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“We will never stay here in this horrible crypt,” she said roughly, brushing the moisture from her eyes. “You will never sleep here again.”

And that was just the beginning.

Her pretty little pink cabin wasn’t big enough for two, but neither one of them wanted to lose it. Together, they built it out. And over time, though it never became less pink, it became other things as well. More theirs than hers, and never a secret again.

Until Jonas could hardly remember a time when they hadn’t lived together like that.

They’d visited her family later that summer, and Jonas had been forced to explain that while most of what he’d told them about himself was true, some of it had been a cover. He’d expected the general and Birdie to freeze him out, but they’d taken it well.

“Good thing,” the general had said. “I never did trust a man who smiles that much. Good thing.”

“I like thinking of you doing those dangerous things together,” Birdie had said in apparent agreement. “It feels safer, doesn’t it?”

Bethan had liked that her parents knew the real Jonas. But she’d been much more concerned, at first, that their teammates wouldn’t like the fact that they had so obviouslygotten together. A couple on missions? It wouldn’t be a shock if their colleagues objected.

“What if it throws everything off?” she’d asked. “What if everything gets reduced to a sexual innuendo and I become nothing more than average after all?”

“If they treat you differently because you’re sleeping with me,” Jonas had said in that pitiless way he knew she liked best, “then they’d better treat me differently because I’m sleeping with you. I think that’s unlikely.”

She’d scowled at him. Of course. “I don’t need you to fight my battles.”

He’d kissed her, there in that cabin that at that point had still been her secret pink refuge. And the happiest place he knew. “It’s not your battle. It’s ours. And you could never be average.”

But they’d underestimated their friends.

“About time,” Isaac had said sometime after Jonas had moved in to Bethan’s cabin. He’d grinned. “Guess I’ll cancel that mediation session.”

And that was all he said.

Templeton, meanwhile, merely laughed and laughed, then offered to help with the remodel.

And it wasn’t for months, after too many missions to count, that Jonas and Bethan realized that nothing had changed as far as their teammates were concerned.

“Nothing’s going to change,” Bethan marveled one night while they were tucked up in their loft bed, just the two of them. Just the way they both liked it most. “I like that. But I’m forced to think it might have something to do with the fact that they all kind of thought we’ve been sleeping together for the past ten years.”

“I wish,” Jonas said.

And then he rolled her over and showed her how much he loved her all over again.

Of all the missions he’d ever had, he took that the mostseriously. And planned to keep on taking it seriously, forever.

Which as far as Jonas was concerned, would be a good start.

But not nearly enough.

A hundred forevers would never be enough, but he figured they’d try them all out anyway, just to see.