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He turns to face me. “I’d have let you know if and when you needed to know. Point is, it was my diagnosis and my personal information to share. Not anyone else’s. Brittney took that away from me just to be cruel.”

“But I wasn’t doing this to be cruel. I was trying to help.”

Stephens shakes his head. “Doesn’t really matter. It was Riley’s information to tell. Not yours. She’s new. Probably doesn’t want people to look at her differently. I know I hadn’t wanted that. I couldn’t stand the idea of being pitied.” A shadow passes over his face and I get a sense of how deep his hurt and pain went.

That day still gave me an ache, too, though. “Why would we have looked at you differently? We were all there when that bomb exploded. Any one of us could have gotten unlucky that day.”

“I was afraid my brain was never going to be okay. That the damage was permanent. I felt... less than.” He turns away and tosses another pebble into the pond.

I make a noise in the back of my throat. “Wouldn’t have mattered. We’re still brothers. You should have trusted us. We can’t be a team if we don’t trust each other. We don’t come back alive if we don’t trust each other.”

Stephens turns back to me, his brow furrowed. He puts a hand on my shoulder. “I do trust you, but Riley’s still learning to trust you. She hasn’t even begun to learn to trust the rest of us.”

I groan and rest my face in my palms, finally getting what she was so mad about. “And I just gave her a huge freaking reason not to trust me ever again.”

“Afraid so. One thing you have to remember, as much as you were trying to care for Riley, you need to communicate with her beforehand. Sharing a person’s disability with others without consent—even if you are doing it out of love—is a misstep. It’s not your decision to make... unless it’s a medical emergency, of course.”

“What do I do? Do I go after her?” I need to find a way to make this right.

Stephens scratches his head. “Give her a minute to cool down. She probably knows in her head that your heart was in the right place. Let her heart catch up with yours.”

Wow. To say that Taya has changed Jim Stephens has got to be the understatement of the century. That was damn close to poetry.

We walk back to where everyone is gathered around the food.

“Well, come on, then,” Marge says, clapping her hands. “Let’s eat before it all gets cold.”

You generally don’t have to tell a SEAL team to start eating. Everyone grabs plates and starts to fill them from the dishes set out on the side table. Mason and I end up in line behind Graves, who seems to be frozen over the potato salad. I trace his line of sight and see Hayden standing in the doorway, sunlight filtering through her crazy hair and outlining the shape of her legs through the long peasant skirt she’s wearing. I elbow him and he startles, plunking a mound of salad on his plate and moving on to a stack of burgers.

He’s a good kid, emphasis on kid. Come to think of it, he’s probably only a couple of years older than Hayden is. She’s twenty-three now. They’re closer to being peers than Graves is to Bear. I somehow doubt Bear will see it that way, though.

I get Mason settled with his plate over by Tony and Inara and go back to the condiment table where Graves is putting the finishing touches on his burger. I knock his elbow and he looks over his shoulder at me. “Yes, sir?”

“I may not be the right one to give advice. Lord knows my own love life is a damn mess. I’d take your eyes off Bear’s daughter, though. Touch her and he will kill you.” I squirt ketchup on my burger.

Graves’s face is about as red as the slice of tomato he spears with his plastic fork. “I, uh, don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I shrug. “Whatever you say, kid.” I walk over to the table and take a seat between Mason and Martinez.

“Where’s Riley, Dad?” Mason asks, looking around.

“She, uh, had to go.” Damn it. How am I supposed to explain to an eight-year-old that his father’s an idiot?

“Where?” He looks over at me, mustard smeared on his chin.

I take a napkin and wipe his face. His nose wrinkles under my hands. “I don’t know for sure.”

Mason’s face scrunches up. “Did you guys get in a fight?”

He’s a little too observant for his own good, this kid. “Kind of. I, uh, did something wrong. Didn’t mean to, but there it is.”

“Are you gonna apologize? Ms. Shapiro always makes me apologize, whether or not I’m wrong.” He looks down at his plate.

I’ve got to get him out of that school. Lisa’s barely speaking to me, though. There hasn’t been a moment to tell her about what I overheard go down between Riley and Ms. Shapiro at the parent-teacher conference. “I’m gonna apologize.”

Martinez claps me on the back. “She’ll cool off, man. Give her some time.”

I take a large bite of my burger so I don’t have to answer.

Buzzing sounds erupt around the table and each member of the team is pulling phones out of pockets.

“No,” Marge says. “Just no.”

Bear gives her a sad look. “I’m afraid so.”

I sigh, looking down at the message on my own phone. The team’s been called in. I look down at Mason and my heart drops to my stomach.

Marge speaks before I can say anything. “I’ll get Mason to Lisa. She can pick him up when it’s convenient or I’ll drive him home. Until then, he and Leslie can hang out in the meantime.”

There it is. What it means to be a team. I don’t even have to ask and someone’s there to help. Not just with training or equipment. With my life. All of it. I drop a kiss on Mason’s head. We’ll be okay.

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