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“I have to tell you what happened with the Golden Frogs.” I sighed.
The truth was, I didn’t want to.
“You don’t have to tell me if you’re not ready.” He told me, climbing in beside me with a bottle of water that he had sitting on the windowsill. “Sometimes, things need time to breathe.”
Storm wrung the cap off and offered the bottle me.
I sipped and handed it back.
“I need to tell you.” I admitted. “Full disclosure?”
Storm sat with a pillow under his lower back, resting against the headboard.
“In 2014, the rules were changed to allow women to join the special forces.” I cleared my throat, drank more of his water, and exhaled. “I was the first woman on the Golden Frogs. I mean, when I walked in you could feel the air just get sucked right out of the room. And all you had to do was look around to know they didn’t want me there.”
Storm reached up and dragged his palm down my arm.
“But I let them know I went throughhellto make that team and I wasn’t going anywhere.” I lifted my chin.
“That’s my girl.”
I smiled.
“After a while, I thought they got it. But I was wrong.” I paused to allow the memories to tornado through me. “Now the rest of this—”
“In the vault.”
I nodded.
“We were deployed to Corvei.” I continued. “It’s not a country per-say. It’s this tiny strip of land between Russia and Georgia. The agreement was that it cannot be occupied by Russia or Georgia. It’s kind of like a buffer zone between the two countries. Russia thought the Georgians were trespassing in that area and there were growing mutterings of Russia doing the same. My team was deployed to investigate. We’d spent the day on patrol, and I was exhausted. I went to sleep. Late—I don’t know what time it was—they rushed into my tent, screaming, shaking the actual tent, shining bright lights into my face. I was stripped naked and brought to an area I didn’t recognize and left there.”
“It was a prank, right?”
“I thought it was at first.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “But then I realized morning was coming and they didn’t come back. I was naked, no food, no water, no shelter—it dawned on me that they left me there to die.”
Storm tried to hug me, but I stopped him.
“When they were picked up, they told our superiors that I abandoned the team.” I told Storm. “A group of people who were born on the land found me. I was sunburnt and—”
“The scars on your shoulders?” His voice cracked.
I nodded, fighting back tears.
“It had been two days. I was half dead. Luckily, they helped me, nursed me back to health and brought me to the next team sent into the area. By then it had been three months.”
“Damn.”
“When I came home, I went through an investigation.” I cleared my throat. “They went back to the area and spoke with the people who’d found me. I was cleared—but the Golden Frogs was never the same after that. They blamed me for the prestige they’ve lost.”
“You—how do they figure that was on you?”
“I didn’t die when they tried to merc me.”
Storm reached for me then and I allowed him to wrap his arms around me.
“That’s athemproblem.” Storm whispered. “This time, you have back-up. This time you have me and we’re going to make them very sorry.”
“This isn’t your fight, Storm.” I leaned back to frame his face. “I don’t want you to catch any blowback from this.”