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She peeled them off with deliberate hands, every movement an unspooling of ghosts. The blouse stuck to her ribs. The skirt fell in a soft whisper. Her bra unclasped like an unspoken goodbye. Her underwear last, wet from sweat and false grief and the night that had undone her.

Then she stepped into the shower. Turning the water hot, she let it burn.

She scrubbed her arms first. Then her chest. Her neck.

Her scalp. She washed Rob from her skin.

All of it. All of him and his false love, his lies, his hubris, and his ego.

The myth she’d foolishly believed swirled down the drain.

The man she’d tried to preserve like glass but had already broken inside.

She washed him away.

When she lifted her face into the spray, the tears that fell were cleansing, a key into a lock…release.

After the shower, she was sick with everything she had done. All of it. The way she’d treated him, his team. She’d dealt with Rob, but the fear lingered, and it was difficult to overcome a life of it from the moment she realized her parents never saw her, only her goodness.

But she had hungered…she had wanted. Wanting had gotten her Rob. Wanting had made her ignore the subtle cruelties. The small, public humiliations. The choices she’d told herself were compromises for the greater good. He was admired, she’d whispered. He’s principled. He’s safe.

But he hadn’t been any of those things. She knew it.

Somewhere beneath the need to prove her goodness, she’d known Rob Quinn had resented her from the moment she surpassed him.

That he’d needed her muted to feel powerful.

She’d let him because to walk away would have made her selfish.

Would have made her wrong. Would have made her… less good.

Everly could survive a loveless marriage.

She could survive grief. But she could not survive the idea that maybe she hadn’t been good.

Not when it was all she had left. That was her lie.

Her prison. That to feel deeply, to want wildly, to want a man who was chaos in motion and tenderness beneath muscle meant she had to open her cage and walk out.

So she didn’t go to Zorro because she was afraid of what it meant if she did. Not afraid of him, but afraid of the part of herself that might never want to leave. Maybe most damning of all?

She knew she was hurting him.She could feel it in every unread text. Every soft knock. Every Talk to me .

She hated that this was still part of her, and it was keeping her rooted instead of going to find him. If she did, she wouldn’t just fall into him.

She’d fall apart. So she stayed in the quiet. Not punishing herself anymore. But not forgiving herself yet either. Somewhere between the ache and the answer. The keycard still sat on the table.

Waiting.

So was she. But not for permission anymore. For peace. For the voice in her chest to quiet. For the fear to stop masquerading as caution. For the ache to feel like want instead of punishment.

She didn’t get all the way there. But she got close enough to reach for her phone.

Her fingers hovered. Then typed. Slowly.

Deliberately. When she hit send, her breath caught, but she didn’t take it back.

She set the phone down, turned toward the window, and watched the lights of Rio ripple across the water. Outside, the night waited.

Naked, she walked to the chair where she’d draped his tee.

She picked it up and brought it to her nose, breathing deep.

She closed her eyes, her throat cramping.

Was she brave enough to face this fear of wanting so hard, she might get lost in it?

Lost in him? Her hands trembled and she almost set the shirt back down, but at the last moment before her will gave out, she pulled it defiantly over her head, went to the bed.

Courage. Wasn’t that being so goddamned afraid, but facing that thing that terrified you and doing it anyway?

She slid onto the mattress, Zorro’s shirt soft against her bare skin, the scent of him curling in her lungs like smoke and memory. Her body was still trembling, but no longer from fear.

Not the old kind. This was something deeper. Quieter. The kind of fear that meant the truth was finally close. She closed her eyes. Not to escape.

But to rest . Clarity was so close, all she needed was to let it be.

The sky above Rio bled orange and bruised lavender as dusk slipped into night, the rooftop pool reflecting every shifting color like liquid glass.

The edge blurred into the coastline, lights flickering against the Atlantic like restless ghosts.

From the shadows just past the pool deck, Bear watched Zorro cut clean lines through the water.

Stroke. Breath. Kick. Turn.

Repeat.

He wasn’t swimming. He was wrestling the water.

Wrestling himself, desperately trying not to rush her before she was ready.

Zorro would never push anyone until that person was ready.

Bear’s heart contracted. If she didn’t come to him, he wouldn’t give up, yet something would crack in him, and Bear…

the team didn’t want that. This man was their brother, and they loved him.

Zorro was running from something that didn’t have legs, and Bear knew that kind of fugitive grief. Knew it down to the bones that still ached when it rained back home on the rez, when the ghosts of the prairie whispered through the tall grass of memory.

He didn’t announce himself. Just stood still in the quiet, arms crossed, Flint at his side, the Malinois as silent and watchful as his handler. Together they formed a shape most people didn’t approach. Not until invited.

Zorro reached the far end of the pool, touched the wall, and just…floated. Head back. Eyes closed. Like maybe if he stayed submerged long enough, the pain would evaporate. Bear didn’t move. Didn’t call his name.

This …this was why he’d come.

He’d felt Zorro’s exhaustion humming through the air like a vibration in his chest. It was more than fatigue. It was the kind of soul-deep tired that sleep couldn’t touch. Bear knew that feeling. He'd lived it more than once.

The first time, he was sixteen.

The call about Thatcher’s death had come in the middle of the night.

An IED in Marjah. The Marines called it an honorable loss.

Grandfather Ray had said nothing. The old man sat down on the front steps of the house and didn’t move for nearly six hours.

Didn’t cry. Didn’t curse. Just stopped .

Bear had never seen him retreat like that, like someone had carved out the light behind his eyes and left only shadow.

The second time, Bear had just finished BUD/S. He’d gone home on leave before quals.

Ayla.

She was just gone . One day part of his life, the next vanished into a system that didn’t know her name, into a world that swallowed girls like her whole. Grandfather Ray didn’t retreat that time.

He collapsed .

Emotionally. Spiritually. The man who taught him how to break horses and burn sage in homage just folded , like the world had become too loud and cruel and undeserving of his words. Bear had been left to carry it alone. The grief. The weight. The silence.

No funeral. No body. No closure.

Just another empty bed and a grandfather who stopped singing.

Bear hadn’t known what waited for him when he left Pine Ridge at eighteen with nothing but a duffel, his hair shorn and burned for his brother, and the silent scream of get me out wedged like glass in his throat.

He didn’t enlist to be a warrior.

He enlisted to survive.

Poverty wasn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it just wore you down, slowly, cruelly, like wind over stone. He hadn’t planned to be a SEAL. At first, he just wanted structure. A challenge. Something big enough to give the weight in his chest a direction.

But then BUD/S cracked him open. Ground him to dust. Somewhere between the freezing surf, the sand in his mouth, and the blistered skin from log PT, he found something he hadn’t expected to receive like a gift in his blood.

Brotherhood. It had snuck in quietly. Not with the oath he took, but in the shared bruises and sweat and purpose.

Through the way Gator snapped at anyone who flinched.

Through Buck’s dry humor. Through Professor’s steady calm.

Through Zorro’s stubborn, relentless care .

Bear exhaled slowly as Zorro surfaced again, dragging himself across the water like it owed him answers. Even in the water, Zorro couldn’t stop trying to save someone. Bear could feel it radiating from him, this ache .

Everly Quinn.

She was breaking him open, and Zorro was letting her. That was the way the fucker worked, and the courage he had, the surrender and the understanding rocked Bear, leaving him with something so deep that he didn’t know how to define it.

Flint made a soft, aching sound, and Bear looked down at him. “Let’s go, boy,” he whispered. Bear pulled off his tee, throwing it on one of the chaise lounges, leaving him in nothing but his black compression shorts. The two women at the bar watched him walk with the black dog, sighing.

Bear shifted slightly, crossing to the edge of the deck, sliding into the water, Flint following. As Zorro reached them, Bear started his own swim right beside him, Flint flanking him on the other side. For a long time they swam laps that way, and the tension in Zorro’s shoulders eased a little.

Zorro grabbed the side and braced his arms on the ledge, water trailing down his bare chest, his face shadowed but exposed. No mask. No grin. Just raw . “You okay?” he asked.

That made Bear huff out a laugh. “You would ask me about my shit when you’re dealing with your own.”

Those sharp eyes watched him. “You know that means nothing to me when someone I care about is in pain. Couldn’t sleep either?” he asked, voice hoarse with emotion.

Bear didn’t smile. Just met his gaze. “Didn’t try.”