The anguish that replaced the trust in Arden’s eyes nearly undid Kyle.
“You lied to me? You aren’t a SEAL?”
Funny, coming from a woman who hadn’t been totally honest withhim. And damn, did that hurt. When he read Nash’s texts earlier just before running into Muir, he wasn’t sure what to think:
Call when you get this. Gina is taking a special interest in Richard Muir and that can’t be good. She wants you to stand down. Repeat: she wants you to stand down. Too dangerous. He’s in with some big bad people.
That was bad enough. But the second text was almost worse:
There is no SEAL named Sean Volker.
That threw him for a loop. Arden knew the name brand for military-grade diving equipment. She’d been to San Diego. She talked around her brother’s traveling—like she knew what he did was top-secret and she couldn’t talk about it. She just seemed familiar enough with SEALs to have one in the family. And then there was Ellie assuming that Kyle was in the military—like he knew Sean. And how else would he know him? From the teams.
But apparently, Sean Volker was and never had been, a SEAL.
Kyle had texted back:
Keep looking
So Nash did. And what he found and texted to Kyle that evening shocked him.
At first, he wondered why Arden was lying to him…until he realized the bigger truth. He’d put it all together the wrong way, and he realized his woman needed him more than ever.
Now Arden was looking at him with more pain in her eyes than he’d seen so far. And he’d put it there by keeping things from her. That needed to end.
“Yeah. I told you I’m a former SEAL but I’m not, Arden. After my final mission, I was given a choice—to face a court-martial and risk being dishonorably discharged, or take an Other Than Honorable discharge. So I took the OTH.”
Arden shook her head slightly as an expression of disbelief took over her pretty features. “Why would you be dishonorably discharged?”
“For sedition.”
Arden’s eyes went wide. “You’dnever…why didn’t you fight this?”
Jesus, the anger in her eyes—and not directed at him but at the charge. He wanted to kiss her. No, he wanted to rewind the past few minutes, keep his damn mouth shut, and be well on his way to fucking her brains out. But the pure faith in those clear gray eyes, faith in him, meant he had to be honest and open.
He felt a weight pressing down on his back as if someone were actually in the room listening to him besides Arden. He’d let her stories of Nancy haunting the place get to him. That was the only explanation. She looked at him with anticipation shining in her gray eyes. They were bordering on silver, like a lake in the moonlight.
“I haven’t told anyone this story. Not even my own family. They’d be the last people I would tell, truth be told. But the way that you look at me, it opens up a door inside me. You make me want to tell you everything. I don’t know if it’s the therapist in you, or the woman, or just the fact that maybe I’ve been carrying all of this on my own for way too long. And if I don’t tell someone, I’m never going to heal. And that’s the thing—I want to heal.”
Arden nodded for him to continue.
“I had a terrible feeling about the mission. Sometimes you fly into a place and you know exactly what you’re going to do. It’s almost like it’s telegraphed straight into your brain. Rappel down with your dog, make your way to the point maybe a mile or two distant. And then you carry out your mission. You rely on your teammates and they rely on you. Camo added something to our team. He made us feel safer, and maybe more connected with our humanity. It’s hard to explain but believe me, having him with us always made the difference.”
“The difference between what? Being afraid and not being afraid?”
“That, yes. Also, it kept us human. It kept us tied to what we were defending, tied to our country, tied to the people we loved back home who we were trying to keep safe. And more than that—he was the promise that we could go back. That we had a life still ahead of us that looked a little bit like the one we had behind us. He was ournormal. That’s the best way I can explain it, he was our normal.
“You depend on your teammates like no one else in your life. It’s a brotherhood, sure, but it goes even deeper. These men have your back and you have theirs. No matter what. Whether it’s drawing sniper fire so that your brother can get out of a hot spot, or going to him in the middle of the night when he’s sitting there in a cold sweat awake from one more nightmare.
“So that mission. We were flying in, it was night, nothing unusual about that. But I think we were all uneasy because we had a new team leader. Buck had been killed two weeks prior. He was our previous leader.”
At this, Kyle paused. Could he tell her? The pain of losing his leader still hurt like a motherfucker. Yeah, if he wanted this to work he’d have to tell her everything.
“I’m so sorry you lost your team leader.” There was something about her voice; she really meant it. Meant it more than most people do who have no idea what that sort of loss is like. It went deeper than someone who had lost a loved one to old age or disease. Sheknewwhat that meant.
Kyle nodded. “Thank you. So we had a new leader. And none of us felt good about him. Of course, there’s always a period of time when you’re trying to get used to a new teammate, trying to feel him out, see what his strengths are, his weaknesses. Whether he’s uptight or a joker or someone who might freeze up at the wrong moment. It’s crucial, right?”
“Of course it is. Like you said, you’ve got to depend on him with your life.”
