I sat down next to him, pulling my knees up and wrapping my arms around them. “We knew what we signed up for. You didn’t sugarcoat it.”
“I know, but . . . it could have gone better. To put it mildly.”
“Maybe,” I conceded. “But you did this to save people, right? The civilian casualties were much smaller than usual. The news reports mentioned that too.”
“Yeah, they were. It was mostly my people who died.”
“And we signed up for that.”
“I know. It’s just . . .” He looked at his phone, on the ground beside him. “I have so many calls to make today. I want to call all the families personally, and I don’t know what to say. We came up with a script months ago, and now it seems like not enough. Not nearly enough.”
“Some of them might be grateful you cared enough to call yourself.” Certainly not all. My dad would just scream and tell Grayson he was an idiot. I was glad that I’d only put down Laurence’s number as my emergency contact.
I touched the phone in my pocket. Maybe I should text him. I hadn’t contacted Laurence since I left him a message when I was in Atlanta.
“Do you regret it?” I asked, after a long silence. “Doing this?”
“No,” he said immediately. “I believe in what we’re doing. I just wonder how long people are going to stay with me if this keeps happening.”
“Well, I’m not leaving,” I said. “If that makes you feel better.”
He smiled. “It does, actually.”
“You know, when we were sitting there yesterday, after, no one was talking about quitting,” I said. He turned to me. “We were talking about what we could do differently. How we could improve and work well as a team. For some of us—like me—this is the first thing we really chose to do on our own. The first thing that I could maybe be good at. I don’t want to quit just because things are hard. And I think most of my team feels the same way.”
“You are good at this. Your whole team is.”
“We try. And I didn’t even get shot by a fellow team member this time! That’s improvement, right?”
He laughed. The cafeteria door opened, and Julian walked in, his eyebrows shooting up as he found us. Maybe he was surprised to find Grayson laughing.
“Hey,” he said, walking to us. His gaze held mine for a few extra seconds. “What’s going on?”
“Clara was making me feel better.” Grayson got to his feet and offered me his hand.
“Yeah?” Julian regarded me curiously, then looked down at where Grayson was still holding my hand. He squeezed it gently before letting it go. “How is my girlfriend making you feel better?”
I looked at Julian quickly. I didn’t know what to respond to first—the fact that he’d called me his girlfriend, or that his words seemed angry, even if he’d said them calmly.
Grayson rolled his eyes, punching Julian on the shoulder as he walked past him. “If you’d stayed gone just a couple minutes longer, I could have stolen her away for sure.”
It was a joke, and one side of Julian’s mouth lifted, but I still caught a flash of anger. I wondered if they’d fought over a girl before.
I guessed that meant that Julian had told Grayson about our relationship, and it was fine. I should have been relieved, but I felt off kilter instead, like I’d missed something important. Maybe I should have asked Julian to talk to Grayson together.
“I need to go talk to Jayden,” Grayson said, swiping at his phone screen. “Clara, have a croissant. And tell other people to help themselves when they come in. Julian, come find me after you eat? We need to discuss your team’s next assignment.” He shot me a smile before walking away.
“He seems to be in a better mood.” Julian watched as Grayson left the cafeteria.
“You know I would never . . .” I didn’t finish the sentence. I felt a flash of annoyance that I had to say it at all. He really thought I was interested in Grayson?
“Oh no, I know,” Julian said quickly. “I was just giving Grayson a hard time. I talked to him, by the way. Obviously. He’s cool.”
“He wasn’t mad about us breaking the rules?”
“Nah, those rules were just to keep the creepers at bay.”
He took a step closer to me. His fingers brushed my wrist, and then the back of my palm, and then he intertwined our fingers together. I sucked in a tiny breath.
“You called me your girlfriend,” I said quietly.
“I did. Is that OK?”
I tried not to smile too widely. “Yes.”
The cafeteria door opened again, and the Australian teams that had been doing yoga burst inside. They were followed by Madison, whose gaze immediately went to our intertwined fingers.
“I need to tell them to put out breakfast,” Julian said. He let his fingers drop from mine very slowly, his fingertips lingering on mine for an extra second, like he didn’t want to let go quite yet.
“I’ll put out the croissants,” I said. Madison was still staring at me with a sour expression on her face. I pretended not to notice.
I grabbed the paper bags and pulled out the boxes of croissants, opening one and leaving the rest stacked on the table. I snagged one for myself and moved out of the way as more people trickled into the cafeteria.
The chefs wheeled in steaming pans of eggs and potatoes, and I filled my plate and joined a few members of team seven who had wandered in. Priya and Archer sat side by side, Zoe across from them. Madison sat with one of the Kenyan teams, her hand resting on the back of one of the guys. He leaned down and stole a quick kiss.
I tried to hide my smile. If she was involved with someone else, maybe she’d stop hating me over Julian.
“Is Madison dating that guy?” Zoe asked as I slid into the seat next to her.
Priya leaned over to see.
