All of that was muted in the back of Liam’s thoughts when his old team joined him for breakfast at the cottage in Kensington Palace.
Samaira entered the cottage ahead of everyone else, bags of produce and two cartons of fresh eggs in her arms. She kissed Liam on each cheek before bustling past him. “The others will be inside in a few seconds. I brought you some chai. Come and let me pour you a cuppa.”
Liam dutifully followed her into the kitchen, watching as she dumped her bags on the counter before uncapping the travel thermos in her hand. She poured the thick, creamy chai tea into a mug and passed it over to him.
“To warm you up,” Samaira said.
“It’s set to be thirty-eight degrees outside. I don’t need to be warmed up,” Liam replied.
He still drank the chai anyway because Samaira’s homebrew was better than any of the store-bought ones he’d tasted over the years.
“I brought pastries and biscuits,” Abigail announced as she came into the kitchen. The box in her hand was from a local bakery in her old neighborhood that honestly deserved more accolades than it got on the travel sites.
Tariq and Glenn arrived maybe a minute later, the pair of them contributing more food to the meal.
“Did you bring the tomato sauce?” Samaira asked.
“Right here,” Tariq said, hefting a bag filled with tins.
“What are we having?” Liam asked, not minding having been relegated to the side.
“Shakshuka, scotch eggs, potatoes, and biscuits because Abigail needed sugar,” Samaira said.
“You’ll thank me when you taste these,” Abigail said around the mouthful of homemade Viennese sandwich.
Glenn laughed. “Only if you don’t eat them all.”
“It’s a fantastic spread,” Liam said.
Samaira looked up from where she was digging out his pans from the storage drawer. “You do realize that just because you’re no longer allowed on active duty doesn’t mean we won’t be sharing meals. I expect you at next week’s team dinner, barring a mission call up,” Samaira told him.
Liam hid his smile behind the mug of chai tea, trying not to let the overwhelming sadness he still felt about being reassigned ruin the morning. He’d led his team with Samaira for years, and relinquishing it to her sole control was difficult, but not impossible. She’d do right by them as she always had, and he knew she would bring everyone home safe.
Having them there that morning, filling up space in his empty home, wasn’t enough to ease the other aches inside him—the guilt and the loss. Liam pushed it aside with the long practice of knowing how to compartmentalize the pieces of his life.
Samaira and the others brought food and laughter to his home, a sense of companionship Liam knew wouldn’t completely disappear from his life. He’d spent months fighting this very moment, and now that it was here, it didn’t feel like the knife to the heart he thought it should be.
It wasn’t the first time he’d lost a team, but at least this one was walking away on their own two feet instead of being buried in a grave.
Between all of them, enough food was made for everyone to have seconds. Glenn put the kettle on and sorted through Liam’s tea stash to find everyone’s preferred flavors. Abigail made mimosas to go with their tea and drank two of them before they all took their seats at the dining table.
“It smells delicious,” Liam said as he spooned some shakshuka into a bowl before passing the serving utensil to Tariq.
“You’ve missed the team get-togethers the past couple of times. Figured it was high time we brought it to you,” Glenn said.
“I appreciate the company.”
Conversation was kept light, none of them wanting to talk about work. The only breach of that silent agreement happened after they’d finished the meal, when Liam and Samaira were loading up the dishwasher alone in the kitchen.
“How are you, really?” Samaira asked in a quiet voice.
They’d made an agreement when first given their orders to co-lead the Royal Legion—never lie to each other. Sometimes that had been a high threshold to reach by virtue of the lives they led. Liam thought about all the ways he could answer but settled for the only one that mattered.
“I’m tired,” Liam said slowly. “And I’m absolutely gutted.”
Samaira placed a dirty glass on the top rack of the dishwasher before hugging Liam tightly. She smelled like her favorite perfume, and he made a mental note to get her a new bottle since her birthday was coming up.
“It’ll get easier,” Samaira whispered.
