Squared Away (Out of Uniform 5)

“Yeah. Mom says she’s not letting me out of her sight for six months.” Swenson gave a weak laugh. “Can’t believe they all came—my parents and both sisters. They drove straight through, just to make it here.”

“They care about you. It was a pretty close call. Bet they were scared for you.” Mark was glad he wasn’t the one who’d had to call them. Those sorts of phone calls were the worst.

“It was, wasn’t it? They said you saved my life. That I was a goner but you wouldn’t stop the CPR.”

“You’re a fighter,” Mark said, sinuses stinging. “I didn’t do it. Just helped you along until your body could remember what to do. You did the real work.”

“You’re too humble. And I’m trying to say thanks. You didn’t have to try so hard—”

“I wouldn’t have quit.” Mark could still remember how his arms had ached, how his lungs had burned, how sweat had poured down his face. “I wasn’t giving up on you. Like I said, you’re a fighter. You have been since day one. But, I would have worked that hard for anyone. You’re all my men.”

“You...you think I’ve got what it takes?” Swenson whispered. “For reals?”

“You focus on getting better first. You’ve got a long road ahead of you.” Mark didn’t want to say it, but a disability discharge was a real possibility. “You might decide you want to take a different rate, maybe go out on a ship. But if you make it back, yeah, I do. Any team would be lucky to get someone like you. You’ve got guts.”

Unlike me. Fuck. Mark was being such a coward, refusing to even think about going public with Isaiah, or hell even to just take a risk with him period. He had no gumption and even worse, he wasn’t sure how to get the courage to do things differently.

“Thanks. That means a lot.” Swenson’s eyes were bright. “You’re the best.”

I’m really not. Can’t even hold my family together. Mark nodded stiffly. He could picture Swenson’s family making the seven-hour drive from Tucson in a panic, holding hands, banding together. That was what a real family did. They stuck it out, through good times and bad. Mark wanted that back, wanted a family like that in his life. He wished he knew how to get it back.

“You take care. I should probably head to base. But I want to hear you’re on the mend, you hear?”

“Yes, sir. Thanks for checking in on me.”

“Least I could do.” Mark seemed pretty good at doing the least lately. Or not even that. What happened to giving his 110 percent effort? Was he really doing that to fix things with Isaiah or was he just letting him go, not trying, sandbagging any chance of a future together?

Hell if he knew. You wouldn’t put up with this lackluster attitude from the recruits. Still in a funk, he headed to base, where he had the distraction of getting the recruits through the grinder. They were doing the giant obstacle course wet and sandy and exhausted by a punishing morning run. But this exercise was to see precisely how the boat crew leaders reacted, whether they could dig deep and consolidate their crew, deal with the chaos of the unexpected.

“Go, go, go,” Mark urged them. The groups scaled the first of several tall wall obstacles, pulling each other up and over. “Do you want this? Work together! No man left behind.”

“You’re getting good at this,” Johnson observed. He was working this particular evolution with Mark. They were both ratio instructors for this exercise, which meant they’d go up and down the line, looking for anything out of place or finding teams that needed extra exercises for deviating from instructions.

“How do you figure?” Mark sure wasn’t feeling all that competent right now. But praise from Johnson, who had been an instructor before, was still nice.

“At first, you wanted to get in there, do everything for the recruits. And you weren’t completely on board with the reprimand system—I could tell. That was hard for me too when I first got here, but it’s our job to keep the team building, competition, reward and reprimand levels high. You’ve been better about getting them to work as a team, take their own lumps.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” Take their own lumps. Mark had to let the guys fail because that was the only way they’d make it as SEALs. No one was going to do it for them out in the field. You can’t protect them forever. Fuck. Was that what he was doing with Isaiah? Not giving him the freedom or space to fail? Not treating him like someone who could be on his team? Fuck. But was it so bad to want to protect the people he lo—

Oh hell no. You did not go and fall in love with Isaiah. That would be stupid. And he was already the master chief of stupid lately. He didn’t need one more mistake compounding everything else he’d fucked up.