Chapter Eighteen
“’Lo?”
“Where’re all the keys?” Shane’s voice sounded rough, gravelly, and Matt stifled a laugh. The dude had to be hurting.
He rolled over in bed and peered at the clock—it was noon—before giving a leisurely stretch.
“In a bowl on the top shelf of your pantry.” Matt could hear him yell the information to someone in the other room.
“They’re all leaving.” Shane let out a groan. “Thank fuck. I have the hangover from hell.”
“I bet.”
“No sympathy from you, huh?”
“None whatsoever.”
“I don’t deserve any.” Now Shane sounded downright pathetic. “I’m sorry, Soup.”
“For what? For having fun with some friends?”
“For drinking around you when I said I wouldn’t. I’m such an asshole.”
“Nah.” Matt plumped his pillow up behind him and got comfy. “I never asked you to make any grand gestures for me.”
“What? It wasn’t a ‘grand gesture,’” Shane said indignantly. “I was trying to be supportive!”
“I appreciate that. But I can handle it, you know. I only left last night because I got bored.”
Shane groaned again. “We were that obnoxious, huh?”
“What drunk guys aren’t?” Matt asked, cutting off Shane’s further attempt at an apology.
“But if you really wanna be supportive—” He told him about the nearly empty beer bottle he’d encountered in Shane’s sink.
“That tempted me more than it should have, and it’s why I left you that night.
It’s not the parties that get to me; it’s those quiet times when I’m stressed and tired, and a beer just sounds really fucking good.
If you wanna help, do me a favor and keep your empties out of sight when it’s just us. ”
“Shit, Matt.” Shane’s voice was hushed. “Done. And I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s your house, and I was the dick that night.”
A short silence fell until Shane whined, “My head hurts so bad.”
“Aww.” Matt couldn’t help but smile at how plaintive he sounded. “Get your ass up and take some aspirin.”
“I’d rather cuddle. Come over and cuddle with me.”
Longing tinged with regret shot through him. “I’d love to, but I can’t. Bus is leaving for La Posta in two hours and I got a ton of stuff to do.”
“Shit, that’s right. How long you gonna be there? A month?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn.”
“If I could, I’d totally come over and cuddle with you, though.”
A split second of silence, and then Shane heaved a disgruntled sigh. “Wonderful. Just great.”
“What?”
“You get me hard when you say stuff like that. Now I have a boner and a headache.”
Matt choked out a startled laugh. “You’re insane. But join the boner club.” He reached down to palm himself soothingly.
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. When you get all sex voice-y like that…fuck, I’m gone.”
“Sex voice-y?” Shane sounded bemused. “I have a sex voice?”
“You do. Low and growly. Gives me fucking goosebumps.”
“Like this?” Shane dropped his pitch, his tone roughening. “Is this my sex voice?”
Matt couldn’t help the little gasp that escaped him. “Stop it. Trey might walk in the door at any moment.”
“Nope. They’re all headed to breakfast.”
Matt closed his eyes, relaxing back into the bed as he took his cock in a firm grasp. “Then yep. That’s your sex voice. I love it.”
“Mmm. You know what I love? The way your breathing hitches when you’re about to come. The feel of your nipples against my tongue.”
“Oh, God. Shane…”
“The way you moan my name. Just like that.”
Giving himself long, slow strokes, Matt rasped, “I love the way you smell. The way your mouth tastes.” The way you hold me close, the way you curl around me like you’re shutting out the world and it’s just us in it.
“Oh, Matt,” Shane whispered. “I want you so fucking much. Ah.”
With a loud groan, Shane came, his grunts of pleasure in Matt’s ear sending him careening off the edge, too. He jetted all over his stomach in a messy rush, gasping out Shane’s name in a breathless litany.
They wallowed together, recovering, until Shane said, “You think maybe that cured my headache? Lemme check.”
Matt could hear a rustling, then Shane gave a whimper. “Nope, still there. Why, oh why did I drink that Drambuie?”
Wishing with all his heart he was there to kiss it better, Matt said gruffly, “Go back to sleep, clown. I need to get ready for La Posta anyway.”
“Fine,” Shane said, clearly disgruntled. “Go get ready, then.”
“I will.”
Neither of them hung up, though, and Matt could hear Shane breathing. “I’ll miss you,” he finally mumbled, feeling stupid as hell.
“Yeah. I’ll think about you occasionally, too.”
“Whatever.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
The phone went dead in Matt’s ear, then immediately vibrated with an incoming text.
See you in Vegas?
He smiled.
See you in Vegas.
* * *
The bus jounced along the road toward La Posta, a military installation high in the Laguna Mountains east of San Diego. Most of Matt’s classmates were sound asleep despite the rough ride, evidence of a BUD/S student’s ability to snooze whenever and wherever he could.
A low-grade excitement buzzed through Matt, preventing him from sleeping.
At last they’d be getting a break from the ocean side of things—away from the surf torture, from being wet and sandy.
Here they’d work on their land navigation techniques, the art of camouflage and, best of all, get to start familiarizing themselves with various weapons and explosives.
In short, they were finally gonna take the first steps toward becoming warriors.
Glancing back and seeing that he was awake, Chief Howe moved from the front and settled himself in the seat across from Matt. “How’s it goin’, Knytych?”
Matt hesitated. Was this a trick? “Very well, Chief. Thank you.” He wondered if he’d be ordered to drop right there in the bus aisle, and he tensed.
“Relax, kid. I’m not here to bust your balls. Just felt like shootin’ the shit for a minute.”
Matt blew out a quiet sigh of relief. “Okay.”
“How’s ol’ Rick? Ornery as ever?”
Surprised, Matt said, “Yeah. I haven’t talked to him in a while, though. I didn’t realize you knew my uncle.”
“He was actually one of my BUD/S instructors. Taught me a lot, but man, he intimidated the shit out of me.”
“I know the feeling.”
They chuckled together before Howe said musingly, “The last time I saw him was at a SEAL funeral, what, two years ago?”
Matt winced. Jon’s funeral.
“Now that was such a fuckin’ waste,” Howe went on, shaking his head. “Kid was a rock star, one of the ones who had it all…brains, guts, the works.”
“You knew him?”
“I did. Fantastic operator, just a helluva SEAL.”
“He may have died a hero, but he wasn’t a nice guy by any stretch of the imagination.”
Curiosity burned once again through Matt, and he wondered if Howe knew of Jon’s connection to Shane. It wasn’t his place to say anything, though, so all he did was mumble, “I’m sorry for your loss, Chief.”
“Yeah, thanks. This is a harsh business, son, no question about it.” Howe stood and clapped Matt on the shoulder. “Well, say hello to your uncle for me when you talk to him again, would ya?”
“I will.”
As Howe moved off, Matt watched him go, relieved that he’d survived the encounter unscathed. He respected Howe a great deal, but he couldn’t say he liked him much. Talk about intimidating.
Settling back again in his seat, Matt stretched his legs out in the aisle and tried to get comfortable.
He closed his eyes, intending to doze, but his thoughts churned.
On impulse he pulled his phone out and did a Google search.
Not a whole lot popped up, just a few official press releases announcing Jon’s death in support of combat operations in Afghanistan’s Nuristan Province, including a long list of the medals he was posthumously awarded.
There were some images from his funeral, and Matt pored over the pictures, looking for Shane or Alexis.
Hmm. Lots of shots of what had to be Jon’s grieving parents, but the Hovlands were nowhere in sight.
Matt squinted closer at one picture. There was his uncle, and Howe, both in dress blues as they stood over Jon’s casket pounding their Tridents into the polished wood, a long-standing SEAL tradition for honoring a fallen brother.
Why wasn’t Shane there, or Alexis, his fiancée?
Matt sighed before turning his phone off and stowing it away. This really wasn’t any of his fucking business. Maybe Shane would tell him the story someday, maybe not. Closing his eyes, Matt at last fell asleep.
When they arrived at La Posta, they all staggered off the bus into the thin mountain air. As he helped to unload their gear, Matt glanced around, seeing nothing more than a few old buildings and what looked like a shooting range.
“I’m starving,” Trey whispered to him at one point. “You think there’s a chow hall?”
That question was answered a few hours later when Howe took his combat knife out and ripped into a cardboard box, revealing it full of MREs.
“This here’s a five-star resort, boys. Nothing but the best! Now drop!”
Their days quickly fell into a routine of little sleep, punishing exertion and cold MREs. The terrain was rugged and unforgiving, the timed evolutions designed to be impossible to meet in order to push them all to the edge physically and mentally.
They climbed up some cliffs; they rappelled down some cliffs. They blew shit up, and had their first introduction to the M4 rifle, a standard SEAL weapon. Matt had grown up around guns and was comfortable with them, so he had no trouble excelling during the firing exercises and competitions.
One night as he got ready to hit his rack after being awake almost forty hours, Matt turned his phone on to see he had a missed call and voice mail from Shane.
He left the barracks and stretched out on top of a large flat rock at the edge of the compound, enjoying the residual warmth it held from the heat of the day, and listened to the message.
“Hey, Soup, it’s me. I, uh—well, I’m not sure how to say this, so I guess I’ll just say it.”
Matt sat up in alarm at the words and the sound of Shane’s voice, rough with emotion.