He closed his eyes, shook his head. “I’ve been beaten before. It’s not . . .” He opened his eyes and leveled his gaze into hers. “I’m fine, Tae.”

“I think you should—”

“Really. Truly, cross my heart, I am fine.”

She nodded. “Of course you are.”

Now he frowned. “What does that mean?”

“That means that tough ex-Delta operator Colt Kingston just keeps on fighting, no matter what.”

Ex. Delta operator.

He didn’t know why that stung, just a little.

Colt looked out onto the lake. It was late. Or maybe early, depending on the view. The moon was falling to the backside of the night, leaving a long streak of luminescence on the water. “Yes. I do keep fighting. But it’s who I am. What I do—”

“It’s going to get you killed.” She sighed, her words turning to a whisper. “But maybe you don’t care.”

Ouch. The woman was an assassin.

“I care.” But even as he said it, his father’s words crept in, latched on. “You live your life as if it doesn’t matter to you.” No. “Really, Tae, I do care.”

She was staring at him, hard, those blue eyes shiny. “You don’t. You nearly got killed a month ago, and here you are, planning on going back into that life. And nearly getting killed along the way.”

A tear slid down her cheek. What was he supposed to do with that?

He softened his voice. “Tae. What do you want from me? It’s how I’m made. You heard the bear story. More than that, after my dad yelled at me, he was . . . well, all my brothers were . . . a little impressed. For a long time after that Range called me the bear hunter. And that was something because he wanted to be a warrior all his life. I started to realize that that’s who I am too. I’m a guy who likes to step into the gap. Yeah, I joined the military to escape, but in doing so, I found brothers. And a purpose.”

He turned away, stared at the moonlight fading from the lake. “The worst day of my life was walking away from my team.”

Silence. A beat, and then he sighed. “Well, no, the worst day of my life was knowing I’d somehow missed something and walked us into an ambush. The second-worst day was signing my discharge papers.”

He didn’t quite know how they’d gotten here, to that moment, but even as he spooled out, the truth settled inside. He met her eyes. “I’m not made to stand on the sidelines. Never was, never will be.”

She drew the blanket around her tighter. Sighed. Looked away.

“What’s going on here, Tae?”

She lifted her shoulders. Then, “I just wish that . . .”