Legal Legacy (Surrendering Charlotte Chronicles) (8 page)

“I understand that you
will not
break me or my brother, Master Chief, sir,” Atticus said, staring into the ravaged face of his commanding officer. The man was cruel and sadistic, his father had warned him about this particular commander. And fuck if he wasn’t the Master Chief who Atticus and Holden would be answering to for the long, grueling months of training that lay ahead. 

“Now see, it’s interesting to me that you call him your brother. Tell me about that, Hale, how is Bly related to you?
Although, come to think of it, I can pretty well figure that one out on my own. There wasn’t a sailor alive who didn’t have your sweet little mommy’s even sweeter little ass plastered above his bunk. We certainly enjoyed every inch of her black haired, blue-eyed, creamy skinned beauty. And if I recall that magazine article was in Bly’s daddy’s magazine. Nature must have taken its course at some point during that photo-shoot, I sure would’ve like to have been a fly on the wall.” The Master Chief said, leaning back in his chair, his eyes narrowing to menacing slits as he waited to see what Atticus would do.

“Respectfully sir,
what my mother does with her ass is none of your fucking business… sir,” Atticus said calmly. He had already begun to calculate how he would make the Master Chief beg for forgiveness in the not too distant future. Finn was wrong, this asshole’s dedication to see him fail wouldn’t be a roadblock in his quest to become a special operative; it would fuel his absolute determination to succeed. He would not let himself be provoked and he would not give in to weakness of any kind. He would be what Finn had been in his chosen vocation, the best of the best.

“I’m gonna let your act of insolence slide just this once, Hale. Now
, change into fatigues, grab a sixty pound pack, hit the asphalt and start marching. By the way Hale, if you ever speak to me like that again, I will make life hard for you and harder for your brother,” the officer said, he was going to enjoy breaking Finn Hale’s son, it would make his life complete.

Day one of BUD/S training was the easiest, the mental and physical assault got tougher and more relentlessly torturous every single day. By the end of the f
irst week the handful of men who were left would agree that the only good day of training was the one they were too weary to remember.

JP’s son
Jack was in training as well but in a separate group, and the Master Chief in charge was just as hard on him. That was the way it went for young men who came to SEAL training with the yoke of their fathers glory around their necks. They were known as legacies and they were expected to handle far more pain and punishment than those who were new to the teams.

Att
icus and Holden only ran into Jack during the brief intervals allotted for meals. And they literally did run into him just as the other candidates scrambled over one another in a mad rush to the mess tents. The men arrived weary and worn out and hurriedly gulped as many calories as they could before the officer on duty ordered them back to the beach or the asphalt or the dive tank. It required a monumental effort not to vomit ten minutes later when they were executing the nearly impossible tasks they were given.

The candidates spent six to eight weeks in pre-training and now they had been at the Naval Air Sta
tion Coronado for twelve days. The men who would make it, (and there would only be six out of the fifty candidates who arrived together) would build an excess of muscle tissue and shed all but a small percentage of fat. In the middle of the night they would be roused from their bunks, allowed time to dress for the elements and dropped into the frigid water miles out in the ocean. Those who made it back without help and without ringing the bell on the beach to signal defeat would be among the elite who made it through the initial six-months to that merciless destroyer of men known as Hell Week. 

*

Finn had bizarre bursts of energy as the dozen or so small tumors in his brain grew and wandered, invading tissue and wrapping around nerves. The pressure caused bursts of erratic behavior, both good and bad. There were weeks of wild nonstop sex when Finn sent everything on the kitchen table crashing to the floor as he lifted Charlotte up and they didn’t bother to muffle their cries of pleasure. Other days they crumpled to the ground and made love in the grass behind the cottage. Often they drove to the beach where Finn had first held Charlotte against him on his surfboard and they had known that they were each other’s future. They lay on a blanket spread out on the sand and Finn pointed toward the horizon and asked Charlotte if she could see the end of the world across the glassy smooth Pacific. One day he recalled how he’d loved to give Charlotte an erotically close shave and so she stood perfectly still balancing one foot on the cold tile floor and the other on the edge of the claw-foot tub. But when he attempted it his fingers had gone numb and he cut her and then dropped the razor and looked at her with utter defeat in his eyes. She told him it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter at all, and she filled the tub with warm water and scented oil and she climbed in and pulled him in with her.

He leaned back, his broad back resting against her breasts and she wrapped her legs around his sublimely perfect body. Her hands travelled over the elegantly contoured muscles, her fingers lingering and tracing tattoos
and scars that told the story of his life, committing every part of him, of their love, to memory. She wondered how long she could stand the feeling of a chainsaw cutting away at her heart, scattering pieces to the wind that would never be found or pieced back together.

September passed and the air cooled and Finn began to read and cast aside several books a day. He rose before dawn for three days in a row and planted a bed of roses in the back yard of the cottage. On the weekends he kicked a soccer ball with Charlie and sat in the sun listening as Hadley described the violent world of motorcycle gangs. Atticus ha
d finished his indoctrination in Illinois in six weeks’ time and he was back in San Diego at NAS Coronado to start his Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training. He called and visited his dad as often as he could but each time Finn grew agitated and argued violently with him over his decision to leave the Naval Academy to become a SEAL.

At the end of October when the leaves began to fall around them as they rested on chaise lounges near the bed of roses, Finn held Hadley’s hand and began to ramble. He told enchanting stories of his life with Charlotte and his children, and horrifying tales of his time as an assassin, and then he was quiet and he napped for hours and eventually days at a time.

In Finn’s mind life and love and joy were endless, his thoughts scrambled about and events stumbled over themselves in their race to be remembered. And what an undeniably fortunate man he was to have lived such a life and to have been gifted so many shining souls to call family and friends. He could see heaven and it was indeed splendid. His heaven was a cottage in Surrey and he felt himself there, he was a contented man watching his children play in the garden. In a split second he was carrying Charlotte up the narrow staircase and she was laughing wholeheartedly with her head thrown back. He laid on their big, beautiful bed and then he was next to her, undressing her, inside her and he realized that Bly was with them. Charlotte’s hands reached up to pull Bly down beside them even as her lips lingered on Finn’s. Bly lay his head next to Charlotte’s on the pillows and Finn closed his eyes and rested his weary soul knowing that Charlotte was happy and in good hands.

Outside the dream he spoke to Charlotte without knowing that he had, his eyes were hazy and she pressed her ear to his lips to be sure and catch his words.

“Make a life with him, my love, he loves you more than you can imagine, be happy,” he said and he smiled and closed his eyes as his mind drifted back to the bucolic English cottage. He saw the truth suddenly and oh, how he wished they had stayed in Surrey and raised their children there. Charlotte had always wanted her children to speak with a British accent, but they’d sold the cottage to Jude and Jude fancied himself in love with Charlotte. That had been clear to Finn from the very beginning, but Jude wasn't the man for her, what he felt for Charlotte was lust not love, and that would never do.

She was a woman to be loved and cherished and Charlie would need a father devoted to both him and his mother. He needed Charlotte to know that, to know that Bly was the right man, that he had suffered for Charlotte and now his time to bask in her love had arrived. Charlotte loved him and he loved her truly, he was Finn’s choice to take his place, but he couldn’t remember if he had already told her or not. Had he warned her that Jude would come for her and try to make her love him? Jude was a fool if he imagined that Charlotte would ever love him, she loved Finn and she loved Bly and as heaven drew him closer he understood that it was just fine. It had been written in the stars long ago, Charlotte was the sun and Finn and
Bly were sustained by her warmth, they existed because of her. He should tell her not let herself be pulled out of their perfect orbit by his brother… had he told her to beware of Jude, did she already know?

“Jude,” he said before he fell silent and travelled back again to the cottage where Charlotte waited for him and pleasure was intense and love for a woman was a gift from God.

“Jude?” Charlotte asked shocked at Finn’s words, but his eyes stayed closed and he didn’t speak again until the very end.

*

Although Finn had slept soundly through the night Charlotte had tossed and turned. She was restless and she spent one minute curled next to him only to move to the far side of the bed and then return to his side as the night wore on. But she made sure that either her arms or legs or toes were always in contact with his hot skin or that her fingers were lost in his long silky hair. She got up and went into the bathroom as dawn broke through the wavy window-glass and Georgina and Hadley smiled sleepily as they came into the room. They had moved in with Charlotte when Finn stopped speaking and it had all gone quickly downhill. He had been unresponsive for five days and he wasn’t suffering, the caregivers from hospice assured them. Five short days were nothing at all, a blessing really, as Finn’s breathing became shallow and his heartbeat slowed.

Georgina set a basin of warm water on the bedside table every morning and spoke sweet words to her son as she gently sponged his cheeks, his forehead,
his beautiful lips. Hadley climbed on the bed and sat cross-legged looking into her father’s face, and she scrolled through Charlotte’s iPod searching for a song that might elicit some response from him.

Charlotte padded quietly across the room and stood at the foot of the bed when a certain song played on the IPod and Finn opened his eyes and looked right at her and spoke two words.

“My love!” He whispered and the song filled the room as Finn’s soul left the earth.

“Oh Mom!” Hadley cried, tears washing over her cheeks as her fingers fumbled, trying to stop the music.

“No, let it play,” Charlotte said as all the color drained from her face and Georgina wept. “He wanted us to hear the words and understand… he wanted me to know.”

And so the song played and after that morning Charlotte would never listen to it again without reliving the saddest moment of her life.

“If I could reach the stars, pull one down for you, shine it on my heart, so you could see the truth. That this love I have inside is everything it seems, but for now I find it’s only in my dreams. And I can change the world, I will be the sunlight in your universe. You would think my love was really something good, Baby if I could change the world. If I could be king, even for a day, I’d take you as my queen; I’d have it no other way. And our love would rule this kingdom we have made, until then I’d be a fool wishing for the day, that I can change the world
.”

*

Charlie
spent those last difficult days with Bly and Evangeline. Bly had settled him into Atticus’s room earlier in the week when Finn’s condition took a turn for the worse. Bly and Evangeline had done their very best to ease the boy’s anxiety and make him as happy as possible. Evangeline rose from her bed early that day and as she sat on the balcony looking out over the ocean she spotted a dozen large gray fins breaking through the waves. Spotting a school of whatever they were, sharks, she supposed, was an unusual sight for a woman who’d spent most of her life in land-locked Paris. Sharks or not, they were an astonishing sight, luminescent and shimmering as they circled just off shore. She woke Charlie and led him out onto the balcony and stood holding his hand. Bly joined them and Charlie looked up at him with unshed tears in his eyes and Bly knelt down and hugged him. Charlie wrapped his thin arms around Bly’s neck and held on as if his life depended on it. The three of them stayed on the terrace awash in the warm California light sharing a moment so poignant that no words were needed.

*

Atticus had been in the ocean for three hours before the sun rose on his thirteenth day of training and his brain had narrowed all conscious thought to simple ‘fight or flight’ scenarios. His team was swimming back to shore from so many miles out they were no longer counting and no one cared. Swimming was all that mattered as Atticus navigated, checking the compass strapped to his wrist and swimming east praying that he could outlast the exhaustion that gripped his body. He and Holden and the rest of their team adjusted their course and swam toward a far off shoreline that had just come into view. A moment later a dozen fins broke the surface and moved toward Atticus but he didn’t care, let the sharks make an end of him, what would it matter? His thoughts had been on Finn all night long, stories he remembered, adventures they had shared. He was aware of Holden yelling at him to get back to in the group but the first swift fins were too close and when the slick gray bodies bumped him he was separated from his team. Then they were everywhere, surrounding him, their noses rose out of the water, their dark eyes glistening, their mouths a swipe of perpetual grin. The dolphins were so close that Atticus reached out and stroked two of them and then they swarmed, eager for his touch. They whistled and clicked and swam along with him, their noses pointing the way home.