Page 25 of Boomer (SEAL Team Tier 1, #7)

Boomer shifted, leaned, and looked through the mesh.

Taylor sat cross-legged on the floor, her sidearm in pieces before her, methodically cleaning each component with exacting care.

Her phone was on the bench behind her. Apparently, on speaker.

He’d lost track of her after the briefing when Forge pulled him aside to go over the schematics again.

This was where she’d gone to gear check as well. Of course, she had.

Taylor froze for half a second, then resumed brushing oil along the recoil spring. “Why won’t he come out?”

"He wants to participate in this art contest his teacher suggested. We don’t need him following in his father’s footsteps. He’ll be focusing his studies on science." She exhaled sharply through her nose.

“Mom, Emil lost his way because you wouldn’t listen to his heart’s desire. You made him feel like his art didn’t matter. That broke him as a child. You can’t do this to Ansel. He needs that connection.”

Boomer, across the cage corridor, stopped mid-stride. He wasn’t trying to listen. He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. But Taylor’s voice wasn’t cold the way it was in briefings. It cracked. Just a little. He looked up, posture stilling.

"There’s no room for sentimentality here," her mother said flatly. "We know what’s best for our grandchild." Taylor’s hands slowed. Her mouth parted, breath stuttering.

“I think I know better.”

"Do you?" The scoff was audible. "How are you going to care for him? On your own? You have no support. Not even a boyfriend. What man wants the burden of a seven-year-old boy?"

Boomer flinched. That sentence didn’t just land.

It detonated. Echoed inside the cavern of his chest like a charge gone wrong.

He stared at Taylor, saw the tension lock into her spine, the way she didn’t even look up.

Just kept wiping the slide of her pistol in even strokes like it was the only thing holding her together.

“That is so short-sighted.” Her voice was quiet now. Tighter. “I met someone, and we’re...connecting.” Boomer’s gut twisted. Not at her words. But at what came next.

“What? Connecting?” She blew out a disgusted breath. “Your father and I didn’t connect. We are partners, and I make the decisions.”

“Doesn’t love mean anything to you, Mom?”

The silence scraped.

"Love?" The word came next, heavy with disdain. "That’s for romance novels and fools. Love is tolerating each other’s flaws, aligning schedules, staying the course. You think a man who kicks down doors for a living will support your career? You’ll be the one making sacrifices."

Boomer’s jaw locked. His breath burned in his chest. He should look away. Should give her privacy. But the words were knives, and they were cutting through a girl he was starting to care about in a way he hadn’t let himself in years.

"Never let a man dictate where you go with your career. That’s career suicide. Now stop this nonsense. We’ll see you for lunch on Saturday."

The call disconnected. The room fell into silence, except for the faint hum of the overhead lights and the subtle squeak of Taylor’s cloth against metal.

Her jaw clenched. Her shoulders had risen nearly to her ears.

She set the cloth down slowly, placed the pieces of the weapon in perfect order.

With quick, efficient movements, she assembled the Glock, stowed it in her gun case, rose, and set it into her cage.

She turned and rushed out of the room, the door slamming behind her.

There was no way he was letting her go, no way he was going to stand making sure she was all right. He started after her, his boots echoing in the hall. He saw her back as she turned the corner, and he was in just enough time to catch her door behind her as she entered her room.

“Taylor,” he whispered.

She whirled. The look on her face he couldn’t define. A kind of regal, rigidly contained expression, as if she had been wounded so deeply, there was no healing from it.

He knew that look. He’d seen it in the mirror.

It made his chest ache just to look at her.

As though there was an enormous energy built up in her, she met his gaze, her shoulders square, her chin up.

When she spoke, her voice was shaky with emotion.

“Boomer please…I can’t talk to you right now,” she said, as if trying to hold everything in.

“I didn’t come here to talk. I overheard the phone conversation. I didn’t mean to, but I don’t want to leave you like this.”

She let out a soft sound, her whole body thrumming with tension as she swallowed and spoke again. “You heard? Oh, Gott .”

His own throat suddenly tight, he abruptly stuck his hands in his back pockets, not trusting himself. Unable to tear his gaze from her face, he spoke, his own voice gruff. “She’s wrong on so many counts,” he whispered.

Her expression transfixed, she stared up at him, then suddenly she covered her face with one hand, her voice a watery mess.

“Emil, my baby brother. Sensitive, artistic, and never quite fit the mold. Our mother barely hid her disappointment. Our father tried to toughen him up unsuccessfully. I tried to protect him,” she sobbed.

“But I didn’t understand. I was trying to protect myself even harder.

Over time, that dynamic exhausted me. I pulled away.

He stopped asking. We drifted. He died of a fentanyl overdose. ”

Her voice gutted him, her face gutted him, and her words gutted him.

He had a feeling she’d never said this stuff aloud to anyone in her life.

Taylor, so young, sweet, tough as nails, was harboring this kind of pain that sent people into a spiral they couldn’t come out of.

His mouth went dry. He knew …he fucking knew.

This was a minefield of emotional chaos wrapped around devastating, raw pain.

He knew how to defuse mines; they were physical, had a format, a purpose, a schematic.

Taylor was a mine, but she was flesh and bones, a body a man would die to have.

But that wasn’t why he’d texted her. He texted her because her loneliness called out to him.

Taking a step toward her body wouldn't be hard. That was instinct. Muscle memory. Contact. His skin already remembered the shape of her hips, the slope of her spine, the burn of her mouth on his. That was simple. That was safe.

But taking a step toward her soul? That was something else entirely.

Letting her in meant letting her see everything, no barrier, no bravado, no place to hide, and if she saw the real him, the one underneath the jokes, the control, the steel-eyed calm, and walked away? He wouldn’t come back from that. Not whole.

Maybe that’s why, whenever it got too close, too real, he cracked a joke. Took a breath. Stepped back. Physical was easy. Physical was a distraction.

Intimacy was war.

As a man, he was ashamed of how much it scared him. As a SEAL, it was almost worse. He’d rather face a kill zone at midnight than fail her like he’d failed Lila. He wouldn’t breach a woman’s heart unless he could clear the room behind it.

If he let her in, there’d be no going back.

Same went for her. If she let him hold this…hold her , she wouldn’t know how to go back to being untouched.

She doubled over, clutching her stomach as everything collapsed, and Boomer didn’t hesitate, he stepped into the maelstrom as she sank to her knees, he followed her down to the floor, catching her. He would never let her fall.

She flinched. Not visibly. Not like she was afraid. Her whole body stiffened like a breath caught sideways in her chest. Like she wasn’t ready for the contact. Or was too ready and hated it.

Boomer froze, his arms loose. His hand hovered just shy of her spine. This rattled him because that flinch wasn’t fear. It was feeling. It was vulnerability.

Boomer knew tension when he touched it. He started to release her, his heart loud in his ears, watched her profile, the way her lips tightened like she was holding something back.

Like she was afraid she would spill it if she breathed too deep.

She wanted to pull away like she always had.

Not because she didn’t want him. But because she did.

This might be the most intimate thing she had ever shown him.

Taylor had held everything in for so long…

too long. She’d never told anyone what she’d just told Boomer.

The shock of her confession, the words she had never uttered for fear they would break her, were doing exactly that.

When his arms came around her, when his warmth touched her, she recoiled because it hurt so much to keep herself separate from him.

Hurt her to see his face tighten, but then Boomer said, “You don’t have to hold it together for me.

” His face contorted, his mouth tightening.

“I’m not going anywhere. Not now. Not when it matters. ”

“Carter,” she whispered. “I loved him so much…and now Ansel. I can’t let her do the same thing to him as she did to my brother. He’s so young, still so heartbroken about Emil. He needs so much more than she can give him.”