Chapter 15 #2
Then she looked back. Just a single glance over her shoulder, but the air between them shifted, snapped tight.
Her eyes shone under the bright terminal lights, gratitude flickering there first…
then something deeper. Something that hit him low and hard.
Something that made every muscle in his body lock, like he’d taken a round straight to the chest.
Need. Raw. Unmasked. Undeniable.
Just for a breath. Just enough to wreck him.
Then she blinked, armor sliding back into place, and turned away, her palm never leaving Flint’s fur as she moved. Bear’s jaw clenched. His pulse kicked hard enough to bruise the inside of his ribs.
She wasn’t gone yet. That look…that moment…was a crack in all her defenses.
A crack big enough for him to get through if he used his voice, spoke his truth.
The ride to Ipanema was fast, with an arm’s-length security escort, nothing unusual. The SEALs sprawled across the seats, laughing and talking like nothing about this city held ghosts. Like this was any other insertion.
It was true that he almost died here. But he’d been in many places, faced down a lot of enemies with the possibility of death. Saving Zorro’s family, his nieces was what stood out to him, not the blood or the pain, or almost losing his life. This is who they were. What they did.
Something else stood out to him as well: Bailee showing up at his hospital room.
The touch of her hands in his hair, the way she soaked into his skin, the feel of her longing, her need to make sure he was all right.
That was the crack she’d opened up, and it had given him the courage to fight for more.
Bailee sat pressed against the window, watching the coastline race by, her reflection carved in shadow, unreadable. Every few minutes, her breath would hitch, not enough for anyone else to notice, but Bear felt it like pressure in his own ribs.
He wanted to reach across the seat. Wanted to take her hand. Wanted to anchor her to the now instead of the nightmare she was sliding into. But she wasn’t ready for that. He knew that before he even tried.
When the SUV pulled into the circle drive of the Hotel Orquídea Atlantica, Zorro grinned like a man walking straight into good memories. Bear felt Bailee flinch beside him.
Subtle. But not to him.
Inside, check-in took minutes. JSOC covered everything. Rooms on the same secure floor. Bear picked up his keycard, felt the old tension settle into his bones, the kind he only got when something important was slipping away and he didn’t know how to stop it.
Bailee took her key without looking at him.
“Adjoining rooms,” Zorro said with a wink.
Protocol. Safety. Proximity.
Bailee nodded, swallowed, and walked ahead.
Bear followed.
She reached her door, slid the keycard, the soft beep cutting through the hush of the hallway. She would have slipped inside without a backward glance but Bear’s voice broke low behind her.
“Flint. Go.”
The dog moved instantly, trotting to her side, pressing himself against her leg with quiet, instinctive devotion.
Bailee stopped.
Her hand slid into Flint’s ruff, fingers curling like someone grounding herself against a shifting world. A breath left her chest, small, unintentional, soft enough to almost miss.
Then she looked back, a fierce search for his gaze as the air changed. Stirred. Tightened.
Her eyes held him, lit by the hotel’s warm light, wide in a way she never allowed, something unguarded breaking through the armor she’d layered on in the plane, in the SUV, in the elevator.
There was no gratitude this time around. She glowed from within with a light that went deeper, shone brighter. Like something inside her recognized him in a place beyond language.
The part of her that ran. The part of her that remembered. The part of her that wanted.
It punched through his control, a clean, unshielded hit straight to the center of him.
Bear’s breath locked somewhere between heart and throat.
He didn’t breathe again until she looked away.
It had been a flicker, no more than a heartbeat, but it lit him like lightning across open sky.
Hope.
Unvarnished.
Fierce in its fragility.
A glimpse of the woman beneath her shadows, the one who’d reached for him on that rooftop without thought, who’d touched his hair like it held meaning, who’d prayed for him in a language older than war.
A beginning, so thin it barely had shape but real as pulse. As breath. As the path between them.
She blinked, shutters slamming down, armor rising. But her hand stayed in Flint’s fur as she slipped inside, the door clicking closed behind her like a soft, deliberate goodbye.
Bear let the breath go at last, slow and heavy.
The crack in her walls was small. But it was there, and he would meet her through it, not as a warrior. Not as her shadow. But as the man who saw her.
“Yeah, yeah. You have a dog advantage, you fucker,” Zorro groused. “All I had was my charm.”
“That’s running thin,” Buck shoved his shoulder. But that grin never wavered.
D-Day stopped next to him, the team silently crowding him like an old, comforting blanket. “You finally found your voice. Don’t lose it now.”
“She’ll come around,” Buck said. “Memories can sometimes be…overwhelming, but she showed up to your hospital room, man. She’s got it bad for our Teddy Bear.”
“You call me that again, Buckaroo, and you’re going to see the grizzly come out.”
Buck chuckled. “Fair enough.”
“Sure,” Professor said. “We’ve seen the way she looks at you. Welcome to winning over a tough and worthy SEAL babe. It’s about time you took something for yourself, Dakota.”
Zorro nodded, his eyes glinting, his smile widening. “I rather like Teddy Bear. It fits so well.” He gestured with his head. “I’m going up to the pool deck to swim. If you want to join me, I’ll save you a lap lane.”
Bear grunted. “She’s still a fucking dick ache, but she’s always been right here,” he whispered, covering his heart. “I might take you up on that.”
Blitz’s eyes widened. “Are you two…you know? Can he do that kind of thing with our liaison? Isn’t that against the rules?”
Gator chuckled and slung his arm around Blitz’s neck. “Oh, clueless one. Let’s go talk about the birds and the bees.”
“What the hell do insects and fowl have to do with anything?” Blitz deadpanned, then laughed softly.
The team shuffled off to their rooms, but Joker didn’t move.
“It seems that BUD/S did you good. We got ourselves two fine officers to be, and you found your voice.” Joker clapped him on the shoulder.
“Sometimes talk is just talk, but then other times, actions speak louder than words. It did with Pippa, and our Bailee already has her sights set on you. Life wouldn’t be the same without my wife, so keep yourself sharp, and don’t let her spiral.
” He walked past, then stopped. “I sometimes wonder if that old adage applies to you and your Great Spirit. Don’t they work in mysterious ways? ”
Then he was gone.
He opened his door and went inside. His room was identical to the one he stayed in before. Sleek wood. Soft gold light. The distant thrum of the Atlantic against the glass. The connecting door sat dead center between them, closed but unlocked if either of them turned the handle.
Bear stood there a long moment, listening. No sound on the other side of that shared wall. She was slipping. He could feel it as surely as he’d ever felt danger. If he didn’t find a way to reach her soon, she was going to drown in whatever was waiting in this city.
He pressed his palm to the connecting door. That wasn’t going to happen, not when he could see something stretching out between them. Sunlight, darkness, gray, none of that mattered. Words were powerful. Actions made all the difference. Losing her wasn’t an option.
Not a goddamned option.
He closed his eyes, just letting himself breathe her in through the barrier.
“Bailee…” he murmured under his breath, voice low and fierce. “You’re not alone. Not this time.”
Bear knew, with the same certainty he felt right before bullets flew, everything would be decided here. He would either claim her or lose her to whatever fear was locking her down.
He would break himself open for her, give her what she needed, give his heart and his soul because he couldn’t do anything else.
He’d walked the edge before, but he couldn’t rush her. Patience and time were his allies, but they might not have the luxury of either.
He had sent Flint with her because she’d been too stubborn, too overwhelmed, too afraid to let him close. She hadn’t been able to take the comfort she wanted so badly she could barely breathe around it.
He’d known.
He always knew.
She pressed her fingers to her eyes, swallowing a sob she wasn’t about to let loose.
What was she doing to him? What was she doing to herself?
She hated that she’d let it get to this, shutting him out all over again. But the memories flooded her, and she couldn’t seem to find her balance, and she knew she could lean on him. Always. He would let her lean, but how was she going to get through all of this if she let herself be weak?
Bailee sat on the sofa in the suite in nothing but a tank and panties, Flint curled against her body.
She was grateful for the dog. He was comfort, warmth, presence in a fur-lined package, a lifeline to Bear, a clear message that he was with her, even if she couldn’t allow him to be.
Hours passed, the distant thrum of Ipanema filtering through the glass like heartbeat and memory.
Flint shifted and she closed her eyes, allowed the silence to swallow her whole.
Bear was giving her space, gentle as a man like him could be, and somehow that was worse. Sweeter. Devastating. He hadn’t pushed. He hadn’t demanded. He hadn’t stepped into the spiral she’d thrown herself into.
He’d just…let her go.
The worst part?
She missed him already.
She curled forward, forehead against her hands.