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He knew that Ellen Wilcox was riddled with anxiety. That she starved herself and that she took pride in that, too. Just like he knew her bridegroom wasn’t half the athlete hethought he was, which made Jonas wonder what other things he was overconfident about.

And Jonas wasn’t exactly the reigning expert on the human heart. By choice, he liked to tell himself. But whether he liked it or not, he was surrounded by people in actual, objectively good relationships these days. Alaska Force was cursed with happy couples, and there was a certain body language to intimacy. To happiness.

Ellen and her man had none of it.

“Why is your sister marrying this guy?” he asked.

Next to him, Bethan shot him a look. She’d put her hair in a ponytail, but not the kind she wore when they were working. This one was high and bouncy and somehow lodged itself inside him like a fist. Like the California sunshine.

Like need, something in him retorted. Darkly.

“Ellen and Matthew have a great number of similar interests,” Bethan said evenly. “She’s very ambitious. He’s very wealthy.”

“Sounds great.”

“The reality is that we moved around a lot when we were kids,” Bethan said after a moment. “I think both Ellen and I made ourselves safe as best we could.”

Jonas thought that was pretty charitable. He smiled brightly as the other couple waved to them but didn’t stop.

“I thought we were going to have a family moment,” Jonas said after they’d passed. “Isn’t that what some families do? Get together and bang out 5Ks?”

Bethan snorted. “Ellen is very serious about running. There’s no socialization.”

Then, with another glance at him, she took off at top speed—so Jonas had absolutely no choice but to follow. And they raced each other all the way back to their suite.

Where Jonas absolutely did not watch as Bethan got some water from the kitchenette and stood there in the doorway, her head tilted back and that body of hers clad in so very little as she chugged it.

He was actually grateful when they broke apart for the day. Bethan was off to indulge in some kind of spa-and-beauty day with her sister and all the bridesmaids. Jonas, meanwhile, had been invited to golf with the military men.

Golf.

He knew it was not an invitation so much as a summons, so he presented himself at the front of the house at the appointed time. He smiled and he laughed, so a collection of three- and four-star generals who would never have given him the time of day before could all greet him and one another heartily, then trudge around a golf course together. Without any pesky civilian irritants.

And he didn’t know why he couldn’t quite disappear into the character he was supposed to be playing, the way he normally did. Not that his jovial, easy performance wasn’t on point, but he couldn’t quite get his head around it. Jonas Crow, who’d been given up on so many times in his youth, by so many different authority figures, family members, and his own bitter self,golfing.

At a country club he knew would never have admitted him had he been in less exalted company.

“Maybe you can give me some clarity,” General Wilcox said when he and Jonas sat in a golf cart while a caddie drove them across the rolling green, which looked like it might topple off into the ocean if it had its way. “I understand that Bethan has something to prove. Seems to me she’s proved it a hundred times over by now. It breaks her mother’s heart to think of her up there in Alaska, of all places, running around like she does.”

Jonas chuckled. Actuallychuckled, because surely that was the kind of thing golfers in country clubs did with their chummy buddies in their funny, preppy clothes. “Well, she’s good at it. Who doesn’t like to do what they’re good at?”

“We keep waiting for this obsession of hers to end,” the general said. “First it was the army. Fair enough. In this family we’re happy to support military service. But shekept reupping. And instead of moving out of the field when she could have, she doubled down.”

“She did indeed.” And it was harder than it should have been to keep that fake smile on his face.

But the general was clearly on a roll here. “Even Ranger School. Impressive, certainly. But surely the point has been made. When she left the army, we thought for sure she would finally settle down into real life. This Alaska Force nonsense is delaying the inevitable.”

“The inevitable, sir?” Jonas asked.

General Wilcox gave him a shrewd look. “She can’t do this forever.”

Jonas shook his head like he didn’t understand. “Sir?”

“It’s not realistic, is it?” the general asked. “You’re a sensible man. You understood that special ops comes with a sell-by date and got out before you were forced out. There are physical limitations to consider.”

“I’m pretty sure she knows that,” Jonas said, and it occurred to him that one of the reasons he was finding this so difficult was because he wasn’t really acting. Not at the moment, when he was facing down a man who, in his view, should have been far more supportive.

Jonas had never had anything approaching a supportive parent himself. Just like he hadn’t had fancy houses, staff, or the collection of advantages that Bethan might imagine she’d walked away from but were still right here, ready and waiting for her. He’d had none of that. Nothing was waiting for him, anywhere.