Page 20 of Boomer

The team assembled just outside the compound for morning muster and PT. The air was cool and damp, tinged with salt and iron, a welcome change from the oven they’d just come from.Concrete still held a bit of night chill, and the sky above Lisbon was the color of wet slate.

Skull and Hazard were already trading jabs with the Brits, both sides smirking like this wasn’t about fitness.

It was a contest of pride and balls.

“Still looking a little rough, Southern fried.” Bash’s voice slid in smooth and smug, the verbal equivalent of silk. He looked like he was the poster boy for Superman—Henry Cavill had nothing on him. Hair perfectly disheveled, jaw sharp enough to insult, smugness loaded and on standby. He was probably the same age as Break and Taylor, young, a quarter of a century. What the fuck did kids know about anything?

He rolled his shoulders once, slow and deliberate. His body was fit as hell. Running five miles and smoking this pretty boy? That was going to befun. Young guys never knew how to pace themselves.

“I can still kick your ass in this run, Posh Spice.”

Skull barked out a laugh. Hazard hooted.

Breakneck grinned, fist-bumping Boomer. “Okay, now we’re awake.”

Bash just grinned wider. “Let’s see what you’ve got and if it holds up under pressure.”

Boomer’s smile was lazy. Dangerous.

“Boomerispressure, union jack.” Skull looked lean and mean this morning. Bones beside him. “When he smokes you, your ears are gonna pop,” Skull said. Then he tipped his head, slow and feral. “Try to keep up.”

Even Iceman cracked a smile at that one, the corner of his mouth twitching as the guys chuckled. A few groaned. One of the Brits muttered“fucking yanks”under his breath, but he was smiling, too.

“Looks like you’re ready for a real run,” Bash said, stretching like hewasn’tabout to be annoying as hell for five miles straight.

Hazard snorted. “Only run I’ve seen you do is your mouth.”

Preacher muttered, “Warm up’s not even over, and I’m already winded from the ego in this group.”

Then Taylor stepped out of the open door.

Even in track pants and a zipped-up windbreaker, coffee in hand, she made the air shift.

Her red hair, cut blunt at the shoulder with matching straight-across bangs, was half-tamed, twisted back just enough to clear her eyes. The cut sharpened everything, the high cheekbones, the clean lines of her jaw, the cool precision of her mouth. She wasn’t soft. She wasn’t meant to be.

But those eyes of hers were as blue as the ocean where glaciers sleptdeepbeneath the surface,a color that held weight, like her resolve. Her focus. Her silence. Eyes that gave nothing away but made you certain something massive was moving underneath. You didn’t just lookintothem. You felt the whisper of unseen danger.

Everything inside that made her Taylor, the loyalty, the discipline, the fire she kept banked so no one could use it against her, it all lived behind that blue. Hidden. Anchored. Waiting.

She was long-limbed and toned, built like she didn’t waste time or energy, not on indulgence, not on expectation. Every inch of her was calibrated. Strong. Unapologetic.

A small silver nose ring caught the morning light, quiet rebellion in a field of conformity. Her shoes, retro Adidas with scuffed soles and personality, told their own story. She wore what worked. What mattered. Nothing else.

She didn’t look at him. That made it worse.

“Give me five,” she said calmly, her voice smooth as the surface of her gaze. “I’ll change and join you.”

Everyone blinked.

Even Iceman hesitated. “This is a five-mile run. We need it done in forty-two minutes.”

She laughed. Not cute or flirty.Confident.

Then she turned and walked back inside, the steam of her coffee trailing behind like a contrail of war paint and intent.

Boomer exhaled, long and quiet.

He hungered for her to look at him, just once. To let him know that his presence here, now,mattered. That it chipped away at the hurt he’d inflicted by not showing up. He needed her to see that it hadn’t been him who walked away. It had beenduty. The kind that didn’t ask. The kind that didn’t leave room for apologies or what-ifs.