Trusting a Warrior (Loving a Warrior #3) - Melanie Hansen Page 0,109

Okay. She had time. She had time to make this right, to at least let Geo have a say before she unilaterally decided their future.

I’m coming. Don’t write me off just yet.

* * *

The C-17 touched down with a thump and whine of the engines.

“We’re home, buddy,” Geo said wearily to Bosch, who stood up in his crate before performing a perfect downward dog.

“Oh, my God, kill me now,” Lennox groaned as he limped toward the open ramp at the rear of the plane. “Everything hurts.”

Geo glared at him for a moment, then shrugged. For once he agreed with the prick—everything hurt. He fought not to groan himself, but the hours of sitting in a cramped webbed seat got the best of him.

“Damn those Greenie Beanies,” he muttered, bending stiffly to unlatch the door to Bosch’s crate and snap a leash onto his harness. “Those are some tough-ass motherfuckers.”

And he was getting too old for this shit.

The hazy Coronado sky was a beautiful sight. At the base of the ramp, the ragged platoon gathered around Alex. “Well, we got our butts kicked, fellas,” he rasped. “Those dudes hiked us into the ground. Fuckin’ embarrassing.”

“Not embarrassing, more like humiliating,” someone else grumbled.

It was true. The Army Special Forces, or Green Berets, were known for their brutal ruck marches, their ability to hike for days with heavy combat loads. When an SF friend of Alex’s had challenged him to bring his platoon and join them deep in the forests of West Virginia, the SEALs had been enthusiastic, and confident they’d at least be able to keep up.

Instead, most of them had struggled even to finish.

By the second day of the four-day ruck, Geo’s heels were so blistered he’d had to cut out the backs of his boots to ease the agony. SEALs were popping ibuprofen like candy, their self-confidence growing dimmer by the day. At the end of the march, egos in tatters, they’d had to admit defeat.

“Let’s see you fast-rope onto a moving ship in high seas now, asshole,” Alex had growled to his friend, a Latino guy who’d barely seemed to have broken a sweat the entire march.

By the time everyone had showered, had their wounds patched up and taken a long nap, all was forgiven.

Now, safely back in Coronado, Alex dismissed them for a forty-eight-hour liberty. “Rest up,” he said. “Next week we’re headed for Langley and the CIA workshop that got rescheduled before. After that, well, you’ll see.”

He grinned wolfishly to a chorus of answering hoots, but instead of excitement, all Geo felt was weariness.

More of the same. It was all just more of the same.

And he’d lost Lani over it.

The FNGs would offload Bosch’s crate and most of the gear, so Geo caught a ride to the kennel and gratefully handed him off to one of the staff, saying, “He could use a good bath and a brush. It’s been a long week for this guy.”

Instead of going on the ruck, Bosch had stayed behind to work with a couple of the new SF handlers in order to show them exactly what a well-trained K9 could do. The handlers had had nothing but the highest of praise for him.

After getting him settled, he ruffled Bosch’s ears with a promise to come check on him in the morning, and then he headed for the team quarterdeck to downstage his personal gear and clean his weapon. He winced at the sight of his blood-stained and ruined boots.

“Fuck you, old man.”

The next equipment cage over, Lennox flipped him off, and Geo desultorily raised his middle finger in return. As he’d expected, the team guys had treated him with a wary caution at first, but as the brutal exercise wore on, they’d thawed little by little, until by the end, everything was more or less back to normal.

Which was the reason Alex had arranged that particular training trip, he suspected.

Yeah, I owe you a big one, Master Chief.

Even he and Lennox had reached a sort of uneasy truce, which was a relief in and of itself. After all, they’d be deploying together by the end of the year.

Once his weapon was cleaned and secured in his locker, then and only then did Geo allow himself to turn on his phone. He held his breath as it booted up—which seemed to take for-fucking-ever—but once it did, not one of the notifications that scrolled past was the one he was looking for.

He closed his eyes. A little over three weeks now, and not