Page 11 of Todd
He’d seen a few teammates in the military take hits to their careers when they’d crossed fraternization rules, especially if the romance ended badly. He’d witnessed some female service members treated unfairly for doing nothing more than what their male counterparts had done. The military made great strides, but misogyny was alive and well. Logan had just started building his team, so Todd had no idea how others would react.
He had been with Logan for a couple of months already and knew the care his boss was taking to build a solid team of Keepers. The last thing he wanted to do was to disappoint Logan, his new teammates, or have any situation that could come back to bite him in the ass. In truth, he was concerned about her, as well. He especially didn’t want any problems to arise for Sadie either.
Oldest child syndrome.That was what his sister, Abbie, called it when they last spoke. “You’ve been shouldering responsibility for everyone else’s mistakes since you were five years old, Todd. When are you going to let yourself just... be human?”
Growing up as the eldest of three meant constantly thinking three steps ahead, anticipating every way his younger siblings could get into trouble, and positioning himself to minimize the fallout.
The military had only reinforced those protective instincts. While other Marines let loose during shore leave, Todd stayed sober to ensure his teammates returned to base safely. While others took risks, he was the steady constant, the one who commanders relied on to keep everyone focused and alive.
Always being the responsible one had created instincts that ran deeper than conscious thought. When faced with a situation that could spiral out of control, his immediate response was damage containment, regardless of the personal cost. He easily made split-second decisions when it came to missions andactions, but when faced with fast-paced emotional moments, he’d always floundered, saying the wrong thing.And I certainly did that with Sadie.
But the cost had been Sadie’s trust, her respect, and possibly even her willingness to work alongside him without the careful distance that now characterized every interaction.
He rolled out of bed and padded to the small window overlooking the compound. In the moonlight, he thought of her just two doors down. Was she sleeping peacefully, or was she lying awake, wondering what kind of man could transform from tender lover to cold stranger in the span of a few hours?
The kind of man who’s spent his entire life carefully planning for every contingency but preferring to speak once he’d thought things through.
That night at the bar, surrounded by her laughter and the intoxicating possibility of connection, he’d allowed himself to forget who he was. Todd Blake didn’t have one-night stands with strangers. He didn’t drink enough to lower his guard, didn’t sleep with women whose last names he barely knew, and he didn’t risk everything for a few hours of pleasure.
But Sadie had been different. She’d made him feel at ease, made him laugh. She made him brave enough to reach for what he wanted instead of always calculating the risks. For one perfect night, he’d been the man he might have been if years of responsibility hadn’t taught him that spontaneity was a luxury he couldn’t afford.
The irony was devastating. He’d worked harder for this position with LSIMT than for anything in his professional life. The opportunity to be part of Logan’s vision, to help build something meaningful from the ground up, represented everything he’d ever wanted in a career. And now that dream job was tainted by the knowledge that he’d potentially compromised the one woman who could make his personal life complete.
Because that was what Sadie had shown him that night. They’d shared not just physical satisfaction, but the possibility of partnership with someone who could match his strength, challenge his assumptions, and make him laugh until his sides ached. She was brilliant, funny, kind, and so devastatingly beautiful that sometimes he forgot to breathe when he looked at her.
He and Sadie only had one night, but that night had him already thinking about many more nights with her.And I threw it all away in thirty seconds of panic.
But Todd’s lifetime of catastrophic thinking had convinced him that disaster was inevitable, that exposure would somehow taint both their reputations and destroy the team dynamic that meant everything to all of them.
In a rare moment of panic, he’d called their perfect night a mistake, and in doing so, had reduced a meaningful connection to casual sex that meant nothing.
The memory of how her expression had crumpled before hardening into professional composure would haunt him. He’d broken something precious and irreplaceable, and he couldn’t figure out how to repair the damage.
Over the past two weeks, he’d watched her integrate seamlessly into the team, her quick wit and sharp intelligence making her indispensable during briefings and training exercises. She was everything Logan had hoped for in a new Keeper, and more. She belonged here just as much as any of them.
But the easy camaraderie she shared with the others only emphasized the careful distance she maintained with him. Polite professionalism and nothing more. She’d taken his dismissal and transformed it into armor that kept him firmly in the colleague category, where he apparently belonged.
Maybe it’s better this way, he told himself for the thousandth time.Maybe protecting our privacy is worth sacrificing any chance we might have had.
But as dawn began to lighten the eastern sky, painting the mountains in shades of rose and gold, Todd couldn’t escape the bitter knowledge that his protective instincts might have destroyed the one thing in his life that didn’t need protecting.
Sadie Hargrove was strong enough to handle workplace gossip, smart enough to navigate team dynamics, and professional enough to maintain her reputation regardless of who she chose to be with. She didn’t require his misguided chivalry. She needed his honesty, his trust, and his willingness to fight for what they’d discovered together.
Instead, she’d gotten his fear dressed up as pragmatism, his cowardice disguised as protection. And now, two weeks later, he was left with nothing but regret and the growing certainty that he’d made the biggest mistake of his life by calling her one.
I have to fix this somehow, he thought, watching the sun, still hidden, casting the sky in pale-blue tones.I have to find a way to apologize, to explain, to make her understand that she was never the mistake. It was all me.
The question was whether she’d give him the chance to try, or if his moment of panic had cost him the only woman he’d found in years who made him want more.
Todd sought her out later that day. He’d been waiting for the right opportunity when they could speak privately without risking interruption or observation. Logan was still in the intensive phase of building LSI Montana, conducting interviews, installing security systems, and establishing protocols, which meant he often sent pairs of Keepers out on various setup tasks.
He and Sadie were assigned to check the perimeter cameras installed around the compound, a routine maintenance task that should have taken no more than two hours. They’d worked innear silence, their communication limited to the bare minimum required for efficiency. The tension between them was thick, but both were too professional to let it interfere with their work.
After they’d completed the first set of cameras and were heading toward the other side of the compound, Todd suddenly pulled the Jeep to the edge of the dusty access road. He cut the engine and shifted in his seat, his hands gripping the steering wheel with white-knuckled intensity, and faced her directly.
“I fucked up, Sadie.”
She tilted her head and raised one eyebrow, her expression carefully neutral despite the way he could see her pulse jumping at her throat. “Exactly which fuckup are you referencing? Because there have been several.”
