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He’d lost his way somehow and he deserved the lesson Tex was giving him. He had been such a complete bastard.
“Sometimes things happen and there’s no place to put blame,” Shark said, looking at Easy.
Easy came to stand in front of him on the sand. “What are you saying?”
“This is about you, Easy,” Twister said, exhaling unevenly.
Easy looked around at his teammates. “What…what happened? How am I involved?”
“Twister saved that pirate instead of using his expertise to save you,” Tex said. “I ordered him to give aid.”
Shark fought against the pressure in his chest, the grief and fear he’d experienced, struggling with the tightness in his throat, the burning in his eyes. “Easy drowned!” Shark said, and the looks on his teammate’s faces ranged between solemn, distressed, and haunted.
Easy’s expression was confused, and he shook his head. “You saved me, Shark. I’m sure LT didn’t make that decision lightly. But it was his decision to make.”
“We could have lost you, man, and we would have failed you.”
“No, Bale, you saved me. You, Brawler, Dagger, and Flash. You were there when it mattered. Twister was doing his duty, following orders. That’s what we do, buddy. What the brotherhood is all about. We have each other’s backs like you had mine outside the wire on our last op. Way out of the fucking wire. It was courage and chutzpah that saved Astra’s life, saved mine. You had my back the whole fucking way.I don’t want you to forget that. We worked together and we got it done. Hoo-yah!”
The guys moved into a tighter formation, and Shark looked at Twister, so contrite that he had hurt one of his teammates. “I’m so sorry, man. I didn’t know where to put all that shit. It all fell on you.”
Twister stepped forward and held out his hand. “I bet pulling together we can get that bitch in the surf for a bath,” he said.
Feeling lighter than he had since the op had separated them, he clasped his brother’s hand. Together, the six of them walked to the log, hefted it with precision and ease, marched to the surf, and dropped it in the water.
Then they picked it up and brought it back to the beach.
Tex stood there with his arms crossed over his chest, and Shark felt like he could finally breathe without pain. What a fucking amazing CO he was.
His reminder by putting them through their paces hit home. He nodded to Tex, and with a proud gleam in his eye, Tex nodded back.
They called it the brotherhood because they had all forged bonds through their shared experiences, but also because they were first and foremost a family of men separate from all others with a warrior spirit uniting them.
Shark would never forget this lesson again.
* * *
Devil’s Den,Willison, Florida
Easy broke the surface with Astraea close behind him. He turned to her and hooted, “Babe, you were amazing!” Astraea had taken to scuba diving like a pro. She had gotten scuba certified in the months leading up to his brother Logan’s wedding.
“It was amazing!” she gasped. “Tell me more about it,” she said as they swam to the platform, removed their flippers, and he helped her onto it.
“It was formed by a karst window, which means that the roof over this subterranean river collapsed, exposing the water to the open surface. Technically, it’s a sinkhole.”
“Is it always this warm?”
“Yep, year-round seventy-two degrees.”
“It’s a pretty sinkhole.” They made their way up the platform to the ladder on the side of the hole. Climbing to the surface, they started walking back to their cabin. This was their last day before they had to get back to Williston for Logan and Tamara’s wedding.
“They found fossils down there?”
“Yes, from the Pleistocene era, mastodons, ground sloths, camels, horses, dire wolves, even saber-toothed cats.” He set his hand to the small of her back, enjoying the feel of her long, toned muscles beneath her wetsuit.
He looked down at his dive watch. “Shit, we need to haul ass, babe. We’ve got the rehearsal dinner soon.”
It was a whirlwind of packing and driving back to Williston, dropping her off at the hotel where everyone would stay for the beach wedding, telling her he had an errand to do. Easy drove and parked at a small strip mall. Exiting the car, he went into the jewelry store.
