Chapter Forty-One

Harvard

The performance review.

The thing I’d been dreading for a month.

It was here.

I woke up with Sami twined around me and Lunchmeat the cat pawing at my face for some tuna. The same cozy way I’d woken up every morning since Sami came home, but today I couldn’t find any contentment in it.

“Hey.” Sami’s soft hand touched my cheek and drew my gaze from the ceiling to her. “No matter what, we’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out.”

They were deciding her fate today, too. Whether or not she’d be allowed to rejoin Class Alpha. I could see her nerves as clearly as I felt my own.

I didn’t want to be just okay. I didn’t want to figure it out. I wanted my team. I wanted my woman. I wanted her on my team. I wanted it all.

But we’d both fucked up so many times I couldn’t see how I’d possibly get it all.

I dressed like the commando I wanted to be—cargo pants and T-shirt, basically HORNET’s battle-dress uniform. I was, after all, going into battle for everything I loved.

When I emerged from the bathroom, I found Sami had dressed similarly. She’d pulled her hair back in a high ponytail and put on her combat boots. She stood in the kitchen, yawning as she waited for the coffee to brew.

“It snowed last night,” she said without glancing up. “My first winter in Wyoming. I’ll admit I went outside and caught snowflakes on my tongue while you were in the shower. It’s gorgeous. Everything’s all soft and white—”

“Why are you dressed like that?”

The pot finished with a burble, and she poured the steaming coffee into two travel mugs. “Because I’m going to your review with you.” She said it like it was a forgone conclusion.

“Why?”

She returned the coffee pot to the burner and turned toward me and held out a hand. “You don’t have to face anything alone anymore.”

I’d been alone for so long it hadn’t crossed my mind that I didn’t have to be. But did I want her to go and bear witness to my dressing-down?

The tension coiling in my neck and shoulders eased at the thought of having her by my side, for better or worse. Yes. I wanted her there.

I laced our fingers together. “Thank you.”

She stood up on her toes to kiss me. “You don’t have to thank me. We’re together. This is how things are going to work from now on.” She pushed one of the travel mugs into my hand. “Now let’s go.”

Sami had been understating things when she said it “snowed” last night. It hadn’t just snowed. It had wintered. Mother Nature had wrapped the world in a soft white blanket at least a foot and a half thick, so we decided to drive the short distance to the training center. Luckily, someone—likely Quinn—had already been out to plow the main drive.

I tried not to look at the burned husk of the dorm as we passed. Police tape still crisscrossed the door. One end had broken loose and fluttered violently in the wind whipping across the plains. Another reminder of my mistakes. And Sami’s.

Time to own up.

With all the trainees still at the hotel in Jackson, the center was quiet. Our footfalls echoed around the empty halls.

Jesus. Felt like I was marching to the electric chair.

Gabe and Quinn waited in Gabe’s office. I couldn’t read their expressions, but they said nothing as Sami followed me inside and shut the door behind her. I had expected some kind of protest.

“Hey, Harvard,” Gabe said softly. “Take a seat.”

My stomach dropped. Did he sound sad? Or was I reading too much into his tone? “If it’s all the same, I’d rather stand.” I wanted to make a quick escape after they handed me my pink slip.

Gabe inclined his head and sat down behind Quinn’s desk. “Suit yourself.”

Quinn positioned himself to Gabe’s right and crossed his arms over his chest. “We have a lot to talk about, so—”

“Can I say something?” Sami had been hanging back by the door, but now she stepped up beside me. “I know you haven’t decided my fate yet, but I’ve heard the rumors from the other trainees, and, putting this out there for the record, you can’t replace Eric with me. It’s not one or the other, and you are myopic as fuck if you think that’s how it has to be.” She took my hand. “Binary doesn’t work without two digits, and neither do we. We’re a package deal, and if you’re firing him, then I’m leaving, too.”

My heart surged into my throat, and I grabbed her shoulders and turned her toward me. “Don’t. I know how much you need this.”

She shook her head. “I thought I did. I thought I had nothing else, but that’s not true. I have you. You are the thing that has been missing from my life. You’re the Han to my Leia. I love you.”

Nobody had ever said those words to me in my entire life, and it was so stunning to hear from her that I didn’t know how to respond.

She cupped my jaw in her hands and leaned up on her toes to kiss me. Then, smiling, she whispered, “Your line is supposed to be ‘I know.’”

I made a choking sound, something lodged somewhere between a sob and a laugh, and gathered her into my arms.

Quinn cleared his throat. “Are you two done?”

I set Sami down, and together, hand in hand, we turned to face the bosses. “Same goes for me. If you kick Sami out of the program, I’m done, too.”

Quinn’s expression was a mask, impossible to read, but Gabe…

Gabe “Stonewall” Bristow stared at the ceiling, and his face was turning an alarming shade of red. I’d have been worried for him, except his wide shoulders shook with suppressed laughter.

I stared back and forth between the two of them. “What— Why is this funny?”

“Jesus Christ.” Quinn released a heavy sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Kid, you have a genius IQ, and you couldn’t figure out that we never planned on firing you?”

I let go of Sami in shock. “Wait…what?”

Gabe stood and crossed to stand in front of me. The man was huge, and I’d always been more than a little intimidated by him, especially when he was in warrior mode. But, right now, his hazel eyes crinkled with humor. “Eric, we had to punish you for not following orders, but firing you wasn’t even a consideration.”

“Hell, if we did that every time someone went AWOL, we wouldn’t have a team,” Quinn said. “Ian and Jean-Luc both would’ve been gone years ago. And considering we have no idea where Marcus is right now… I mean, c’mon, kid. Use that amazing brain of yours.”

Gabe set his baseball-mitt-sized hands on my shoulders and gave me a little shake. “We’re family. Family sticks. Through the good, the bad, and the ugly.”

“Not in my experience.” My throat seized, and I could barely get the words out. Sami’s hand tightened in mine, a silent show of support. “In my family, if I wasn’t useful, I wasn’t worth my mother’s time. That’s why I wanted—needed to prove myself to you.”

“You have, kid,” Quinn said softly. “Over and over again. Don’t you get that? We rely on you for…Jesus, everything. Without you, we’d be half as successful as a team.”

Gabe nodded. “We know you’re more than capable of handling yourself in combat, but every time I thought of sending you in, I froze. I didn’t see you as an operative. I saw you as a kid brother I needed to protect.”

A kid brother. He really thought of me as family. As someone to be cared for and protected.

All this time, I’d been so sure they thought I was lacking it never crossed my mind that their decisions had been made out of love.

Sami wasn’t the first to say she loved me. The guys had just been saying it in a different way, and I hadn’t realized it until now.

I stared up at Gabe, and something broke inside me. Just shattered. They didn’t judge me for it and let me get it out of my system. Sami held me through it. Gabe pulled up a chair and gently guided me to sit. Quinn reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of bourbon.

He grabbed my coffee cup from Sami and poured a healthy splash into it, then shoved the cup into my hand. “Drink up.”

I stared down at the coffee, which now reeked strongly of alcohol. “I thought I drank your only bottle.”

Quinn smirked and twisted the cap back on the bottle. “You stole the crappy stuff. Which was there to hide this.”

Gabe scowled at him. “You’re not supposed to drink.”

He shrugged and tucked the bottle safely into the back of his desk. “Until you’re sitting here, trying to wrangle a bunch of headstrong trainees and our pain-in-the-ass guys into something resembling a training program, you can’t judge. It’s like being a cop and a parent at the same time.”

Gabe’s scowl only deepened.

Quinn pointed a finger at him. “You say a damn thing, and I’ll tell Audrey you don’t take your pills like you’re supposed to.”

Gabe blew out a gusty breath. “Fuck, look at us. When did we get old? It sucks.”

“Amen to that, brother.”

I knew they were giving me time to pull myself together, and I appreciated them for that. I straightened in my seat and met each of their gazes. “I’ve fucked up. A lot.”

“We both have,” Sami added and squeezed my hand. “How can we make up for it?”

Gabe and Quinn shared a glance.

“I think,” Gabe said after a beat, “we’ll go the Jean-Luc route with this. We’ll have you teach a class.”

“A class?” I looked at Sami and saw the worry in her eyes. What would this mean for us? I couldn’t be her instructor.

Quinn nodded. “Right now, every member of HORNET has a specialized skill set. Originally, we were separating the trainees by those skills—Sami, computers. Wolfe, medic. Remy, EOD. Blaze, sniper. Gavin, language. And so on. But I’ve come to realize it’s the wrong tactic. We need to make sure everyone can do a bit of everything, which is why we tasked Jean-Luc with teaching Arabic.”

“And why,” Gabe continued, “we want you to teach the basic computer skills most relevant to our missions. Whatever you think they may be.”

Holding Sami’s gaze, I said, “I won’t do it if it means Sami and I can’t have a relationship.”

Quinn grumbled under his breath. Obviously, he still wasn’t happy with us being together.

Gabe waved him silent and faced us both. “I expected that, and it won’t be a problem. You will teach the other trainees. As for Sami’s training, we’re taking a different approach.”

“What kind of approach?” she asked, apprehension tightening her voice. “Am I being punished?”

“No,” Gabe admitted. “We’ve all been there. We’ve all made shitty decisions that put ourselves or our loved ones in danger. We’re big on second chances around here, so everyone gets a one-off. One mistake, no matter how bad it is. This was yours. One more, and you’re done. Understand?”

Sami drew a breath and released it slowly. “Okay.”

“I’m not going to ask you to swear loyalty to us. That’s not how we work. But I’m going to trust that you will never betray us again, and I’ll be extremely pissed if you break that trust. Understand?”

Sami nodded so hard she was liable to hurt herself. “Thank you.”

“Good,” Quinn said. “Now that’s outta the way, let’s talk about how things will work moving forward. You’ve completed your training. At least as far as the physical aspects of it. You passed your PT requirements and range work. I think our best option now is to move you to active-duty training.”

Her hand tightened in mine. I knew how much she didn’t want to end up in the field—how much she didn’t want to kill anyone again. I’d held her through enough nightmares this past week. I could feel the tension radiating off her and gently squeezed her hand in response. A silent reminder of her words this morning.

No matter what, we’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out.

“What do you mean by active-duty training?” I asked so she wouldn’t have to.

“Well,” Gabe said, drawing the word out. “Way I see it; we have an operative who wants fieldwork.” He motioned to me. “And one who doesn’t.” He motioned to Sami. “More than once, we had to leave Harvard behind because we needed someone to stay and man the computers.”

“But we also needed someone handy with computers in the field,” Quinn said.

“We tried to dump it all on Harvard’s shoulders, which wasn’t fair,” Gabe concluded. “Here’s our solution. Our next mission, you two will work together—Sami from home base, and Harvard from the field.”

“Oh,” Sami said on an exhale, and her grip relaxed. She laughed. “You want me to be Mission Control?”

The corner of Gabe’s mouth lifted. “That’s one way to put it.”

“I love it!” She jumped up and threw her arms around Gabe.

For a moment, we all froze. You didn’t just…hug…Gabe like that. The look he gave me was one of panic. I made a motion with my arms, indicating he should hug her back. Tentatively, he wrapped his big arms around her.

“Thank you,” she whispered again. She drew back and made a face up at him. “But can I have a cooler call sign? Gigi sounds like a pampered Pomeranian.”

Gabe affectionately patted the top of her head. “Sorry, Gigi. We don’t get to pick our call signs.”

“Ugh.” Her disgust was palpable as she dropped back into a chair to sulk.

“Could be worse,” I told her. “I knew a guy in the CIA codenamed Upchuck. You can guess why.”

“Our SEAL team had a Guano,” Quinn supplied. “Because he was a dickhead who insisted we call him Batman. And a guy in our BUD/S class was called McSharty.”

Gabe chuckled. “Oh, Jesus. I forgot about McSharty.”

She blinked at them. “Why McSharty?”

“His name was McCarthy, but he had a blowout while on a twenty-six-mile run during Hell Week. All down his legs and up his back. Stank like something had crawled up into his colon and died. Sarge made him finish the run.”

We all laughed.

Except Sami. She stared at us in open-mouthed disgust. “And you made fun of the poor guy for it?”

Quinn shrugged. “It’s funny.”

“Ew. Why are men so gross? Never mind. I don’t want to know.” She shook her head. “All right, fine. It could be worse. I’ll stick with Gigi, thanks.”

Quinn turned his gaze to me and got serious. “What about you, kid? Are you still our Harvard?”

I took time to consider the question before answering. Over the last few months, I’d grown to hate the nickname. It had been a constant reminder I was living a lie that could crumble out from under me. But the lie did crumble, and I was still standing. No longer Khaos. At some point in the last few weeks, I had truly become the man they thought I was.

“Yeah,” I said and wrapped an arm around Sami’s shoulders. “I’m Harvard.”

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