Free Legal Legacy (Surrendering Charlotte Chronicles) by Kimball Lee Page A

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