“There are limits on what I can share, but these are the basics. I was on a four-man Fire Team sent in to extract a hostage—the daughter of someone important in another country—who was being held in Belarus. She only had two guards, so it should have been a piece of cake.”

His body tensed as he spoke. Other than the initial debriefing, she didn’t imagine he’d spoken of this much. “Should have been…?”

“Yeah. But my team was betrayed.”

She placed a hand on his thigh. “They knew you were coming.”

“It was worse, actually. But I can’t say more than that.”

“I understand. So you were shot…”

“And two on my Fire Team were killed. Flyte, the fourth man, got us out of there. He saved my life.”

“And the hostage?”

“She died.”

“I’m so sorry.” She couldn’t imagine how it would feel to lose two men on his team and be injured himself, all for nothing. No rescued hostage. A completely failed mission.

She didn’t doubt that he blamed himself for that failure. “You were betrayed.”

He nodded. “It was a variable we hadn’t considered. Never again.”

She guessed at his underlying meaning. This training session had been designed to throw unexpected curveballs at the team. But then a bunch of armed mercenaries showed up, lobbing the ultimate curveball at Xavier and the SEALs.

He cleared his throat. “Lieutenant Flyte, the guy who saved my life in Belarus, is second-in-command of the platoon that’s here now.”

And that was what he’d been about to say before. His former teammate was here, not as a trainer, but as a SEAL. “Do you get along?”

“Chris is… I don’t really have words that don’t sound hokey. He did the impossible. Kept his head when the op went FUBAR. He’s a hell of an operator and one of the greatest men I know. He can be pigheaded when he thinks he’s right—which is always—and a total pain in the ass when he really is right. I owe him my life, and he ranks with Jae as one of my closest friends.”

Again, she heard what he didn’t say. Lieutenant Chris Flyte was in danger now, and again, Xavier blamed himself.

She did the only thing she could think of. She set down her mug, rose to her knees, then turned and straddled him. She took his mug from his hand and set it to the side, then wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him. His arms slid around her waist and pulled her tight. She tucked her head down so their necks were skin to skin as their bodies fit together like a puzzle.

With her eyes closed, she held him, breathing deeply. And he held her back as rain softly pattered on their shelter.