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Maria stiffened. She knew Teag thought he was tossing her a relatively benign question, but her standard answer, the simplest version of the truth, felt a little like cheating now. Still, she stuck with it. “My brothers both joined the Army, and I wanted to try and one-up them.”
Teag nodded and grinned, but he was so observant, so in tune with her, that she was sure he picked up on her discomfort.
Thankfully, he moved on. “Well, you got two questions, so I’m going to keep going. How’d you meet Cam Taylor and the TSI crew?”
“During a deployment, my unit supplied boots-on-the-ground support for a covert op led by none other than Lieutenant Commander Cameron Taylor.”
“So you knew him way back when,” Teag said, smiling.
“Well, I wouldn’t say I knew him, but it was a pretty sensitive operation, so we had to work closely together. His team was tasked with extracting a high value target from a known enemy camp. I had a good relationship with the locals bordering the area and solid knowledge of the region. I got his SEALs cleanly in and out of the area. When we were safely back on base, Cam talked to me about his dream of starting a private firm and said I should look him up when I got out if I wanted a job.”
“Because you’re a badass,” Teag said, holding his water glass up as if making a toast.
Maria shrugged. “It was a good op.”
“And she’s modest too,” he teased.
“Anyway,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “After I got out, I decompressed for a few weeks in Aruba, and then looked up Cam.”
They spent the next hour or so learning details about each other. Fun little things like Teag’s love of hot sauce and Maria’s secret obsession with romance novels. They touched on a few sensitive topics, like Maria’s dad’s disappearance and Teag’s dad’s complete absence from his life, but they didn’t dive too deeply or press each other for details.
Maria’s side hurt from laughing so hard when Teag told her about the first time he changed Violet’s diaper, and she reciprocated with a similar story about taking care of her own niece for the first time.
As much as Maria didn’t want to end their dinner, which felt very much like a date despite the security system and Maria’s terrible outfit, Teag looked like he was wilting before her eyes. The fine sheen of sweat that appeared on his forehead was her first clue, and the absentminded way he rubbed at his chest and winced was the second.
She brought him a pain pill and a full glass of water and then hurried to clean their dishes.
“Time for bed,” she said, helping him up from the chair.
“That sounds promising,” he said.
“You wish.”
“I do. I really do.”
But he hissed in pain when she changed his bandage, and his eyes closed the moment she helped ease him down on the pillow.
“Maria,” he whispered.
“Yeah, Teag?”
“Will you stay with me tonight? I don’t really want to be alone,” he said, the last spoken in a quiet, somber voice.
Maria only hesitated for a second. There was another bedroom in the house. She’d already put her small travel bag in there. But now, the thought of sleeping away from him, somewhere she couldn’t watch him breathe and feel his warmth or know with certainty that he was alive and safe, suddenly felt unbearable.
“Yes, I’ll stay with you,” she promised.
