CHAPTER TEN #2
"Length through the back," Reese calls, and her voice is different. More confident. More certain. "Feel each other. Match pressure."
And we do. It's effortless in a way that makes my chest tight. Like my body knows exactly where everyone else is without looking. Like we're connected by invisible threads.
Like pack.
"Pick it up to half pressure," she commands.
The boat responds instantly. No lag, no adjustment period. Just smooth acceleration that makes the hull sing through the water.
I can see Torres in the launch, making notes, her expression unreadable behind sunglasses. But there's something in her posture - a slight forward lean, the way she's stopped writing - that suggests surprise.
We run through our standard pieces - starts, steady state, power tens. Each one better than the last. By the time we're doing full pressure work, we're flying. The boat feels weightless, skimming across the surface like we've transcended physics.
"Hold water," Reese calls as we approach the dock.
We stop in perfect unison, blades squared and buried.
"Fuck me," Zane breathes, still panting. "We haven't moved like that since..."
"Ever," Jackson finishes flatly. "We've never moved like that."
"The boat was actually set for once," Tyler adds, and coming from him, that's practically a declaration of love.
"Whatever just happened," Gray says carefully, "we need to figure out how to replicate it."
"That was what we're capable of when we stop fighting ourselves," Reese says quietly.
Gray meets her eyes across the length of the boat. "Or when we stop pretending."
The words hang there, loaded with meaning Torres can't quite parse but definitely notices.
"Adequate," she pronounces once we're back on the dock. "Whatever you did differently this morning, keep doing it. But watch the proximity patterns on land. You cluster like a..." she pauses, choosing her words, "like a unit with poor professional boundaries."
After she leaves to file her report, we stand there in the morning sun, endorphin-high from the best practice we've had in weeks.
"We should hit The Griddle," Zane suggests. "I'm starving and they have those cinnamon pancakes."
"Everything's better than your cooking anyway," Tyler says.
"Excuse me? My pasta last night was excellent."
"You literally made spaghetti with jarred sauce," Beckett points out.
"Elevated jarred sauce. I added herbs."
The banter feels easy, natural. Like we're finally becoming what we were meant to be. Not just a crew, but something more. Something deeper.
As we head back to the team house, I fall into step beside Reese.
"You're different this morning," I observe.
She glances up at me, and there's a knowing look in her eyes. "So are you."
Heat creeps up my neck. There's no way she could know. Unless...
"I can smell too, you know," she says simply. "Even with suppressants."
Fuck. Of course. If I could smell them on her, she could smell herself on me. The evidence of what I did while listening to them.
She walks ahead to join Zane, leaving me standing there with my shame burning hot.
But as I watch them - Zane's hand brushing her lower back, her shoulder bumping his arm, the easy intimacy that wasn't there yesterday - I realize something.
I'm not jealous. Not exactly.
I'm curious.
What would it be like to be part of that?
Not just the sex, though the sounds last night will haunt my dreams. But the connection.
The belonging. The way they moved through the kitchen like they were sharing the same heartbeat.
The reason Reese looked so settled this morning, like she'd finally found her place.
I've spent three years keeping myself separate. Safe. Watching from the edges while the team bonds and breaks and reforms around me. I thought distance would protect me from the messy complications of pack dynamics.
But maybe I've been looking at it wrong. Maybe the messiness is the point. Maybe you can't have synchronization without vulnerability, trust without intimacy, strength without surrender.
Gray falls back to walk beside me. "You hear them last night?" he asks quietly.
I freeze. "What?"
"Reese and Zane. In the kitchen." His jaw is tight. "Hard to miss."
Heat creeps up my neck. "Yeah."
He's quiet for a moment. "Kept me up until 3 AM. Couldn't focus on my reading."
"Yeah, me too." I don't mention what else I did. Don't need to. The shame is probably written all over my face.
We walk in silence for a few steps.
"It's getting stronger," I say. "Whatever this is between all of us."
"I know."
"Torres knows too. She can't prove it yet, but she knows."
"Then we better get our shit together before she can." He glances at me. "You in or out, Blake? Can't keep one foot on the dock anymore."
He's right. The comfortable distance I've maintained is becoming a liability. Either I'm part of this, whatever this is becoming, or I'm not.
"You coming?" Jackson calls back.
I nod, jogging to catch up.
Whatever's happening to us, whatever we're becoming, I'm starting to think fighting it is pointless.
We're already too far gone.