All around them, people moved, taking the young men down the stairs from the rooms where they’d been holed up and trying to assess the situation. But all Grover could do was stand there and stare at Sierra.
To his shock, tears filled her eyes, quickly spilling down her cheeks.
Fuck. Sierra didn’t cry. They’d both discussed it at length, with each other and with therapists.
And here she was, crying.
“Sierra?” he whispered, his own voice breaking.
To his amazement, she smiled. Tears dripped off her chin and she was fucking smiling.
“I’m okay!” she reassured him. “I’m just so relieved it’s over!”
Pulling her close, Grover did his best not to smother her as he held her against his chest. He could feel her tears wetting his shirt, and the feeling was one he’d never forget. “I love you,” he said. He put his hands on her shoulders and eased her back slightly. “I love you,” he repeated, louder.
“I love you too,” she said, still smiling and crying at the same time. “Maybe tonight is a good time to break in my apartment. Your house seems a bit…drafty.”
A loud laugh sounded from behind him, and Grover turned to see Brain. “That’s because most of the windows were blown out from the RPG blast,” he told them. “I’m thinking it might be a few days before you’re gonna want to return home.”
“We’re moving,” Grover informed his friend.
“What? No, we aren’t!” Sierra countered with a frown as she wiped her face.
“You can’t want to live here,” Grover argued.
“Why not? I’m not going to let some crazy person chase us out of our home!”
Grover pulled her into his arms again and turned to get the hell out of the hallway. He didn’t want Sierra to see Cory’s body, even though he suspected it wouldn’t upset her as much as it might someone else. She’d been through hell and back. He guessed not much would faze her in the future.
“We’ve got hours of meetings ahead of us,” he said as he walked her to the stairs. “We’ll have to tell not only the FBI and ATF everything that happened here, but my commander as well. We need to call Gillian and the others, make sure they know we’re okay. We also need to call our parents. I have to get in touch with a security company to come out and arm this place with the best shit they’ve got, then I need to find someone to replace all these windows—”
“I’ll take care of the windows,” Ghost said, interrupting him.
They were at the bottom of the stairs now, and Grover could hardly believe the number of people who were in his house. He thought space was limited when all his teammates and their wives were over, but that was nothing compared to the bodies crammed inside at the moment.
Grover nodded at Ghost. “I’d appreciate it. Thanks for being here.”
“Wouldn’t have been anywhere else.”
“Hey, at least your house didn’t get blown up like mine did,” Fletch joked.
Grover remembered that event from a few years ago. All he could do was nod. “True.” He turned back to Sierra. “Anyway, as I was saying, we’re gonna be busy for a while. But when we’re done, I’m taking you to your apartment and we’re not coming out for days. I didn’t get to make you the dinner I had planned, and that pisses me off.”
She smiled up at him. “Not making me dinner pisses you off, but not the fact that your house was just in the middle of a freaking war zone?”
“Oh, I’m pissed about that, for sure. Especially that you put yourself smack dab in the middle of this shit show. And that Cory hit you. And that these stupid kids didn’t realize what he had planned for them. And—”
Sierra reached up and put her hand over his mouth. “I get it.”
Suddenly, everything that had just happened hit Grover all at once. He couldn’t get the sight of Cory holding a gun to Sierra’s head out of his mind. He swayed on his feet.
“Get me a chair,” Sierra barked loudly. Everyone around them froze, and she snapped her fingers impatiently. “Now!”
Grover couldn’t help but smile slightly as several people rushed to do as she demanded. His woman was a tiny dynamo. She was stronger than anyone he’d ever met.
He sat, pulling her down with him. Sierra snuggled into him as if she didn’t care who was watching. And he supposed that was the case, because he sure as hell didn’t.
As men and women scurried around them, going about the business of figuring out what the hell had happened and how an unassuming American had gotten his hand on a freaking rocket-propelled grenade, Grover closed his eyes and held on to the woman he loved more than he could ever put into words. They’d had a close call, and they both knew it. But they were both all right now. And he was going to make sure they stayed that way.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sierra glanced up from her spot on the back deck. Grover was standing inside and, as if he could feel her looking, he turned to meet her gaze.
“You okay?” he mouthed.
Sierra nodded and smiled at him. She was chilling on the back deck with Devyn, Gillian, and Aspen.
The week since he’d been taken hostage and his house taken over had been insane. Sierra’s parents flew in to check for themselves that she was all right. Grover’s parents had also come down from Missouri. Apparently, having a bomb go off in their son’s front yard was way scarier than knowing he risked his life regularly on top-secret missions for the Army.
It turned out Trigger had been lying to Cory about the press not filming. There was no way they’d have agreed to that, and no one could legally stop them. Even the cameras at the end of the driveway had caught the huge plume of black smoke that had risen in the air after the RPG was fired. But the one news outlet that had gotten near the house—how they’d managed that, Grover and the rest of the team still had no idea—had of course caught everything happening live.
Including how the police and military snipers were shooting at nothing, acting as a distraction for the Delta teams to breach the house.
Cory might’ve wanted the American people to turn against the military, but the opposite had happened. Thanks to the news footage, support for the Armed Forces seemed to be higher than ever.
Grover hadn’t left Sierra’s side since it happened. He seemed to be taking everything that happened harder than she was. He’d lost it completely one night, yelling at her for being so reckless and foolish. She’d let him rant and rail, knowing he needed to get it out, and when he’d finally wound down, she walked into his arms and held him tight. “I was so scared for you,” she told him. “I couldn’t leave you in there on your own.”
“Never again,” he’d told her. “I don’t care that you being there and doing what you did saved us. My heart can’t handle anything like that ever again.”
“Okay,” she agreed immediately. It wasn’t as if she wanted to ever go through something like that again herself.
All the other women had come over to see her in person over the last week. It had been emotional for Sierra to see how much they all cared so deeply. She wasn’t someone they’d known for years, but friendships in the military seemed to be stronger, more immediate.