permanence. “Forever.”
His warm, brown eyes flick back to the road, and with one hand on the steering wheel he keeps the other on me, continuing his fast pace down a road to nowhere. I lean my head back against the seat and watch the huge trees fly by, only interrupted by flashes of pool blue sky. I think this might be one of the most peaceful moments of our relationship—just existing outside of everything else.
He’s magnetic. The positive to my negative. The sun shines on his hair and I’m reminded of fire. Stone Sterns is like a lit match between my fingers. I’ll hold it until it burns all the way down, but I’ll have to eventually drop it. The risk of getting burnt is worth it because for those few burning moments those flames belong to me. Nothing can take them away. Nothing except the fact that the flame dies and that cheap piece of wood will never ignite again. If there’s one thing I know, it’s endings. This is a story about how I ended a man’s life. The man I love.
Sometimes there isn’t a new beginning after the end.
Sometimes it’s just the end.
CHAPTER ONE
Steve
“AND YOU JUMPED off the boat with your dick in your hand singing, ‘Hey motherfucker, Steve is superman!’” I bust a hot beat before dropping into the black water, flippers first. I know Maverick will appreciate my sick rhyme. Splashes behind me let me know my teammates are sliding off the side of our matte, dark speedboat into the murky Virginia Beach water.
There’s only a slight change in temperature when I submerge completely because of my thick wetsuit, which will more than likely cause me to sweat my fucking balls off in a minute flat. Hot is better than cold—always. Hot food, hot weather, hot chicks, hot weapons…all good things. If you can’t turn cold into hot, you’re fucked. Go ahead and apply that to all areas of life.
My teammates form a line underwater, grabbing onto a swimmer pole so we know where the fuck we’re swimming in the dark, and so we stay together as we approach our practice target, an old training submarine. Cody is lead so he holds the tac-board with a compass, timer, and depth gauge. The rest of us are just along for the ride. Like fucking water ballerinas…covered in black, wielding limpet mines.
I smile around my mouthpiece, cracking myself up. Actually, the only thing that lets me know how close I am to the target is by keeping track of my kicks. I know exactly how far one will propel me through the water. It’s down to an exact science.
You have to be down with the quickness to be a Navy SEAL, but I’ve been quick my whole life. Maybe even too quick that one time in high school when Lily Kline took off her panties and finally let me use my fine motor skills on something I hadn’t conquered yet. From then on out it was just a matter of finding a new task and dominating it. I’m not sure where the drive came from—it was always there. As an only child my parents always encouraged and supported anything I showed interest in. Martial arts, every single sport under the sun…you name it and I’ve probably tried it. When I was seventeen years old and I saw online propaganda about the high fail rate of the candidates that go through the SEAL selection program, I knew exactly what I wanted to master next. With single-minded focus I made it my sole purpose in life and I did it.
Love it or fuck you, but my sick humor is how I keep things light. Because sometimes shit gets hard. Co-workers that are more like brothers die. They die because even though they have their craft mastered, you can’t predict circumstances. It’s also hard because I’m away from the real world for such long periods that I forget how regular people live. All the fucking rats treading water in a nine to five trying to make ends meet, being miserable assholes, to what end? To live a pseudo life without any extreme life experiences breaking up the monotony. The regular people deserve more credit than I do. I live. Most exist. The risks I take are worth my sanity.
Looking straight ahead I see our target, or just a black blob that’s darker than the water, and I break away from the pole with Cody and Dax. The practice mine is