Page 17 of Unexpected Christmas with the SEAL

“Two thousand, actually.”

She reared back and gently smacked his arm. “Bullshit.”

He shook more on top of her as he chuckled, then lifted onto his forearms and gazed down at her. “I’m kidding. But I used to do a lot of squats and deadlifts and shit when I was training. Guess I kept my butt.”

“And the abs and the arms.” She shook her head with wide-eyed fascination. The man was like a work of art. Sculpted from marble. He made Michelangelo’s David look like Fred Flintstone.

Slowly, carefully, he rolled off her and got up. She ogled his butt as he headed out of the bedroom. The sink ran in the bathroom and he returned a moment later with a warm washcloth. Then he gently cleaned up between her legs like a gentleman. But she still needed to use the bathroom, so after he cleaned up his mess, she excused herself to the bathroom to ward off a UTI, then returned to the bed a few moments later.

He welcomed her with a wide-open arm, lifting the covers until she was snuggled in against him. “That was unexpected,” she said, facing away from him as he tucked in behind her in the spoon position.

“But not bad, right?” He pressed his lips to her shoulder.

“Not bad at all.”

She didn’t have to see him to know he was smiling.

“Thank you for pushing me. I’m sorry again for being a bitch when you first showed up. I’m not used to being on a team. And it just felt like Nate and Asher didn’t trust me. That they sent you here to babysit me. I mean, they weren’t even gone an hour, and you showed up.”

He squeezed her tighter against him. “That was more so I could just introduce myself. They didn’t think you’d need any help after an hour. They just mentioned that if I was in the area, to pop in, introduce myself and let you know I was around if you needed help.”

“I see that now. But it felt like I was being assigned a babysitter.”

“I can see how you’d feel that way. But I know you’re entirely capable of taking care of this place on your own. The thing is:you don’t have to.”

She spun around in his arms to face him, cupping his cheek. “Why are you so wonderful?”

He smiled, closed his eyes for a moment, and tipped his head down. “How is anyone supposed to answer that?”

“Nothing seems to get you down. You’ve got to have a demon hidden somewhere. Otherwise, you’re just too damn perfect.”

His eyes flashed open and a pain she hadn’t been prepared for stared back at her. She swallowed and braced herself.

“There were ten of us on the team. There are nine now.”

She pressed her hand to his heart. “I’m sorry.”

“We’d all returned home. Some of us had even retired. Like Brendan. He was young, had a wife and a new baby girl. But after what happened in Peru—I didn’t see it, but I know what they saw—he was a shattered man. Took his own life.”

Her heart ached, like it was being squeezed by her ribcage. She cupped his cheek. “I’m so sorry.”

Anger flickered in the spinach-green of his eyes. “He could have asked for help. Any one of us would have flown to Jackson Hole and gone with him to a VA meeting. Talked through his issues. Done whatever we could to help him. But he didn’t ask. He didn’t lean on his team. He took it all on himself, that motherfucker. He shouldered it all alone, even when he knew how important it was to rely on your team. Tonotattempt to fight off the monsters by yourself. And now his daughter is growing up without her daddy. Because he was too fucking prideful to pick up the phone and call me and tell me he was having a hard time.”

This explained so much about why Cal was so eager to help. To lighten someone else’s load.

To not let them be alone, particularly on a holiday where the rate of suicide and self-harm increased.

Not that Hannah would ever consider taking her own life, but Cal didn’t know that.

All he saw was a sad, lonely woman with a chip on her shoulder. So unlike his friend Brendan, who hadn’t asked for help, who hadn’t been close enough for Cal to see signs of distress, he was doing what he could to help Hannah. To save her.

“It’s why my other brothers and I check in on each other all the time. We have a group chat and at least once a week we all post something. Unless one of us is on a mission and has told the rest that we’re going dark. But we do it so that nobody ever feels alone. So we all know that as isolated as we might feel, when we feel like nobody around us understands what we’re feeling or thinking, that there are those who get it. We just need to send a message. And a simple 911 text is all it takes for one of us to fly to the other one.”

“That’s amazing that you’ve set up such a system between all of you. That you have that support system. That team.”

“None of us would be alive without it. Without each other. Every single one of them knows that if they texted 911, I’d be in Bella and flying to wherever they are in a heartbeat. We all would.”

She kissed his strong jaw, the rough rusty stubble prickly against her lips. “You’re a good friend, Peter Callahan. A good teammate.”

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