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“I’m kind of a blood ball connoisseur.” Lennon flipped her shiny hair over her shoulder with a little smirk. “I’ve even played before.”

I tore my gaze from the mayhem to gape at her. “You played blood ball? With them?” I gestured incredulously to the former SEAL team currently smashing each other to bits.

Emma laughed. “Lennon didn’t just play. She won.”

My mouth dropped open. “How?”

“It wasn’t my athletic prowess, I can tell you that,” Lennon admitted. “I outsmarted them, that’s all. It wasn’t that impressive.”

“That’s all?” I repeated. “That’s all?” I shook my head. “No, Lennon, that’s really fucking impressive.”

Lennon blinked her big brown eyes at me in surprise. Emma gave her a playful flick on her shoulder. “We keep telling her that.”

“When you’ve been called stupid your whole life, sometimes it’s hard to believe anything else. I’m working on it,” she said quietly. Then she gave her shoulders a little shimmy like she was literally shaking it off and grinned at me. “You want me to explain the rules to you so you know what’s going on?”

“There are rules?” I deadpanned.

She laughed. “There are indeed, and they’re actually pretty simple because there aren’t a lot of them. The setup is your basic croquet layout, but they don’t care about getting through the wickets in order. See those two poles?”

She pointed to a pole with a green flag at one end of the field, and a pole with a red flag at the opposite end. I nodded.

“The green one is Pole A,” Lennon explained. “That’s where they start. The red one is Pole Z, the home pole. The goal is to get from Pole A to Pole Z before anyone else, with more points than anyone else. Each wicket is five points. Hitting another player’s ball is ten points. Reaching Pole Z before anyone else is twenty points. Making someone bleed is fifty points. The game ends when the first person reaches the home pole.”

“Okay, but how do they know who won? They can’t possibly be keeping track of who bleeds when.”

“That’s what the camera is for.” Lennon pointed to the tripod. “It keeps them honest.”

“You should see them play in summer,” Emma said. “It’s even better.”

“How so?” I asked.

She wiggled her eyebrows. “No shirts.”

I laughed, but it quickly turned to a groan when Seb tussled with Holly again. I pressed my hands to my cheeks, unable to look away, and hating every second of it. “I can’t not look. Why does he keep aiming for Holly like that? It doesn’t seem to be a winning strategy.”

An understatement if ever there was one. Holly was vicious. I could respect that—watching her take down men who were nearly double her size was awe-inspiring—but I cringed every time that viciousness was directed at Seb. Even if it did look like he was asking for it.

Lennon cocked her head. “They all have distinct strategies of playing, I’ve noticed. Jeremiah and Holly are very calculating. They count points and aim for anyone in the lead. Liam is defensive. He’s less likely to attack physically, and more likely to send one of their balls far away. Mateo likes to have fun, so he’s a little chaotic but so much fun to watch. And Seb, he’s…well⁠—”

She broke off as Seb collided with Liam and we all groaned in sympathy.

“Reckless,” I whispered. “He’s reckless.”

It wasn’t a side of him I’d ever seen before. Sure, he loved adrenaline-inducing sports like rock climbing and mountain biking, but he was always careful. I felt safer with Seb in a climbing harness a thousand feet up a sheer cliff than with most people driving on the interstate. But Seb played blood ball like a hippo in a river of crocodiles. He was out for blood, and it didn’t seem to matter to him if the blood was theirs or his. It was almost like he wanted to get hurt.

“He’s insane,” I said as he launched a surprise attack on Holly, who was, predictably, not at all surprised. I winced. “Oh, my god, she’s going to kill him.”

“They don’t get any points for broken bones,” Lennon said, like that was reassuring.

I shot her a look. “He’s not going to have any blood left when this is over.”

“It’s October. Seb is always a little crazy in October. They know that. They won’t let him take it too far.” Emma squeezed my hand. “He’ll be okay. They always are.”

My brows pushed together. “What does October have to do with it?”

“Seb’s last mission. That was October, right? Or was it November?” Emma pursed her lips, thinking. “No, it was definitely October, because Liam flew out to D.C. to see him. He called Blair on Halloween so she could show him her costume.”

Lennon stood up and stretched, her eyes on the field. “Jeremiah called it survivor’s guilt. That makes sense. When your whole team dies and you make it out with barely a scratch, that’s gotta mess with you, right?” She sighed. “Poor guy.”