The last time Rob had been on a horse he’d been a kid. Maybe seven or eight, if he recalled right. That time had been a disaster as well, the saddle not tight enough, slipping sideways as he tumbled to the ground. That incident had pushed all thoughts of a rodeo career out of his mind, and he’d gotten to this age without feeling the need to go riding again.

Still, the kids wanted to learn, and for some horrific reason, Nate, the big former rodeo star, had said that the best way for the kids to learn was for the grown-ups to show there was nothing to be scared of.

And he wasn't scared. Not exactly. There wasn't much in his life that scared him; not even the bullet fragments that were stealing his life. Or at least, he had a very strong mental trap to hide the fear in, and it only opened on odd occasions.

He just didn’t know if riding was a good thing. Hell, it probably wasn’t on the list of approved activities when the surgeon said rest would be good. But he wanted the kids to feel he was joining in.

Why did he want that when it went against everything he was aiming for he? Hell if he knew.

I want them to smile, is all.

Nate did all the checks, proficiently, tidily, spoke with great confidence of how the horse was a smooth ride and how the kids would be fine on the smaller ponies when it was their turn.

“Take her around the ring,” Nate said and waited. When it dawned on him that Nate wanted him to make the horse go, he pressed with his heels, and Dragon moved forward.

And who the hell named a white horse Dragon, and why did it make Rob think that things were going to go to shit?

Which, of course, they did.

Not because of the horse. Dragon was a pussycat who placidly walked around the ring, returning to Nate and accepting a treat for managing not to throw the idiot on its back.

No, the shit was that standing next to the kids, with his niece and nephew, was Aaron. Not only that, but Aaron was smirking. He was probably the best rider in the whole damn world or something.

“Looking good up there, Navy,” he said and smirked. The fucker.

“Okay, are we ready?” Nate asked, thankfully interrupting the fact that all Rob wanted to do was get off the horse and rub Aaron’s face in the dirt.

Even with an audience.

Out on the trail, with him following Bran and Toby, he managed to avoid talking to Aaron at all, focusing on the fact that his nephews seemed to have some skills with horses. Even the tiny ones they were on. Toby had an assistant, a young girl called Clair, who led his pony and reassured him, but Bran seemed happy to plod along and stay up by gripping everything super tight. Poor pony.

He ignored that Aaron and his two had gotten far ahead now, right up to the lake probably, which was where they were heading. He looked as if being in the saddle was second nature and Rob had a lot of jokes about the state of Aaron’s ass if they ever had alone time again.

Which we’re not.

When he, Bran, and Toby reached the lake, Nate instructed them on how to tie the ponies off, then settled down with the four kids to talk horse care and all kinds of other things, Clair sitting with them.

Which, of course, left Rob with Aaron, who was stripping out of his clothes.

"Swim?" Aaron asked, standing in swim trunks that clung to muscular thighs and made Rob's imagination go wild.

“That was the idea,” Rob said, stripping down to his shorts as well. They had a thirty-minute horse care break, and it seemed as if he had the same idea as Aaron, the lake calling to him.

Now, in the water, that was his strength, and as soon as he was away from shore, he headed to the other side of the lake with vigorous movements. He only got halfway before his arms failed to propel him anymore, but he was twenty feet in front of Aaron who reached him, stopped, and trod water.

"How long were you a SEAL?" Aaron asked in the middle of the enormous lake where no one would be able to hear him.

“I wasn’t—”

Aaron snorted. “You said you were navy, but you’re a heroic idiot. You’re clearly in pain, yet you went off like a torpedo from shore, most of that underwater, so tell me, how long were you a SEAL?”

“Long enough,” Rob hedged. Discussions about his career would lead to the gaps which would end up with loads of questions he couldn’t answer. He’d left his SEAL team when the politics got in the way of being allowed to go into a country and help civilians. And when taking the bad guys out of the equation meant that some higher up in a foreign government was offended.

He'd been ripe picking for Saunders, who recruited him for a new private team, along with a quiet kid he’d learned was Justin, and another man, Webb. Saunders and Webb were dead, Justin had seen to that, and everyone above them? They were dead and it was all Rob’s doing.

He and Justin were the last ones left standing.

As it should be.

He startled when Aaron touched him, running hands over his shoulders. “You are so tight,” he said, and it wasn’t a euphemism; it was a medical analysis. “Have you tried acupuncture?” Rob shrugged away, and the movement of water separated them by a few feet.

“We should go back,” he said and turned to face the shore, abruptly aware of how far he’d come out, and how fucked his spine was, and how unlikely it would be he’d make it back without suffering for his stupidity.

He’d only struck out like that because he’d wanted to show Aaron that, even though he was shit on horseback, he could swim like an Olympian.

If the Olympian had a mess of scar tissue under his skin on muscles holding him upright.

They made it back to shore at a slower pace, and Aaron stayed with him, the asshole, with his caring and his annoying way of constantly asking if Rob was okay.

“I can help you out,” Aaron offered.

“Fuck off,” Rob muttered under his breath.

“Idiot Frogman,” Aaron replied and then smirked, which gave Rob the push he needed to get out of the water by himself. What really burned was that part of him wanted to lean on Aaron because somehow they had a connection.

Even if Rob had tried to avoid it.

He used the towel he’d thought to bring with him and pulled on jeans.

“Uncle Rob, look!” Toby left the circle of people and trotted over, a notebook in his hand and a wide grin on his face. “I did this for you!”

Tongue poking out, he concentrated on tearing a page from the book and thrust it at his uncle. Rob wiped his hands on his jeans and took the page, turning it to see a stylized black line drawing of a horse, that had been colored in with a surprising amount of purple and green.

“Do you like it?” Toby asked, worrying at a loose tooth with his tongue and looking concerned.

“I love it. We should put it on the fridge when we get back.”

“Or when we get a real house,” Bran said from behind them.

Rob stiffened. This wasn’t the first time Bran had mentioned a real house, but it was the first when he’d let little Toby hear. What did Rob do? Agree, which would give Bran hope, or tell them explicitly that a real home would be somewhere where he wasn’t?

“That would be great.” He took the coward’s way out. “Can you look after it? I’m still a bit wet.”

Toby nodded and pushed the picture back into the notebook, very carefully, as if it was the most precious of things.

And all Rob could think was that despite what his plans were and how long he had left, the picture was precious. Sadness pushed its soul-stealing way into his heart, and he couldn’t help himself. Something inside him snapped, and he reached for Toby and hugged him.

He wanted to give Toby that one memory of the day at the lake when he’d handed his uncle a picture and gotten a hug in return.