Sierra fell silent, and Grover couldn’t help but reach for her hand. The second his fingers closed around hers, he relaxed. He met her gaze when she looked at him and couldn’t help but love the fact that his touch seemed to help her as well.
“Anyway, so yeah, I was used to the cold. When I first came over here, I thought I was going to die. It was just so darn hot. Don’t get me wrong, Denver, despite being known as the Mile High City, gets hot in the summers too, but not like here. Now I can’t imagine going skiing in negative temperatures. I’ve acclimated to the hot weather, and I have a feeling I’ll always be cold in anything less than eighty degrees.”
“You’ll adjust,” Trigger told her. “Remember arctic training?” he asked his friends. “Lord, we were so unprepared for that. Doc got frostbite on his toes and Lucky almost lost the tips of his ears. We learned a lot about how to deal with the cold, but damn, that sucked. Give me heat any day.”
“I don’t know, that mission we had in Africa wasn’t exactly pleasant,” Oz said. “It was summer, we were right on the equator, and the humidity was so thick it was hard to even breathe. Our clothes were soaked the entire mission. It was a miracle Lucky was the only one who got trench foot because our socks were constantly wet from the sweat and humidity.”
Everyone groaned, remembering that particular mission.
“What are your plans when you get home?” Doc asked gently after a moment. “You going back to Leadville to stay with your parents?”
Grover stiffened, anxious to hear what Sierra would say.
“No. I mean, yeah, I want to see them. I’m sure they want to see for themselves that I’m all right, but I’m almost thirty. I don’t want to live at home again. And Leadville isn’t exactly where I see myself spending the rest of my life.”
Sierra glanced over at him, and Grover couldn’t help but tell his friends, “I’ve invited her to come to Killeen.”
“Awesome.”
“It’s definitely not cold there.”
“Gillian would love to meet you.”
“Ember too. She’ll be so relieved you’re all right.”
His teammates all immediately added their support to the idea, which Grover appreciated more than he could say. “I thought I might take her to The Refuge,” he added.
“That’s a great idea,” Trigger agreed. “She’s probably going to have to deal with a lot of interview requests. Brick and his team can help her with that.”
“Ember can too,” Doc said. “She’s had more than her fair share of dealing with reporters and paparazzi and interviews.”
“I know Riley will help with autobiography requests,” Oz said.
“The Refuge? Brick?” Sierra asked when she could get a word in edgewise.
Grover worried for a moment that they were overwhelming her with their enthusiasm, but she didn’t sound stressed, so he explained. “I think I told you about this when we were in the caves, or at least I meant to. The Refuge is a retreat run by a team of former special forces guys, led by Brick. They all suffered with their own forms of PTSD when they either retired or were medically discharged from active duty. They were SEALs, Delta, Night Stalkers, DSF—which is Coast Guard Deployable Special Forces—Green Beret, and SAS, the British equivalent of what we do. They bought a few hundred acres of land near Los Alamos in New Mexico. From everything I’ve heard, it’s an amazing place for men and women from all over the world, trying to regain balance in their lives after a traumatic experience. And not just while in the military. There are plenty of events that can cause mental distress, and Brick and his team wanted to offer a safe haven for anyone who needs it.”
“It sounds amazing,” Sierra said softly. “I feel kind of lost, honestly. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy to be sitting here with you guys and not in that damn cave. But I don’t know what I want to do with my life now.”
“What did you do before you came over here?” Trigger asked.
“I worked for an Amazon fulfillment center. Not exactly changing-the-world kind of stuff.”
“Hey, don’t be ashamed of having a job. I’m assuming you had a place of your own, bought your own food, paid your own bills…that’s all a part of being an adult,” Lucky told her.
“Yeah, but that’s why I took the job with the contractor, because I wanted to make a difference. And working in a warehouse wasn’t what I had in mind.”
“Why didn’t you find anything in the psychology field?” Grover asked.
Sierra shrugged. “I realized that while I liked psychology itself, I didn’t really want to get into the medical field…and most jobs, at least the ones that pay well, require more schooling. And yes, I probably should’ve researched it a bit more before deciding to major in psychology,” she said a little sheepishly.
“You don’t have to decide right this second what you want to do with the rest of your life,” Trigger told her. “First you need to take care of yourself. You’ve handled everything remarkably, but we all know firsthand that sometimes trauma strikes out of nowhere. You can be going about your life, then a memory hits and it does its best to suck you down. Gillian still has the occasional nightmare over two years later. They wake her up in the middle of the night and she can’t go back to sleep.”
“Riley and I both randomly wake and have to go check on the kids. Make sure they’re in their beds asleep,” Oz added.
“For Devyn, it’s birds. She’s gotten a lot better, but sometimes hearing a bird chirp puts her right back in the middle of that forest where she was left to die,” Lucky said.
“Executive assistant, part-time vet tech, proofreader, event planner, EMT, and former Olympic athlete turned small-business owner,” Grover said quietly. “That’s what the other women do. You can be whoever you want, do whatever strikes your fancy. But you don’t have to decide right this second. Take a moment to breathe, Sierra. Get your bearings. Eat some good food, celebrate not letting Shahzada win.”
He heard her sigh. “You’re right.”
“I know,” he said immediately.
The guys chuckled, and Grover was pleased to see a smile cross Sierra’s lips. “None of you guys suffer from a lack of confidence, do you?”
“Why should we? We’re the best at what we do, and we have women who love us for some insane reason,” Doc answered with a grin.
“And for the record, Grover told me all about your wives. They all sound…” Her voice faded.
“Amazing?”
“Beautiful?”
“Strong as hell?”
Sierra smiled. “Intimidating,” she said after a beat.
Doc laughed. “They aren’t, promise.”
Sierra shook her head. “So says the guy who’s with the most famous woman on the internet.”
“Seriously,” Doc insisted. “I admit that I didn’t want to like Ember when I first met her. I’m very private, and she was anything but—or so I thought. I also figured she’d be spoiled rotten and a diva. But she isn’t like that at all.”
“By the way, Shahzada wasn’t happy when she posted my picture on her account,” Sierra told him.