TWELVE
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.
Then came the thought he really couldn’t stomach.
Caryssa was going to leave. Go back to her life and a job that could put her in danger while he was hundreds of miles away, unable to do a damn thing about it. Not allowed to know.
Worry didn’t begin to cover what that did to him.
A hand came down on the opposite end of the table, a thump loud enough to bring everyone’s attention to Younger. He eyed the spread of food. “What’s for dessert tonight?”
“Nothing.” Stina didn’t look a bit bothered. “I’m not in my baking era anymore.”
Groans rose around the table, and Rome’s brow creased with real disappointment. “I miss your banana chocolate chip muffins.”
She leaned toward him and touched his jaw. “Maybe I’ll bring that recipe out of the archives just for you.”
The pair exchanged a sickeningly sweet smile that made Younger ball up his napkin and launch it their way. It bounced off the table to the floor.
After the laughter died down again, Stina jerked a thumb at Caryssa. “It’s Caryssa’s turn to be in her baking era. She made us dessert the other night.”
Every head turned. Rivers eyed her across the table.
“Why are you looking at me?” she demanded with a playful note in her voice he hadn’t heard in a long time.
“We all enjoy dessert here, Caryssa. Don’t we, guys?” Younger’s face was the picture of innocence.
A chorus of agreement rounded the table.
Caryssa looked straight at Rivers. “Do I look like Betty fucking Crocker to you?”
The table cracked up, and Rivers laughed with them, fascinated by this piece of Caryssa he’d never known. The woman he remembered didn’t bake. She considered putting takeout on a real plate gourmet.
Her mother used to despair over it, claiming Caryssa had spent too much time riding bikes with her brothers and not enough in the kitchen.
“You made us those little desserts, though,” Jolie pointed out, eyes dancing with delight. “In the mugs.”
“It was mug cakes.” Caryssa waved a dismissive hand. “No big deal.”
Rivers’s lips tilted at one corner, his body reacting to seeing her a little more agitated than usual. “Tell us what a mug cake is.”
Seeing she was outnumbered, she gave in. “You just dump everything into a mug—flour, sugar, cocoa, water, whatever—and microwave it. Ninety seconds and you’re done. It’s not exactly culinary artistry.”
“Microwave? Ninety seconds? I can get behind that.” Younger looked as if he was already planning to raid the pantry the second dinner ended.
More laughter rolled around the table, easy and warm. And Rivers watched Caryssa in the middle of it—genuinely laughing, shoulders loose as she teased Stina and Jolie. And he felt a sensation thicken in his chest.
This was her. The real her. The woman he’d fallen for in the first place, still there under years of grief and a steely armor he forced her to forge with his choice to walk away in order to save her.
Even after all she’d endured, she was still in there.
He saw it emerging in the way she laughed at a table full of strangers who included her as their family in the space of a few days. For a second, he let himself live in the moment without wrestling with the heavy guilt he’d borne every day of his life since.
She wasn’t wearing her FBI armor tonight either. Once she knew his arm was fine and the bleeding handled, she’d disappeared into her room to change. He’d expected her to come back in a clean blazer, perfect posture firmly in place.
Instead, she wore jeans and a soft green sweater that brought out her eyes. Her hair hung loose, the wavy ends brushing her collarbones.
The sight gave him a jolt.
She was the Caryssa he remembered. The woman who used to fall asleep with her head in his lap, a bowl of popcorn balanced beside her.
For one disorienting second, six years fell away.
“Okay,” Jolie got everyone’s attention once the laughter died down enough to hear herself speak. “We should do something after dinner. We’ve earned a game night, especially after everyone put in a hard day’s work.” She directed her attention to Monk, then to O and finally Rivers and Caryssa.
Cannon’s voice cut across the room from the opposite end of the table. “Actually, it’s team movie night.”
Jolie opened her mouth to argue, but he threw up a hand.
“Already decided.”
“But—” Stina began.
“No debate.”
A groan went up, from Rivers included.
Caryssa looked around, confusion on her face.
“What are we watching?” Stina’s eyes flashed, prepared to battle Cannon for the remote control.
He was already shoving away from the table, plate in hand. “Doesn’t matter. I’m picking, and nobody’s allowed to complain about my choice.”
The room dissolved into a low buzz of protest and negotiations that wouldn’t change Cannon’s mind.
Rome leaned over to Rivers. “Ten bucks says he picks that awful alien movie again.”
With a low groan, he shook his head. “I’m not willing to take that bet.”
He leaned in to catch Caryssa’s eye and suddenly the room faded around them as if the two of them were enclosed in a perfect, private bubble. “You in?”
She hesitated, and he held his breath. He wouldn’t let her refuse and go to her room, shutting herself away from everyone.
Away from him.
The crease between her brows smoothed. “I’m in.”
He sucked in a full breath, feeling more himself than he’d been in years too.
He’d take movie night with the woman he loved. He’d take teasing at the dinner table with his brothers-in-arms…he’d take every single piece of Caryssa she was willing to hand back to him.
One night at a time. For as long as she’d let him have her.
* * * * *
Apparently, the downfall of an elite SEAL team was going to be ice cream, bad movies and women with access to liquor.
Caryssa had insisted on cleaning up the dinner mess since others had prepared the meal. Reid hung back to help, and Townie packed the dishwasher, fitting every last pot. When they were finished, she followed the men through the underground base, moving toward the echo of voices.
When she stepped into a wide, sprawling space carved into the concrete, she stopped in her tracks.
Reid touched her elbow. “Everything okay?”
She blinked. “When they said movie night, I expected a flat screen and a couple pillows on the floor.”
He chuckled and squeezed her arm lightly before entering the space.
The big room opened up in front of her—sofas and recliners arranged in a loose semicircle and a projector already humming against the far wall. The entire place felt less like a bunker and more like a place built for a huge family.