"But nobody tells Mom no."
Ben walked up beside me, breathing in deeply.
"Please tell me those are for us."
Storm laughed.
"I suppose we can share."
Ben grinned.
"I suddenly love this charter."
I watched Storm walk toward her mother.
For just a moment...
She wasn't Captain Storm Sinclair.
She was simply a daughter accepting a warm cinnamon roll and a kiss on the cheek.
Something settled quietly inside me.
I couldn't explain why.
Maybe because I'd spent so much time chasing promotions, deployments, and expectations that I'd forgotten what something this simple looked like.
Family.
Real family.
The kind that didn't care what rank you wore.
Or where you'd been.
Only that you'd come home.
And for the first time in months...
I wondered if maybe...
Just maybe...
This voyage wasn't about escaping my wedding.
Maybe it was about finding the life I'd been too busy to notice.
49
Storm
"You've got exactly twenty minutes."
Six pairs of eyes looked at me.
One of them checked his watch.
"Twenty?" the tall blond one asked.
