a nice one—swim teams used it for practices, and we all learned to swim there. And everyone wanted to be a strong enough swimmer to use the high dive. Some visits, we’d probably jump a hundred times, egging each other on, coming up with silly new ways to jump. I could flip, but he’d never quite mastered that one.”
