Chapter 6
“Jesus, last night was such a fucking mistake.”
The words echoed in his head like a broken record, each repetition driving the knife of regret deeper into his chest. He’d replayed that moment a thousand times, searching for some way he could have handled it differently, some magical combination of words that would have preserved both their dignity and their careers.
But there had been no time to think, no opportunity to process the shock of seeing her walk out of Logan’s office.
One moment, he’d hoped to see her again at that same bar where they’d discovered their connection, and ask her to dinner.
Suddenly, she was his colleague, his teammate, and someone whose professional reputation shouldn’t be romantically tangled with his.
He’d seen a few teammates in the military take hits to their careers when they’d crossed fraternization rules, especially if the romance ended badly.
He’d witnessed some female service members treated unfairly for doing nothing more than what their male counterparts had done.
The military made great strides, but misogyny was alive and well.
Logan had just started building his team, so Todd had no idea how others would react.
He had been with Logan for a couple of months already and knew the care his boss was taking to build a solid team of Keepers.
The last thing he wanted to do was to disappoint Logan, his new teammates, or have any situation that could come back to bite him in the ass.
In truth, he was concerned about her, as well.
He especially didn’t want any problems to arise for Sadie either.
Oldest child syndrome. That was what his sister, Abbie, called it when they last spoke. “You’ve been shouldering responsibility for everyone else’s mistakes since you were five years old, Todd. When are you going to let yourself just... be human?”
Growing up as the eldest of three meant constantly thinking three steps ahead, anticipating every way his younger siblings could get into trouble, and positioning himself to minimize the fallout.
The military had only reinforced those protective instincts. While other Marines let loose during shore leave, Todd stayed sober to ensure his teammates returned to base safely. While others took risks, he was the steady constant, the one who commanders relied on to keep everyone focused and alive.
Always being the responsible one had created instincts that ran deeper than conscious thought.
When faced with a situation that could spiral out of control, his immediate response was damage containment, regardless of the personal cost. He easily made split-second decisions when it came to missions and actions, but when faced with fast-paced emotional moments, he’d always floundered, saying the wrong thing. And I certainly did that with Sadie.
But the cost had been Sadie’s trust, her respect, and possibly even her willingness to work alongside him without the careful distance that now characterized every interaction.
He rolled out of bed and padded to the small window overlooking the compound. In the moonlight, he thought of her just two doors down. Was she sleeping peacefully, or was she lying awake, wondering what kind of man could transform from tender lover to cold stranger in the span of a few hours?
The kind of man who’s spent his entire life carefully planning for every contingency but preferring to speak once he’d thought things through.
That night at the bar, surrounded by her laughter and the intoxicating possibility of connection, he’d allowed himself to forget who he was.
Todd Blake didn’t have one-night stands with strangers.
He didn’t drink enough to lower his guard, didn’t sleep with women whose last names he barely knew, and he didn’t risk everything for a few hours of pleasure.
But Sadie had been different. She’d made him feel at ease, made him laugh.
She made him brave enough to reach for what he wanted instead of always calculating the risks.
For one perfect night, he’d been the man he might have been if years of responsibility hadn’t taught him that spontaneity was a luxury he couldn’t afford.
The irony was devastating. He’d worked harder for this position with LSIMT than for anything in his professional life.
The opportunity to be part of Logan’s vision, to help build something meaningful from the ground up, represented everything he’d ever wanted in a career.
And now that dream job was tainted by the knowledge that he’d potentially compromised the one woman who could make his personal life complete.
Because that was what Sadie had shown him that night.
They’d shared not just physical satisfaction, but the possibility of partnership with someone who could match his strength, challenge his assumptions, and make him laugh until his sides ached.
She was brilliant, funny, kind, and so devastatingly beautiful that sometimes he forgot to breathe when he looked at her.
He and Sadie only had one night, but that night had him already thinking about many more nights with her. And I threw it all away in thirty seconds of panic.
But Todd’s lifetime of catastrophic thinking had convinced him that disaster was inevitable, that exposure would somehow taint both their reputations and destroy the team dynamic that meant everything to all of them.
In a rare moment of panic, he’d called their perfect night a mistake, and in doing so, had reduced a meaningful connection to casual sex that meant nothing.
The memory of how her expression had crumpled before hardening into professional composure would haunt him. He’d broken something precious and irreplaceable, and he couldn’t figure out how to repair the damage.
Over the past two weeks, he’d watched her integrate seamlessly into the team, her quick wit and sharp intelligence making her indispensable during briefings and training exercises. She was everything Logan had hoped for in a new Keeper, and more. She belonged here just as much as any of them.
But the easy camaraderie she shared with the others only emphasized the careful distance she maintained with him. Polite professionalism and nothing more. She’d taken his dismissal and transformed it into armor that kept him firmly in the colleague category, where he apparently belonged.
Maybe it’s better this way, he told himself for the thousandth time. Maybe protecting our privacy is worth sacrificing any chance we might have had.
But as dawn began to lighten the eastern sky, painting the mountains in shades of rose and gold, Todd couldn’t escape the bitter knowledge that his protective instincts might have destroyed the one thing in his life that didn’t need protecting.
Sadie Hargrove was strong enough to handle workplace gossip, smart enough to navigate team dynamics, and professional enough to maintain her reputation regardless of who she chose to be with.
She didn’t require his misguided chivalry.
She needed his honesty, his trust, and his willingness to fight for what they’d discovered together.
Instead, she’d gotten his fear dressed up as pragmatism, his cowardice disguised as protection. And now, two weeks later, he was left with nothing but regret and the growing certainty that he’d made the biggest mistake of his life by calling her one.
I have to fix this somehow, he thought, watching the sun, still hidden, casting the sky in pale-blue tones. I have to find a way to apologize, to explain, to make her understand that she was never the mistake. It was all me.
The question was whether she’d give him the chance to try, or if his moment of panic had cost him the only woman he’d found in years who made him want more.
Todd sought her out later that day. He’d been waiting for the right opportunity when they could speak privately without risking interruption or observation.
Logan was still in the intensive phase of building LSI Montana, conducting interviews, installing security systems, and establishing protocols, which meant he often sent pairs of Keepers out on various setup tasks.
He and Sadie were assigned to check the perimeter cameras installed around the compound, a routine maintenance task that should have taken no more than two hours.
They’d worked in near silence, their communication limited to the bare minimum required for efficiency.
The tension between them was thick, but both were too professional to let it interfere with their work.
After they’d completed the first set of cameras and were heading toward the other side of the compound, Todd suddenly pulled the Jeep to the edge of the dusty access road.
He cut the engine and shifted in his seat, his hands gripping the steering wheel with white-knuckled intensity, and faced her directly.
“I fucked up, Sadie.”
She tilted her head and raised one eyebrow, her expression carefully neutral despite the way he could see her pulse jumping at her throat. “Exactly which fuckup are you referencing? Because there have been several.”
His jaw clenched, and he felt his throat work as he swallowed hard. He stared out at the endless Montana plains for a long moment, gathering courage from the vast landscape, before turning back to meet her gaze with obvious effort.
“You were never a mistake. What happened between us was never a mistake. But I said that to you, and I was wrong. Dead wrong.”
“Okay.” She refused to give him anything more than that single word, unwilling to make this easier for him when he’d made it so much harder for her.
“It wasn’t the right thing to say,” he continued, his expression twisting with what he knew was genuine regret.
“I was blindsided. I knew Logan was interviewing candidates that week, but we hadn’t been given details about who might be coming in.
When I met you at the bar, it never occurred to me that you might be. ..”
“Oh, it never occurred to you that he might hire a woman.” Her voice was flat in reply to his fumbled explanation.
Todd grimaced and shook his head vigorously. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. Hell, this has nothing to do with your gender.”
“So I was acceptable to pick up in a bar and fuck, but not acceptable to work alongside?” The crude words seemed foreign coming from her mouth, but he could see she wanted to wound him the way he’d wounded her.
A heavy sigh escaped his lungs, and he felt the frustration building in the tight line of his shoulders. “Sadie, I’m trying here. I’m really trying to tell you that I’m sorry, and that I handled everything wrong.”
“Fine.” It was now her turn to heft her shoulders in a heavy sigh. “Say whatever you need to get off your chest so we can go back to being nothing more than coworkers.”
He opened and closed his mouth several times, struggling with words that seemed determined to come out wrong.
Finally, he managed, “I didn’t handle the shock of seeing you walk out of Logan’s office well.
Obviously, if I’d known the night before that you were in town to interview for LSIMT, we never would have gone beyond conversation at the bar. ”
“But we did go beyond conversation.”
“Yes, we did. And it meant a lot to me.” The words carried all the weight of what they’d shared—the laughter, the connection, the earth-shattering intimacy that had made him believe, for a few precious hours, that he might have found something worth holding on to.
“And, if we’re going to be honest, Todd, I really like you. Or liked you… the you I got to know that night. Not so much this silent, brooding, growly version I’ve had for the past two weeks.”
“I know. That’s the part I completely fucked up handling.
” His voice dropped, becoming rougher with emotion.
“It wasn’t being with you that was a mistake, Sadie.
It wasn’t what we did or how it felt or any of that.
It’s just that nothing can come from it now.
Both our careers depend on us doing our job and not taking risks.
An attempted relationship between coworkers could backfire.
I was terrified that if the other Keepers found out, it would create problems for us both. ”
His eyes never wavered from her face as he spoke, and despite her anger, he found himself cataloging those familiar details that he’d memorized over the past few weeks.
He noted the way her eyes darkened when she was hurt, the stubborn set of her jaw, the slight tremor in her hands that she was trying so hard to hide.
He was honest enough with himself to admit that if she hadn’t been so devastatingly beautiful or such an incredible lover, this entire conversation would have been infinitely easier to navigate.
She nodded slowly, and he watched some of the fight drain out of her.
“I appreciate the apology, Todd. And if you’re being honest with me, then I can be honest too.
I felt a real connection that night… something deeper than just physical attraction.
And yes, it absolutely sucks to know that’s all it can ever be.
” She met his gaze directly, letting him see the hurt she’d been trying so hard to hide.
“But I need you to stop stomping around the compound like a caged bear and glaring at me like I’ve personally wronged you.
That’s a surefire way to let everyone know something happened between us. ”
“You didn’t wrong me, Sadie.” His voice was quiet but fierce with conviction. “That’s the furthest thing from what I feel.”
A week ago, those words might have opened a door between them. Now they're just emphasizing another wall that will never come down.
Finally, she waved her hand dismissively. “Okay. We’re Keepers. Coworkers. I’m sure we’re both mature enough to handle whatever attraction existed between us, knowing it ended after one night.”
He opened his mouth to say something that felt important, urgent even, judging by the way his chest was tightening, but she turned forward in her seat and cut him off. “Let’s get out of here. We still have three more camera stations to check.”
He knew she was slamming the door on the night that rocked his world and made him believe he might have discovered someone he could be with. But he’d done this and had no one to blame but himself. He tucked his pain deep inside his heart and wondered if she did the same.