Free Can't Hold Back by Serena Bell Page B

look. “You try accepting it. It
hurts.
”
    “I know. But it
is
something you can learn to do. That’s the basis of a lot of pain-reduction techniques. I’m leading this morning meditation cir—”
    “I don’t meditate.”
    “You also didn’t want to do PT,” she pointed out.
    “I don’t meditate.”
    It had been a tough sell to the other men, too, at first. She’d meditated alone the first four mornings after she’d stared her “circle.” But she’d stuck it out, and they’d begun to show up.
    “The Seattle Seahawks do it. And I just read an article about Marines who’ve started doing it. To help with battle strain.”
    He gave her a look, as if to say,
What the fuck does that have to do with me?
    “Three guys came this morning, including Griff.”
    His eyebrows went up.
    “Yep, Griff,” she said smugly. “I think you should try it. It’ll help you feel like you have a better relationship with the pain.”
    “See? It’s when you say stuff like that that I can’t take you seriously at all.
A better relationship with the pain?
”
    “Just try it.”
    He shook his head. “No, thanks. I’ll do it my way, thank you very much.”
    She shrugged and got a mouthful of water for her trouble. “Are you going all the way across?”
    “Was thinking of trying.”
    He fell in beside her. They swam side by side, and that was good, too. There was the quiet, and the steady, peaceful rhythm, and then there was his company, which should have unsettled her but felt like a tether. She’d never liked the deep, dark middle of the lake much, but with him next to her, it bothered her less.
    They were closing in on the far shore when she realized she’d lost him and turned to see him struggling.
    She swam swiftly back, and he grabbed for her, but she moved out of his way, afraid he’d pull her under in his panic and drown both of them. From her high school lifeguarding days, she remembered: There was nothing more dangerous than a panicked swimmer. “You’re okay,” she said, soothingly. “You’re okay.”
    “It hurts.” He was flailing like he’d never swum a stroke in his life.
    “You’re okay. Turn on your back.”
    He was beyond hearing her, still reaching desperately for her.
    “Nate!” She wasn’t sure where the drill-sergeant voice had come from. “Turn. On. Your. Back.”
    Damn it, she’d slap him if she had to.
    He flopped himself onto his back and, bit by bit, stilled his struggles.
    For a moment, the only sound was his breathing, fast and rough, then slowing gradually as he registered that he was going to be okay.
    She had to take a minute to calm her own breathing, too. Only then did she let herself realize how far away from shore they still were. How big the sky was over their heads, their two little selves in this blue vastness. Note to self: Maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing on earth to swim all alone out here.
    “What happened?” she asked.
    He’d been caught off guard by his pain, the way he’d described earlier. “I panicked, and I kept going under.” There was a kind of wonder in his voice. “That’s never happened to me. I’m a strong swimmer.”
    “I think it can happen to anyone if they panic.”
    They swam slowly to shore and climbed out of the water. She led him into the sunny clearing, where she liked to sit on a big log and dry out.
    “You see? I can’t kayak by myself with a little kid. I’ll scare the crap out of him. And what if I need to rescue
him,
and I panic like that again?”
    “If you had to, you’d do it. You let me help you because I was there, but if the situation had been reversed, you would have snapped out of it.”
    He shook his head. “I don’t know.
Fuck.
”
    “It hurts?”
    “Will you tap?”
    They were alone in a clearing that was so quiet and peaceful and beautiful it was like a chapel. Tall trees, firs and cedars, towered overhead, but there was enough of a space here that sunlight filtered down and warmed the air, warmed the