Falling for my boyfriend's Navy brother novel Chapter 251

Chapter 251: Asher

It’s strange, walking into a place like this without a weapon strapped to my side.

Not that there aren’t weapons around. There are plenty. This facility is basically a steel–and–glass fortress buried just outside the city, filled with tech that still feels like science fiction, and more military–grade firepower than I ever saw deployed in the field. But now I’m not the one being armed. I’m the one designing the armor.

It’s my first week officially on–site as part of the Tactical Field Design and Testing Unit.

Which is a fancy way of saying: I break things until they stop breaking the people who use them.

The building itself is clean, sterile, sharp in its edges. All white walls and reinforced windows. But underneath that slick civilian gloss, it hums with tension. Like everyone knows this place exists to prepare for war, whether anyone says it out loud or not.

My clearance badge feels heavier than it should. Not physically. Just in what it means.

I scan in at the south wing entrance, get the same nod from the security guys, and head straight for Lab 3 my assigned space. It’s already half a mess. I’ve got blueprints unrolled across three separate tables, parts disassembled into color–coded bins, and notes scribbled all over the whiteboards lining the far wall.

–

This is where I live now.

No gunfire. No yelling. No trauma hidden in desert wind or jungle leaves. Just data. Steel. Stress–testing.

I thought it might feel boring.

It doesn’t.

There’s a quiet kind of intensity to it. Like a puzzle I get to solve over and over, only this time I’m not gambling with someone’s life. I’m protecting it.

This morning’s briefing was with a SEAL deployment team prepping for cold–weather arctic runs. Their boots failed in the last sim- ice cracks too easily under the standard rubber, and they’re burning too much energy adjusting balance every few seconds.

So now it’s my job to redesign a tactical sole that grips on sheer ice without sacrificing speed or maneuverability.

“Not to add pressure,” my direct supervisor, Harris, says from over my shoulder, “but if you get this wrong, we’ll be sending these guys into a frozen wasteland with ballerina shoes.”

I glance at him and smile because he doesn’t know how that hit home. “So no sparkles?”

He snorts. “Not unless they’re also shatterproof.”

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Chapter 251: Asher

Harris is ex–Army, late forties, scar on his chin and a permanently broken nose. He’s gruff, blunt, and surprisingly supportive in the way soldiers are when they recognize another one trying to recalibrate to civilian life. We don’t talk about our units. But we know. And that’s enough.

The team respects me faster than I expect. I don’t know if it’s because of my credentials or my scars, but no one gives me shit. If anything, I get a few too many quiet looks. Like they’re waiting to see if I’ll break under the weight of the quiet.

But I don’t.

Because I have her.

Because after all the shit I’ve crawled through, I get to go home to Penny. She’s not a fantasy anymore. She’s not a danger I need to protect from a distance. She’s mine. And she’s safe. And she texts me every day at noon exactly, no matter how busy she is, with things like:

PENNY:

day two of rehearsals and I already feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. send food or flowers or sexy pics.

or

PENNY:

I ate too fast and now I can’t dance but on the bright side I have zero regrets. panini was a 10/10.

Sometimes I read her texts three times before I answer, just because I like seeing her words on a screen, knowing she’s real and alive and still that sharp and funny even when she’s exhausted.

I don’t tell anyone here about her.

Not yet.

Not because I’m hiding her–but because this place still feels like a test. Like I’m still proving I can function in the after of it all.

But the truth is, I’m already lightyears away from the man I used to be in the field. Back then, my brain was wired for survival only. Scan. React. Eliminate. Repeat. And I was good at it. Too good. There was a time I could take out a team of four armed men in under thirty seconds and feel nothing except the weight of the knife in my hand.

Now I spend hours poring over resistance data on shock–absorbing material.

And it’s weirdly comforting.

I think about my old CO sometimes. I think about the guys who didn’t make it out. And I think about the version of me that came back and tried to bury everything under routine and isolation and anger.

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Chapter 251: Asher

But every time those thoughts get too loud, I picture Penny.

In her sweatshirt and tights and messy bun. Twirling on a studio floor lit by nothing but late–afternoon sun. Laughing at her own clumsy pirouette. Letting me feed her tacos in the front seat of my car.

I picture her eyes when she’s tired and still trying to act like she’s not.

Her voice when she says my name like it’s home.

I picture all the things we haven’t done yet–waking up together more days than we don’t. Grocery shopping. Arguing over paint colors. Picking out a couch. Watching her perform at the gala and smiling like a lunatic in the back row while pretending I’m totally calm.

That’s what makes this job worth it.

Not the paycheck. Not the praise. Not the clean slate.

It’s that I get to build something now.

Something useful.

Something lasting.

Something that doesn’t involve blood or screaming or goodbyes over satellite phones.

The sound of a drill whirring in the prototype room snaps me out of it. I glance at the clock. Lunch is over. Time to go test the first set of sole inserts for the arctic boots.

I grab my notes, scan my badge again, and head for the next room. The door slides shut behind me with a

soft hiss.

But before I start the next round of tests, I check my phone one more time.

Another text.

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