Chapter 26
Sleeping Wind Ranch, Bear and Bailee Residence, Bonita, California
The mornings still began before dawn, but now they mucked stalls and groomed the animals before their run.
Copper was a bundle of nervous energy that demanded to be worked hard, a perfect outlet for Fly’s restless grief.
Than’s buckskin was a different challenge.
Steady. Powerful. Demanding a focus that distracted even as it mirrored the turmoil in Than’s own mind.
They rode until their legs went numb, swam until salt burned their eyes, lifted until their muscles failed. They were still trying to outwork the pain.
It was still failing.
The exhaustion ran deeper now. Bone-deep. The kind sleep couldn’t touch. The nightmares, if anything, had grown sharper.
After a week of this, they woke to a quiet that felt wrong.
The air was still. No birds. No wind.
A black Ford F-150 sat near the drive, its presence clean and deliberate against the land.
Standing by the corral was a man.
He didn’t move when they approached. His stillness filled the space, pressed against the restless energy of the horses and the men alike. Jeans. A worn denim jacket. Dark hair pulled back neatly at his nape.
But it was his eyes that stopped Than cold. Green. Vivid. Uncompromising. They tracked everything at once, the tension in Than’s shoulders, the feral edge in Fly, the way the horses shifted under too much pressure.
Than knew him instantly.
Dr. Shawl Red Thunder, his tribe’s modern medicine man with a controversial edge. A healer who walked in both worlds, the old ways and the current one, called in when pain refused to be outrun.
The knot in Than’s chest tightened, relief and unease colliding. Shawl wasn’t just a man. His presence here felt like an intervention Than hadn’t agreed to, and anger spiked through the numbness. Anger directed entirely at his brother.
Bear stood off to the side near the barn, arms crossed, watching with a gaze that carried both concern and experience.
“You’re going to burn yourselves out before you even get to BUD/S,” Bear said quietly. “They don’t go easy on anyone. Especially officers.”
Shawl’s gaze moved to Fly, then returned to Than. He said nothing. Let the silence settle. Let it work.
Than’s gut clenched. This guy didn’t circle wounds or offer comfort. He went straight for the load-bearing walls.
For weeks, Than had been keeping certain thoughts sealed, compressed, and buried under discipline, exhaustion, motion.
They slipped sometimes. After brutal workouts, his body was wrecked and his mind too slow to keep watch.
After the nightmares, when he came awake gasping and the lines blurred for a heartbeat between grief and blame.
Thoughts he crushed immediately. Thoughts he would never voice.
Shawl was the kind of man who could reach in and pull them free without ever raising his voice. If those things surfaced, if Fly ever heard them, Than didn’t know how they would come back from it. He wasn’t afraid of breaking. He was afraid of what might fracture between them.
What was the point? Mei was dead, and everything associated with her should die, too. It had to…he couldn’t…
He looked at Fly, and everything twisted dark and minacious.
“Dr. Red Thunder is here because I asked him,” Bear added. “You don’t have to talk to him. That’s your call. But, Than, you know him. And Fly…he’s worth a conversation.”
Than couldn’t contain the explosion inside him. “Bear,” he said, clipped, controlled. “I need a word. Now.” His eyes cut briefly to Shawl. “Alone.”
Bear nodded, his brother’s calm demeanor only making his anger spike harder. When they got far enough away, Than turned on him. “You don’t trust me,” he said flatly. “You don’t think I’m ready for BUD/S.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“Then why do I need an intervention. You’re right.
I know who he is, and I know what he does.
How the fuck do you think some guy my own age can offer me anything that will help with Mei?
” He took hard breaths. She was a landmine, and he’d just stepped right on it.
He was breaking apart. “That’s why he’s here. For her!”
“Than,” Bear said, his voice harder, but never raised.
“I brought him here because you need him. You can’t go to BUD/S like this.
Neither can Fly. You’re feeding off each other’s grief, and Fly is drowning in guilt.
” He stepped forward, grabbing Than’s neck.
“Do you think I think you’ll break?” He squeezed and Than’s anger exploded, and he twisted out of Bear’s hold.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I think you’ll survive anything.
That’s the problem. You’re about to survive this by calcifying around it, and BUD/S will finish the job. ”
He glared at him, his chest heaving, all the nightmares, the ache, the pain compounding.
“I didn’t break when she died. I didn’t,” he shouted.
Then he turned and ran and just kept running.
He vaulted the fence, mounted his buckskin without a saddle, took up the halter and kicked his heels into the horse’s sides.
The buckskin took off, heading for the fence, and as he reached it, he didn’t disappoint Than.
His big hindquarters bunched, and he sailed over without a problem.
Fly knew something was wrong the moment Than bolted.
He didn’t lose control like that. Not with Bear. Especially not with Bear. He’d always been respectful, even when they disagreed. Even when things were hard. The look on Bear’s face as Than ran, surprise edged with concern, set off alarms Fly couldn’t ignore.
They’d been through too much together for this to be nothing.
Fly took a slow breath, eyes tracking the man who had spooked a very unspookable man. He’d just…stood there. Let the truth do the work.
Fly’s guard went up solely because of Than’s reaction.
What was he so afraid of?
Than had already broken down over Mei. Fly hadn’t seen it, only heard it from Bear, pared down and sparse. So if this wasn’t about Mei…then it meant Than was carrying something else. Something he didn’t want Fly to see.
That thought hit harder than Fly expected.
Four years of living in each other’s pockets. Of shared Naval Academy stress and grind, then shared grief and shared silence. Than thought he could keep something like that from him?
That stung. Bad.
Fly didn’t let himself linger there. Hurt wasn’t useful. Understanding was.
He studied the man again. He radiated a kind of contained energy Fly recognized immediately, the kind that could wire a city without ever flipping a switch. Just quiet, lethal competence.
It intrigued him.
Fly had spent his whole life reading people, anticipating shifts before they happened. This was a man who invited truth without demanding it. That was rare. Dangerous. Possibly exactly what they needed.
Could Shawl help Fly with his own shit?
He had no idea.
But he knew one thing for certain.
If he didn’t ask, he’d never know, and that would be his own damn fault.
He wasn’t one to run from his own truth.
He was sad that Than thought he had to run.
He hated that, and he hated thinking Bear was maybe right.
They wanted to believe they were ready for BUD/S, and the training would be so grueling, it would take all their energy, but what if Fly was wrong?
What if he was deluding himself into thinking that all that they had been through was just the tip of a huge iceberg?
Fly squared his shoulders and stepped forward.
How about leading from the front?
“You have me at a disadvantage.” He glanced at Bear, who was watching Than disappear into the back country. “Bear is usually so on it, but he’s worried about his brother.” He reached out his hand. “I’m Flynn Gallagher.”
The man clasped his hand. “Shawl.”
“I’m assuming if Bear asked you to come down here, you’re part of his tribe. I apologize if that’s not right.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“I’m guessing you’re a head doctor,” Fly said, blunt as ever. “Shrink. Healer. Something in between.” His mouth tilted, not quite a smile. “If you talk to ghosts, we might qualify. Than and I are trying to keep our heads above water after Mei.”
“I don’t chase ghosts,” Shawl said. “I leave that up to the ghostbusters. They have the equipment. I help people live with what still speaks.” He nodded toward Fly. “What was the name of your sailing vessel?”
Fly frowned. What the hell did that have to do with anything? “Valor.”
“Ah, that’s a loaded word. Great courage in the face of danger, especially in battle.”
“I wasn’t in battle.”
“Weren’t you? You were the skipper, and you were in a competitive race, driven by an instructor who sounded like he was more interested in beating his brother than your safety.”
“I don’t assign blame. I did what I did, and I owned it.”
“Did you?” Shawl asked. “Valor was well named for your boat, Flynn. My question is simple. Can you live with it?”
Fly didn’t look away.
“If I can’t,” he said, steady and unembellished, “then I’ll be a goddamned shitty leader. I’ll fold under the weight of command, and I won’t have learned a damn thing from what happened to Mei.”
Shawl nodded once.
“That’s right,” he said. “You won’t have.
But the fact that you know this already tells me something.
” He stepped closer, not crowding, just present.
“Sit with this for one day,” Shawl said.
“Ask yourself what Mei would say to you if she were standing here now.” He let that land.
“And whether you truly believe she would blame you.”
Than galloped away as the three men behind him gaped and came back an hour later.
Dirty. Sweaty. Breath rough in his chest. The buckskin lathered, sides heaving, but steady as ever beneath him. Than slid down, boots hitting the dirt hard, fingers still clenched in the halter like he hadn’t decided yet whether to let go.