CHAPTER SEVEN
As Jim had known, Ashley wasn’t at all dismayed that the schedule had changed and they were starting the morning at the physically punishing O-course.
He was dismayed enough for both of them as he forced himself not to limp through the breakfast line. He helped himself to a small mountain of scrambled eggs, a pile of toast, and two mugs of coffee.
Jesus, he was tired. His knees had kept him up most of the night—icing hadn’t helped and he’d refused to take the painkiller the captain had prescribed. There just weren’t enough hours left when he’d finally gone to bed—if he’d taken it, he’d still be feeling drugged this morning.
It was Jim’s own fault for disregarding Dunk’s suggestion that he take a scooter on last night’s hike. Five miles hadn’t seemed like any kind of big deal. Also, he’d wanted Ashley to be challenged by his limitations, and she wouldn’t have been if he’d had the scooter.
But okay. He’d done what he’d done, and today’s pain and fatigue was what it was. He didn’t have to like it, he just had to do it—get through the day, that is.
Meanwhile Ashley—who’d only gotten a bit more sleep than he had—was sitting alone at a table, eating her breakfast while reading through her Team Leader packet. She was studying it with far more focus and care than it deserved.
Jim wasn’t surprised. The woman was a direction-reader, which admittedly was a useful skill. He’d noted that last night when, even despite the flashlight’s dim glow, she’d read the application instructions on the bug repellent wipes. Some people—and yeah, he tended to lean toward that particular subset—preferred to figure things out on the fly. Dive in headfirst, and if SNAFUs happened, only then read the directions.
Which could be dangerous. It went against the age-old SEAL adage, Never assume.
But in the case of the Team Leader packet—Jim had glanced through it last night while he was not-sleeping—there really wasn’t all that much to learn.
In some ways it was standard officer bullshit. But unlike a Naval officer, SEAL World TLs didn’t have any real command status. The job was more that of a liaison to Jim, to Dunk, and to the hospital corpsman. Because of that, Ashley had to carry a bag with a phone, a walkie-talkie in case cell service failed, and a rudimentary med kit.
Exactly what she didn’t need—a few extra pounds of gear to weigh her down.
“You can delegate,” Jim said in lieu of a greeting as he set his tray onto her table, and awkwardly lifted his legs over the bench so that he could sit opposite her. Ow, and ow. “Assign a team member, or even me, to carry the team’s bag.”
Ashley looked up and managed a smile. “Good morning.”
Jesus, angels sang because that smile was pure blinding sunshine. He had to look away, ungracefully digging into his eggs. “Well, it’s morning, that’s true.”
“Your knees survive the hike?” she leaned forward slightly and lowered her voice to ask.
“I’m fine.” Shit. Now that he’d pictured that stupid word-cloud, he was going to see it every time that idiocy came out of his mouth.
Ashley wasn’t fooled—he could see disbelief swimming in her observant gray eyes. But she co-signed his BS. “That’s great,” she said. “Because I can’t wait to be dragged up and over that six foot wall by Bull and Todd. And FYI, I cannot hand off the Team Leader’s bag.” She pointed down to one of the pages in front of her. “Says so right here.”
Ah, damnit, really…? “We could pretend we didn’t read that,” Jim countered.
“Too late,” she told him. “I won’t lie. Besides, if I’m doing this, I’m doing this.”
She was dead serious, and Jim found himself not just respecting her, but really liking her. Her resourcefulness last night hadn’t been just a fluke, and her sense of humor was solid. She was as shiny and gleaming and beautiful inside as she was out, and he found himself thinking about last night, when she’d handed him back his shirt, as she stood bedraggled and still drenched, her clothes glued to her lithe body, her shirt rendered transparent. She was not well-endowed up top, but her nipples were enticingly dark, and those long, strong, shapely, smooth legs that he’d seen when she’d worn running shorts would more than make up for her lack of breast size when she wrapped them around him and—
What.
The hell?
What was wrong with him? He found himself liking her because she was smart and funny and honorable, so his immediate response was to picture her naked and think about what it would be like to screw her…?
Now her words from the other night echoed in his head: You’re a part of the problem.
At the time, he’d thought she was being overly dramatic, but damn it, maybe he was if he couldn’t sit here and have a simple conversation with an attractive woman without getting a hard-on.
This was why there weren’t women in the teams—except, nope. That kind of thinking was first cousin to victim-blaming—of putting the responsibility for safety against crimes like sexual assault purely on the backs of women, because “men couldn’t help themselves.” Which was damned insulting to men—implying that they were weak, lacking in control, and morally incapable of keeping their pants zipped.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
Now Ashley was looking at him quizzically, so he focused on their conversation. What had they been discussing? His gaze fell on the team leader packet on the table in front of her. Right. The requirement for her to always carry the team’s communication and medical bag.
“Maybe it’s negotiable,” he suggested. “Carrying the bag. How important can it be? I didn’t even notice it when I read through the packet.”
“This type of fine print is called boilerplate,” she told him. “That generally means non-negotiable.”
“Come on,” he said. “You’re a lawyer. Everything’s negotiable.”
“I wish,” she said, looking down again at the document on the table in front of her. She sighed. “Oh, God, I do really wish…” But instead of finishing her thought, she shook her head and forced a smile.
“What?” Jim asked around a bite of toast. “Maybe I can be your fairy godmother, you know, make your wish come true.”
She laughed at that, but shook her head again. “I wish I was really in charge of the team—that team leader really meant team leader. So, unless you can re-write these rules…”
He shrugged expansively. “Navy SEAL.”
She laughed again, but this time rolled her eyes. “You say that a lot—as if it’s your catch-phrase, or… It means whatever you need it to mean in the moment, doesn’t it?”
She was right about that. “In this case,” he told her, “it means that rewriting the rules is kinda our jam.”
“With all due respect, sir, please don’t say jam.”
They both looked up to see Thomas King carrying his tray toward the bussing area.
“Too old?” Jim asked the younger man with a laugh.
“And too not-from-California,” Thomas grinned back at him. “Please also purge cowabunga from your vocabulary, sir. And, Dunk asked me to tell you that he’s finally got a few minutes to spare,” the young SEAL continued. He gave both a nod and a Ma’am to Ashley as he then continued on his way.
Jim finished up his eggs with one last large forkful. “Gotta run,” he told Ashley as he stood up. Ow and ow. “Meet you out at the O. Don’t forget—this morning’s exercise is a team event.”
“Believe me, I’m well aware of that.” She nodded as he took his tray toward the corner with the trash cans and dirty dish basins.
But was she? Really…? As Jim glanced back at Ashley, she gave him one last rueful smile.
“Think about it—team,” he told her, but he was far enough away now that the noise of the clattering dishes made it impossible for her to hear him, and as he watched, she shook her head, frowning slightly to signal that she wasn’t able to read his lips. So he tapped his head instead, but he could see that she still didn’t understand, so he held up six fingers, but she still shook her head.
Sadly, he couldn’t be any less cryptic. His team leader had to figure it out for herself—best he could do was make broad hints.
As he went to talk to Dunk—about Ashley, although his conversational subtopic of how best to help her was now on hold as a discussion of team leader duties took priority—her words echoed in his head. I can’t wait to be dragged up and over that wall by Bull and Todd.
Yeah, that was gonna be hard to watch.
He was certain that Ashley would figure it out eventually. He just hoped—for his sake as well as her own—that it would be sooner rather than later.
* * *
Bull “helped” Ashley up to the top of the O-course wall—one hand on her butt, the other beneath her arm, which ended up, yes, on her breast.
It could’ve been accidental—yeah, right, in some alternate universe.
He somewhat laboriously pulled himself up and slid down the other side as she got her bearings and teetered there, balancing on the top. She risked a glance over at Jim, who was leaning against the fence across the compound. He’d absolutely seen that—his eyes were narrowed and his mouth tight. But he didn’t stop them—he just went back to looking down at his phone.
“Come on, move it!” Bull shouted up at her, once he was securely on the ground, with a gesture that was half impatience and half I’ll catch you.
“No, I got it,” she said, because the wall wasn’t that high, and sliding down was much easier than clambering up—although in truth, she’d really only needed a clasped-handed toe boost from him, which of course wouldn’t have allowed him to grope her as thoroughly. “Back off, Mr. Edison, give me space.”
Of course, he didn’t. He moved closer, hands outstretched as she slid down—right into a crotch grab, God damn it.
“I got it, move back!” she said, louder this time as she twisted to get away from his hands and his leering, laughing face. There was enough of an edge to her voice that Jim looked up again from whatever he was doing—sending texts or emails, or God, maybe even live-tweeting this debacle—during this so-called planning phase of their first morning exercise.
Before Team One was officially timed as they ran the obstacle course, their task was to figure out the best way to get through it as quickly as possible, considering their individual limitations—i.e. her limitations.
Bull just laughed at Ashley’s raised voice, so Todd laughed, too, as Clark and Kenneth hovered anxiously nearby, and that was it. Something in her snapped.
“Okay!” she clapped her hands together. “That’s it. We’re good. I got it—I know how we’re doing this.” She forced herself to sound cheerful, rather than enraged—because enraged never worked with men like Bull and Todd.
Jim headed toward them, his phone finally back in his pocket, his face and eyes lit with interest as he looked from Ashley to Bull and back.
“You got it?” Bull asked, belligerence in his voice. “Yeah, sorry, it’s not up to you. Todd and I have the most experience.”
“What’s your strategy?” Jim asked.
Bull turned to look at the SEAL. “Move as fast as we can while we drag the chick and the hipsters over the fuh—”
Jim spoke loudly over him. “Team Leader, what’s your strategy?” He was looking at her, because, yes, she was the TL.
Bull protested. “Brah, the team-leader thing is only an honorary title—”
Jim glared at Bull with ice in his eyes. “It’s Lieutenant or LT or Sir when you address me, and Team Leader DeWitt or TL or Ma’am when you address your team leader.”
“No, I mean, yes, LT—” Bull, of course, chose the least formal way of addressing the SEAL instructor “—but you’re new so, you probably don’t realize that the TL is random, you know, just someone with administrative skills to act as a go-between for the team and the camp.”
“Incorrect, Mr. Edison,” Jim shot back. “Your SEAL instructor, which last time I checked was me, has the discretion to decide specifically what the team leader’s duties will entail. I could see how you might’ve missed it. It’s in the fine print in the TL’s packet.”
Ashley sighed and shook her head, because that wasn’t even close to true, but then Jim turned to aim his next words at her.
“You’ll be getting a revised team leader packet,” he informed her, “with that change included.” He pulled out his phone and held it up as if Exhibit A. “I just wrote it and got Dunk to sign off on it,” he added. “So please do tell us, TL, what is your strategy for the O-course.”
This time Bull and Todd remained silent—they both respected his status as a SEAL officer, and took the military-like structure of the team seriously. But the look in their eyes said You don’t seriously expect her to have a real strategy, and We wouldn’t need a strategy if we weren’t on a team with a bunch of losers.
Ashley worked to make her voice sound even. Pleasant. Not as if she’d just fended off a sexual assault from an idiot. “Let Bull and Todd go first, so we’re not in their way, while Kenneth, Clark, and I help each other.”
Bull and Todd immediately started making noise about that, but Jim held up one hand, and somewhat miraculously, they shut up.
“That’s smart,” Jim said. “Pairing Bull and Todd up—letting the team members otherwise get out of each others’ way. Five—or six—people going over an obstacle like the wall or the cargo net at the exact same time isn’t easy or even possible, at least not on this smaller course.”
He widened his eyes at her, and in a sudden flash, she realized that she’d completely forgotten about the fact that because they were a team of five, they were allowed to ask their instructor to participate in team events. Which this was. Completely. Which made them a team of six, which meant…
Suddenly, she remembered him holding up six fingers, in that silent message he’d tried sending her across the mess hall. Dear God, she was so tired, she wasn’t thinking clearly…
“Bull’s with Todd, and Kenneth’s with Clark,” Jim prompted her now, “leaving…”
“You with me,” she finished. Thank God. Oh, please, God, don’t let Jim be a groper, too. But then she realized this team configuration only worked in theory. “What about your knees?”
“What about ’em?”
“Can you even… I mean… I don’t want you to…”
“Hell, yeah. On this course…? I’ll be fine.” He winced. “I know I say that a lot, but really. I got this, TL.”
Ashley gazed into his blue eyes. Please, don’t be lying about your knees, and please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t also be a douchebag and use this as an excuse to put your hands all over me…
He smiled wryly, almost as if he’d read her mind. And after glancing over at Bull, who’d moved off a bit to mutter privately to Todd, he lowered his voice to say, “I thought you were finally gonna…” He shook his head almost regretfully, and repeated what he’d told her before. “It’s okay to get angry,” but then added, “I promise I won’t let you kill him.”
She laughed her surprise at that. “Then, it doesn’t matter, because without killing him, nothing would change.”
“Hmmm. You actually believe that, don’t you?”
“I believe it, because it’s true,” she told him.
Jim nodded. “It’s not, because it’s not only about him—you’re part of this, too, but okay. We don’t have time to discuss that now, because we’re waiting on your command.”
Her command. She liked that word. It was strong and decisive, instead of wimpy and uncertain. She straightened her shoulders and raised her voice in a team-leaderly manner. “Let’s do it, then,” she commanded. “Let’s go.”