Shawl knew better than to confuse honesty with completion. Grief didn’t vanish because it had been spoken. Guilt didn’t evaporate because it had been shared. Those things would walk with them for years, shaping choices, sharpening awareness, demanding respect.
The land opened around them as the trail crested a low rise. Rolling grass, scattered pines, the sky wide and unencumbered. The paint flicked an ear back, then forward again, content to follow. Shawl breathed in the scent of dust and sun-warmed earth and felt the quiet satisfaction of work done well.
Not finished. Just begun.
He thought of Bear and Bailee waiting back at the house, of the worry they had carried quietly, respectfully, trusting him to see what they could not. He would tell them the truth when they asked.
These two were ready.
They had chosen honesty over protection, connection over silence. They had learned how to carry weight without letting it hollow them out.
They would go into BUD/S together, and they would endure it apart, each on his own merits, each with his own reckoning still ahead.
That was as it should be.
Shawl shifted his weight in the saddle and guided the paint a little closer, letting his presence be known without breaking the moment. Fly glanced back, caught his eye, and nodded once. Than followed a second later, his expression open, unguarded.
Shawl returned the nod and said nothing.
Fly had settled Copper, the restless, kinetic sorrel, by matching his fire with a steady, unyielding rhythm, turning the horse's boundless energy into a focused extension of his own. Hoka, Than's buckskin, had become his touchstone, a solid, grounding presence that moved with an unhurried strength, a living embodiment of the calm Than had fought so hard to find.
The horses moved on, hooves drumming a steady cadence into the earth, three riders bound for different trials, sharing this stretch of ground while it was theirs to share.
29
RCMP WILD Headquarters, Firing Range, Outskirts of Kamloops, British Columbia
The snap of the slide releasing echoed across the range. Ayla had asked him to give her some pointers on her shooting. She was mostly relegated to TOC and handling the team’s logistical needs. Those were her primary duties, but she told him she was under no illusion that she would be on foreign soil and not exposed to any of the dangers the team faced.
Breakneck lined up the target, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger of his Glock in rapid succession. The reports cracked cleanly through the air. He had better than 20/20 vision in both eyes, and that only added to his proficiency in hitting targets far away.
“Nice,” Ayla murmured, brushing his arm. He reached out and steadied her with the practiced ease of a man proficient in navigating different terrains. Ayla must not be used to it.
He rendered the Glock safe, then set it down on the table before Ayla walked to the paper targets and retrieved them. When she brought his back, it had a nice grouping of both head and heart shots.
He looked at hers. “It’s pretty good. With this grouping, you’ll kill the target, eventually.”
She chuckled. “Not ideal.”
“No, but I noticed you pulled slightly after the first shot’s recoil. You need to keep your hand and arm steady. Let me show you.” He positioned himself behind her. “Pick up the weapon.” She trembled, but he just expected that was from nerves. Shooting was best done cold and calculated. He wrapped his hand around hers on the grip, keeping his trigger finger alongside hers. “Concentrate,” he whispered. She exhaled, then pulled the trigger in rapid succession.
“I felt that,” she said softly. “The adjustment.”
He nodded and stepped back. “Now try it again but send the message to your arm and hand to hold it steady. That way, you’ll hit exactly the place you want to hit without a degree of error.”
He picked up his Glock, shoved in a new clip, and set it in his left hand, then repeated the sequence, body in perfect rhythm, mind anything but. He couldn’t stop thinking about Blair. Not the way she looked, though God, that was bad enough, and the feel of her on top of him, breath against his lips, hips pressed into his with every broken, desperate breath between them. His body hardened, his dick stirring. He couldn’t stop the response even if he was doused in ice water. His body wanted her in a bad, desperate way.
But what she did to his heart. That was just as potent.
He remembered waking from that nightmare, heart pounding, sweat cold, shame rising like bile, and finding her hand on his chest, her voice in his ear, and her presence like a lighthouse through the fog.
The way she responded threw him into overdrive. She’d promised and she kept her word. She’d stayed until his breathing slowed, until his grip loosened, until he drifted back under with the weight of her still over his heart. He swore he could still feel the warm imprint of her palm.
Now, standing here in the bright sun, weapon in hand, everything felt off kilter. Too exposed. Too real. In that moment in the barracks, he’d felt incredibly vulnerable, because he knew she’d touched him in a way no woman ever had, deeper than he could imagine anyone would be able to slip under his armor.
He’d lived his whole life building walls. Creating compartments. Running interference between himself and anything that might gut him emotionally. But she’d slipped through somehow.
His usual response was to not only emotionally distance himself but to remove himself from the woman’s orbit. Not ghost exactly, but being a SEAL, it was easy to just disappear with a one-word text. Deployment. But with Blair, he didn’t want to do either.
