“Halfway,” Fisher panted.
Cormac spat, “You sure? Feels like halfway to hell.”
Fisher flicked a glance over, hair slicked back, eyes calm and impossible, that surfer serenity that looked like laziness until you tried to match it and discovered he was managing a dozen things at once, including Cormac’s own stupidity. “Hell’s warmer.”
He snorted. “Fair.”
Bear’s voice came again from somewhere behind them, carried by the wind. “Your battle isn’t with the ocean. She has a language. Learn it.”
Cormac would have rolled his eyes if he hadn’t been so tired. But part of him heard it differently now, through the rhythm of his own stroke. Fisher didn’t fight the water. He moved with it. When the ocean pushed, he yielded. When it pulled, he cut across. The guy had tuned himself to the tide.
Cormac tried it. He let the current lift him, rolling with it instead of against it. The drag eased. The rhythm smoothed. For the first time, the water stopped feeling like an enemy. Not surrender, but partnership.
Bear’s words came back, quiet but absolute. Stay together. Keep moving. Keep breathing.
He didn’t know if Bear had meant it as instruction or philosophy, but out here, it was both.
They hit the final leg, arms heavy, legs burning. The tide had turned against them, waves building, wind biting harder. The shoreline still looked impossibly far. Cormac gritted his teeth and grunted through the next stroke.
“Talk to me,” Fisher said. “You’re too quiet.”
Cormac laughed hoarsely. “You’re afraid of silence now? Thought that was Bear’s thing.”
“Yeah, but you go quiet, and I start worrying.”
“Worry about your own pretty ass.”
“I am. You’re attached to it now, genius.”
That got another ragged laugh out of him, but the sound dissolved into coughing. They pushed through it, two shadows crawling across gray water.
When the surf finally broke beneath them, they rode it in, exhausted, kicking just enough to stay above the foam. “Almost there,” Fisher gasped.
“Almost,” Cormac echoed, not sure if it was a promise or plea. They broke the surface together, two heads in the waves. The beach was a strip of gold under a low sky, the Grinder black as a healed scab above it, instructors speckled along the line like carrion birds, the low ring of the bell waiting for the quitters.
They hit the sand together, crawling past the waterline, fins dragging grooves in the wet earth. The world tilted. His lungs were molten glass. He rolled onto his back, staring at the washed-out sky, his pulse a drumbeat in his ears.
Fisher collapsed beside him, mask askew, laughing weakly. “Told you. Easy part.”
“Bite me,” Cormac wheezed.
“Maybe later. After Hell Week.”
A shadow fell across them. Brick. His gaze swept over the pair, taking in their ragged chests, the way they’d surfaced together. His voice was low, steady.
“Good work, gentlemen. You stayed connected.”
Cormac blinked up at him, every muscle trembling. “Did we pass?”
Brick’s mouth curved, barely a smile, more like the ghost of approval. “You’re in the running for first place…amongst your boat crew.” Cormac’s chest tightened. They had beat the class…the whole class? Now the competition was only between Bear’s Boys. “You didn’t drown. That’s a start.”
Fisher chuckled, low and rough. “That’s high praise.”
Brick’s eyes shifted toward the horizon as the bell started to ring. More men had decided that they weren’t one with the ocean. “Hell Week begins Sunday. Get your asses to the shower, lovers, and rest while you can. You’re going to need it.”
Then he walked away, this man who didn’t give out any praise, bent just a little, the surf curling around his boots.
Cormac let his head drop back, the tide whispering against the shore. He felt Fisher’s elbow nudge his.
