Every now and then, he wobbled, but he had no trouble finding his footing again. Maybe surfing had given him a better balance? I’d never tried it, but it seemed to me standing on a surfboard was a feat in itself, let alone doing it while you were riding a wave. I’d never admit it to Heath, but surfing was kind of badass.
As a guy with way too much free time on his hands, I’d discovered TikTok and Facebook reels, and lord almighty, the algorithms worked like a charm. All that kept popping up were surfing videos, just because I’d searched for them once or twice.
Okay, so I’d spent a couple of hours getting lost in them one afternoon, so what? I’d just been curious why Heath found it so much fun. Nothing more than that.
But some of those videos had been mind-blowing. Guys riding monster waves in Australia, sharks within a few feet of them. That would be a hell fucking no for ten points.
This dude setting some kind of record for the longest wave in Hawaii. Pretty cool to see, not gonna lie. I’d even watched a few of some woman who’d lost an arm in a shark attack but was still surfing—the very definition of insanity if you asked me.
And then there was this one spot in Portugal—I’d had to look it up on the map, as European geography wasn’t my strong point—where the highest waves in the world had been recorded. I swear to god and everything holy, a man would need balls of steel to ride those. My stomach had twisted even watching.
Even before my accident, you couldn’t have paid me enough money to try surfing, not even on baby waves. If I wanted to drown in salt water, I would’ve joined the fucking Navy, okay? I liked my feet on dry land.
My foot. How long would it take before I fully accepted the fact that I only had one foot left? Or would I come to think of my prosthetic leg over time as a second foot? That seemed far-fetched, but a man could dream, no?
“Your turn,” Kent said, and my cheeks heated as I realized I’d been staring at Heath for minutes. Had he picked up on it? I could only hope he hadn’t, or he’d make my life hell.
Well, he did that anyway, but the last thing he needed was more fodder to make fun of me. I didn’t dare to look in his direction now, instead focusing on Kent.
“I wanna try walking through the room like Heath did,” I told him.
“Absolutely not.”
“I know I can do it.”
Kent firmly shook his head. “Not up for debate, dude. You’re not stable enough yet, and your stump can’t take the full weight yet.”
“I can take the pain.”
To his credit, Kent stayed patient with me despite my whining-toddler tone. “It’s not about pain, Creek. You could hurt yourself, agitate your wounds, and, worst-case scenario, set yourself back for weeks in your healing process. We’ll practice on the parallel bars, but that’s it.”
“But Heath…” I couldn’t believe I’d gone there, and Kent’s eyes narrowed.
“Heath is weeks ahead of you in his recovery, but aside from that, you shouldn’t compare yourself to him. You both need to walk your own path at your own pace. This isn’t a competition.”
He was wrong. In the Army, everything was a competition, and the sooner you realized that the better you did. Being the best was what kept you and your men alive, and nobody could tell me different. Hell, if that dipshit had been better at his job, I would have two legs, Tameron would still have his hearing, and Bean wouldn’t suffer from traumatic brain injury.
Anger surged inside me, but I squashed it down. Now was not the time.
“Okay,” I said, accepting that I wasn’t gonna convince Kent, at least not today. Maybe if he saw I was serious about this, that I was willing to push myself hard, he’d reassess.
He had me walk along the parallel bars again, and I did my best to show him how much progress I’d made. And if I snuck in a glance or two at Heath to see what he was doing, well, that was because I needed to keep an eye on him after our…encounter last week. For all I knew, he could be out for payback after I knocked him off his feet with that ball.
“Take a breather,” Kent told me after I’d done four back-and-forths. “Once that’s done, I need you to do some exercises on the balance pad. Put it right next to the wall rack so you can hold on. And, Creek?” He waited until I looked up and met his eyes. “IfI see you balancing without holding on to the wall, I’m going to kick your ass myself. Do you feel me?”
“Yes, sir.”
He grinned. “Good. Glad we understand each other.”
Oh, he was smart, wasn’t he? He knew I responded to authority—that was wholly ingrained by now, as evidenced by me calling himsir—and had used that to get through to me. I couldn’t help but admire his tactics.
I sat on the bench, annoyed that I was sweating from the exercise. Why did I feel like I had just run ten miles in full battle rattle? I’d always been in excellent shape, so I shouldn’t be this winded from walking not even twenty feet between those damn parallel bars.
As I sipped some water, I peeked at Heath from between my lashes. He’d been doing his balance exercises while Kent worked with me. I guess Kent didn’t trust us anymore to work with each other. Not entirely without reason, and my cheeks grew warm.
Last week had been…embarrassing. I’d let Heath get to me, and I wasn’t proud of that. Nor was I proud of the things I’d said to him.
I’d always had a temper, courtesy of my father, but I had worked hard to control it. My father’s life was sad proof of what happened when you let your anger get the best of you. He’d already been arrested for being drunk and disorderly a few times when he’d gotten into a bar fight with some dude and beaten the shit out of him in a fit of rage. The barstool had come out the victor in the battle with the other guy’s head, and he’d died.
