Page 10 of Trusting a Warrior

“You’re better off without us. You really are.”

They snickered together, and she said, “I wish moving on was that simple, though. I was with Rhys for ten years.”

He glanced at her. “Wow. High school sweethearts?”

“Sort of.” She bit her lip. How could she explain to a stranger everything Rhys was—and wasn’t—to her?

Finally she settled on, “My brother died suddenly when I was fourteen. Rhys and I were friends, and afterward, we clung to each other. As time went on, it was easy to convince ourselves it was love.”

“But it wasn’t?”

“Well, let me put it this way. I’ve had a more meaningful conversation with you this past hour than I’ve had with Rhys in years.” She shrugged. “Looking back, we were going through the motions, that’s all.”

Needing something to do with her hands, she fished a hair tie out of her pocket and pulled her hair into a ponytail, aware of Geo’s sympathetic gaze.

“The end of a ten-year relationship is no joke. I’m sorry.”

His quiet sincerity was a balm to her ragged emotions. “Thanks.”

They strolled on in a companionable silence, their shoulders so close together, they almost touched. Lani glanced at his moonlit profile. “So. Who were you drinking with tonight?”

His lips tightened into a thin line, and for a moment, she didn’t think he’d answer. Then he grunted, “A teammate. Died one year ago today.”

She winced at the pain threading through the terse words. “Aww, shit, Geo. I’m—”

“Yeah,” he interrupted. “Me, too.”

He didn’t want the pity. Well, she could relate. Painful memories surged, of morbid curiosity, intrusive questions, or worse, judgmental silences followed by disgust. After a while, she’d stopped mentioning Tyler’s death to anyone, leaving Rhys to carry that particular burden alone...

“One-year anniversaries are hard,” was all she said. “I know.”

After a long pause, Geo exhaled slowly. “Yeah, I imagine you do.”

“How long did you and your teammate serve together?”

“Oh, God, off and on for ten years. I actually met Cade before I went to BUD/S, before I was even a SEAL.”

“Yeah?” Instinctively, she kept her tone light, encouraging, remembering her own clawing need to talk to someone, anyone, about who Tyler was, and her desperation not to define him by his death. “How’d that happen?”

Geo shrugged, although a tiny smile played about his lips. “You really wanna know? It’s kind of a cool story.”

In answer, she dropped to sitting in the sand and looked up at him expectantly.

Grinning now, Geo sank down next to her and lifted one knee to drape his wrist over it. The pose drew his jeans tight across his lap and powerful thighs, the sight of both drying Lani’s mouth up. She gulped, then thought, Fuck it. There was no law against appreciating a beautiful man, and it’d sure give her a nice memory to hang on to during the long, lonely nights ahead.

When he didn’t immediately say anything, she prompted, “So ten years ago, you were—”

“Twenty years old, and convinced I knew everything.”

“You weren’t a SEAL yet?”

“No, but I was in the Navy, had been for going on two years. In those days, you enlisted the regular way and then applied for Naval Special Warfare. Now you’re sent to a bootcamp that feeds directly into BUD/S, but when I first went in, you had to apply and then wait to hear.”

“That must’ve been hard, the waiting.”

“Shit, you have no idea,” Geo said fervently. “After two years with no word, I’d pretty much convinced myself it was never gonna happen. Then one day I was called into my department head’s office. He had some news for me.”

“You’d made it!”