Page 51 of Deep Cover

Rivers had walked away from a bomb blast with a torn-up arm and the memory of a kiss he still felt everywhere. After that, dinner with the Blackout Sierra team almost felt anticlimactic.

When he and Caryssa walked into the dining room to an argument over who was hogging the dinner roll basket, he couldn’t help but feel his chest tighten. Just a normal day on a ghost ops base, and damn, it was good to be here.

Every eye snapped to them, and the first question wasn’t about the bomb at all.

“Who stitched up the medic?” Rorke called across the room.

Rivers lifted his forearm. “Just needed a few butterfly bandages.”

His gaze met Rome’s across the room. They didn’t need words. Rome hadn’t gotten the chance to walk him through defusing the device, but his warning had made Rivers treat the package differently.

Suspecting a bomb was one thing. Knowing was another.

Movement at the far end of the table caught his attention. Jolie was waving Caryssa over.

Apparently, that end had become couples’ territory. Rome and Stina sat close together, while Monk and Jolie had barely left daylight between their chairs.

Stina smiled and waved them over too.

Them.

Rivers was still deciding whether he’d imagined that part when Caryssa’s fingers brushed the back of his hand on her way past.

She took the open chair beside Jolie. Then Stina pointed to the seat next to her and looked directly at Rivers.

Well, shit.

He glanced at Cannon, but their CO was deep in conversation with O, either oblivious to the new seating arrangement or smart enough to stay out of it.

They arrived late to the meal, and dishes of potatoes and roast beef were passed their way. Across the table, he met Caryssa’s gaze. Her luminous hazel eyes, a mixture of greens and browns and golds, seemed softer somehow. As if nearly dying in that parking lot helped assuage the pain of him disappearing from her life.

He gave her a small nod to go ahead. Caryssa filled her plate, passing dishes around the table with an ease he hadn’t expected.

That ease followed her into conversation.

There was none of the stiffness he’d seen between her and the women before. She asked about their days, listening attentively as Jolie talked about a class toward her psychiatry degree.

Rivers found himself watching her smile.

Not the careful one she gave colleagues or the rare one he managed to coax out of her. A real one. Relaxed and unguarded.

For the first time, he could picture Caryssa at this table without imagining the day she’d have to leave it.

She laughed when Stina launched into the latest disaster with her crochet project.

At that point, Rome leaned in. “That thing was godawful. I thought she’d made a matted poodle.”

She slapped Rome lightly on the arm, mouth open in affront. “It was a placemat!”

Rome raised both brows, giving Monk a pointed look that had both women laughing.

Then Stina peered at Rivers, all traces of humor leaving her face. “You’re both okay, right?”

“Totally fine,” he assured her.

Caryssa waved her fork in the air. “Just another day on the job,” she downplayed their near-miss too.

He caught her glance again, wondering how many close calls she’d had over the years. He hated every one he hadn’t been there to prevent.