He didn’t take offense at her drifting off midconversation like this. He remembered all too well the continuous, dragging exhaustion of BUD/S. He’d certainly had missions that were worse, but those had come later, when he was tougher and more used to feeling like shit on a shingle. Those missions also didn’t last for months on end. A few days, maybe a few weeks, without proper sleep or meals, and then they were over and he and his team got a break to recharge.

“Sweet dreams,” he murmured, kissing her temple gently.

“Love you,” she sighed as she slipped into unconsciousness.

He froze, not moving a muscle. She what?

Holy shit. What was he supposed to do with that? Pretend he hadn’t heard her say it? Say it back? Respond with something lame like thank you? Panic ripped through him.

But then something even more alarming occurred to him. He wasn’t panicked because a woman had told him she loved him. He was panicked because he didn’t want to screw up responding to it.

What the hell did that say about him? About them?

* * *

As always, when Sherri’s alarm went off at 4:00 a.m., she woke up alone. She rolled out of bed, yanking on clothes by rote, stomping into her boots, and French braiding her hair as she jogged down the stairs.

Griffin was in charge of log PT this morning, and he worked out her class ferociously. If she didn’t know better, she would think he had it in for her. He seemed to choose every exercise she was the worst at to run the crews through. Did the mental whiplash of their double life get to him, too?

Smurf crew was only down one guy—Brewster had medically washed back with a knee injury. He would be given time to recover from surgery to repair it, and then he would have an opportunity to start the training pipeline again. She hoped he tried. He was a good guy. His departure left six of them hoisting, hugging, and lugging the log.

Some of the other crews were down to as few as four guys, and they struggled mightily to get through log PT sessions. The lesson was clear to everyone. Survive as a team. Die as a team.

Friday of that week, they spent much of the day alternating between relay races in the infamous mud flats and paddling for their lives in the boats to avoid getting slammed into rocks on shore by particularly brutal surf. She muttered a warning to her buddies to memorize the coastline in as much detail as they could during daylight, because Hell Week was likely to include doing these dangerous rock portages at night.