Page 74 of Fighting for Scarlett

“Hey, relax, man, we’re going to get this mess sorted, keep your girl safe,” Blake “Rocco” Wise told him.

Looking over at the man seated beside him on the helo as they headed out to check out a lead on the mole, he had to fight not to scoff. The only thing that held him back was the fact that these men weren't strangers to knowing what it felt like to have the woman you would do anything to protect in trouble.

Rocco and his team were SEALs, and every single one of them had gone through something with the woman they now called their wife.

To that end, his retort died on his tongue.

“Not sure I can still call her my girl,” he admitted honestly. “She doesn’t understand why I had no choice but to let her get arrested. At least there I know she’s alive.”

“Sometimes you have to lay it all on the line, regardless of the consequences,” Forest “Phantom” Dalton said softly. The man had risked his career, and ultimately, his freedom by going off on his own to rescue the woman he hadn't been able to forget. Now Kalee was his wife, and the two were happy together, but in saving her he’d put everything on the line, and Tate had heard that it had caused relationships to be tense between the team for a while.

“Easier to say when your woman isn’t sitting in a jail cell hating you,” he muttered. The thought of Scarlett hating him was eating him alive. Slowly devouring him from the inside out. How was he going to survive if he couldn’t get her to forgive him?

Big picture.

Each time he doubted that he’d made the right choice, that’s what he had to remind himself of. The big picture was going to keep Scarlett alive.

“She doesn’t hate you,” Cole “Rex” Kingston assured him.

What did Rex know about his woman hating him?

The man had saved Avery’s life, believed in her when she’d been written off as a deserter. He’d gone above and beyond to track her down and save her from being buried alive as a prisoner of war.

Completely the opposite of what he’d done to Scarlett.

Rex had been Avery’s savior, but he had been Scarlett’s villain, responsible for getting her arrested.

“Pretty sure she does,” he argued. It had been written into her voice and her face as soon as she realized he had no intention of taking her back to the apartment, and that instead, he was taking her to Prey where they both knew she’d be arrested as soon as they got there.

“Nah, man,” Mark “Bubba” Wright countered. “I’ve known Scarlett for a while. She’s sweet as they come. She doesn’t hate you. She’s scared and she’s hurting, and she thinks you messed up. Right now, she can't see the big picture but she will.” Bubba and his now-wife Zoey had rekindled the attraction between them when their plane crashed leaving them stranded together in the Alaskan wilderness. Again, there was nothing Bubba had done to betray his woman.

These guys had all been their women’s heroes, and in this moment, he was resenting the hell out of all of them.

“What do you guys know about failing your women?” he snapped. Including Rocco, Decker “Gumby” Kincade, and Beckett “Ace” Morgan in his glare. Gumby had rescued his now-wife Sidney when she was trying to save a dog, and Ace had saved his now-wife Piper, when she had been fleeing civil unrest in Timor-Leste with three little girls in tow after an attack at an orphanage.

Heroes.

Every last one of them.

So why couldn’t he be Scarlett’s hero for once?

Instead, he let her down at every turn.

From pushing her away when he should have held on to her, to not believing in her and giving her the warmth and comfort she needed when he rescued her in Mexico, to sleeping with her when he still had doubts.

For all his fears of losing the woman he loved, and it destroying him, he had been the one to cause himself to lose Scarlett. While he admitted that at every turn he’d made the wrong choices, he couldn’t deny that this time, he knew he’d done the right thing despite all the doubts and fear.

“Sorry,” he mumbled before anyone could offer any retort.

Lashing out at these guys wouldn’t change anything, and it wouldn’t help at all. These guys had dropped everything when Eagle called them in, and they were coming with him to check out the boat where they hoped Warren Barone was hiding out. The former lab worker at Prey, who had been fired for being drunk and unreliable, was the best lead they had for the mole, and thankfully, he appeared to have taken a boat out into international waters, meaning Tate, as a SEAL, could be involved.

“I’m grateful you're here, and you're right,” he said to Bubba. “Scarlett is amazing. If anyone can forgive me it’s her. It’s just … I keep letting her down, right from the beginning. And now I've done it again.”

“To keep her alive,” Ace reminded him.

“Any one of us would do the same thing,” Gumby said.

“You would?” Tate asked.

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