Damaged Desires: A Frenemy, Military Romance

by LJ Evans

  I made it through the rehearsal and to the club without talking to him. I was sitting down for the first course in the club’s private ballroom before I patted myself on the back. Even better, Nash and I were seated on opposite sides of Mac and Georgie, and the conversation flowed without us having to acknowledge each other.

  Unfortunately, Bee and Thomas were on my other side, and Bee had focused in, once more, on me and my lack of a job. “Have you even put out any résumés?”

  “I don’t understand why this is so important to you,” I told her with a small frown. “It isn’t your life.”

  “Can’t I care about my sister? I don’t want you sitting around getting depressed. After everything that happened last year, it’s the last thing you need.”

  “Oh, hell,” Gabi said from two seats down.

  My body tensed, as it did whenever the incident was mentioned. I thought Bee had gotten the message to not talk about it when I’d gone with her and Gabi to their girls’ night. “What happened with Fenway has nothing to do with why I left Washington. Nor is it the reason I haven’t gotten a new job.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for then?” Bee asked, the small frown I knew was going to someday leave a permanent mark on her face returning.

  The table had gotten oddly quiet. The conversation had been in a natural lull, which made Bee’s voice stand out all the more. “Something not here,” I said.

  “Well, that narrows it down a lot,” Bee replied.

  “There’s a spot open at the Naval Academy. I think it’s more fundraising than anything else.” Nash’s voice cut through the room and coasted over me. I bristled, and I couldn’t stop the words that poured out.

  “Look, I don’t know why everyone is so worried about me and my job situation. I’ve worked an endless number of hours over the last twelve years. I think it’s okay for me to be taking a minute to just let myself unwind,” I said and then turned to the other side of the table, meeting Nash’s gaze. “I think you should be worrying more about yourself and what you’re going to do when your SEAL career is over.”

  As soon as I said the words, I knew they sounded harsh. It sounded like I was saying they were going to kick him out of the military, and that wasn’t what I’d meant. I hadn’t thought through my words before I’d spit them out. Nash was the only one who had that effect on me.

  I heard Mac draw in a breath next to me, and his eyes narrowed on my face.

  Mom cleared her throat, turning the conversation deftly with years of experience. She looked at Georgie’s mom and said, “Manya, how was your flight?”

  The room picked up with chatter.

  “What the hell was that about?” Mac asked quietly.

  I didn’t respond at first. My nerves were on edge from being around Nash, because even though we hadn’t said a word, it still felt like he was standing right next to me. I gathered myself together and then said, “Nothing. I’m just tired of everyone trying to shove a job down my throat. I’ll find what I want soon enough.”

  I pushed back my chair and headed for the ladies’ room. I stood there, staring at myself in the mirror again. Public restrooms and I were not friends anymore, because I always flashed back to the restroom at The Oriental. But as bad as they were, restrooms weren’t as hard as elevators. I refused to let myself go down that route tonight as we celebrated Mac and Georgie. I was determined to have a smile on my lips.

  I washed my hands and left, only to run straight into Nash. His hands settled on both my arms in an attempt to keep me on my feet, scoring me like a knife.

  I stepped back, pulling away, as he took in my entire body. I was in one of my favorite halter tops and a flowy skirt which reminded me of Georgie more than me. I’d bought it in an effort to debusiness-ize my wardrobe. The longer Nash stared, the more it felt as if I had shed my clothes and was standing there as naked as I’d been the weekend before.

  “Dani,” he breathed out.

  I looked back down the hallway toward the ballroom my family was in. I wasn’t going to be the one to talk. I had nothing to say. I’d rather be eating raw onions at the moment than standing there speaking with him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it. The sorrow was practically pouring from his veins, and it just made me angrier. At both of us. For not stopping when we’d both known we should.

  “Can we just stop talking about it?” I asked, and I hated that I couldn’t meet his gaze.

  “We just didn’t get to talk about it before you left.”

  “It was one night, Otter. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “If it didn’t, you wouldn’t be upset and avoiding me.”

  I laughed a forced laugh. “I’m not avoiding you, and I’m certainly not upset. You’re the one going all toddler on me about this.”

  I finally returned his stare, and I hoped mine only reflected the anger and the hatred for everything about this situation. Anger at getting myself into this mess to begin with.

  He searched my face and was going to say something else, but then I happened to look behind him to see Truck coming down the hall, and I cut Nash off by calling out to Truck. “Hey! You made it!”

  I swept away from the man who’d made my blood come alive just by standing next to him and hugged Truck.

  “Dani, this is my wife, Jersey,” Truck said, and his voice went down five notches with emotion as he turned to the beautiful blonde with her hand tucked tightly in his. She was much smaller than him but had hair so fair it was almost white, just like Truck’s—as if they’d been molded from Swedish clay.

  “It’s such a pleasure to meet you,” I said, greeting her with a genuine smile I hadn’t been able to give to Nash.

  I ignored the way my heart jumped as Nash joined me. He and Truck shook hands while the introduction to Truck’s wife was repeated. “We’re just in here,” I said, and I turned to open the door to the ballroom and let them all pass.

  When Nash got even with me, he looked like he still wanted to say something, and I just went in first, leaving him to grab the door before it hit him in the face. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t talk to him right now. Maybe never. It had nothing to do with him at the same time it did. But mostly, it was about me.

  Nash

  BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS

  “Read between the lines

  What's fucked up and every thing's all right

  Check my vital signs to know I'm still alive

  And I walk alone.”

  Performed by Green Day

  Written by Pritchard / Frank E. / Wright / Armstrong

  Dani was ignoring me again. She’d denied it, but the truth was, if she wasn’t ignoring me, we would have been able to continue the normal flirtation which had existed between us from the first day we’d met. I’d allowed myself a moment of weakness, a moment where I’d given in to emotions, and it had fucked everything up. I knew better. I’d trained for almost two decades to not let emotions take over, because if you did, the wrong person almost always ended up dead.

  Dani had been my casualty. She’d lit my charred heart on fire, and then I’d doused it—and her—with fire repellant, the white powder drowning both of us.

  I was standing with a gorgeous blonde, her hand light on my Navy whites, but my eyes were on the woman in front of me who had done something no one had done in my lifetime: made me react without thought. Truck, in his own Coast Guard dress uniform, had Dani on his arm. She was in a magenta dress that curved to every graceful edge of her and showed off muscles like the toned lines of her shoulder and back showing above the top of her strapless dress. The bare skin I’d seen in its entirety last weekend.

  My body reacted to that memory, and I had to force it into submission as I continued to take in every part of her. Long, dark hair swept partially up away from her face, showing off the glow of a tan that had taken over her skin from her time at Tristan’s house. The curls cascading down her muscled back to the top of the zipper I
wanted to undo with my teeth. As if she could feel my gaze, she reached back and ran a finger along the top of the dress. Then, she looked toward Truck as he nudged her with an elbow, and I caught sight of her eyes circled in makeup which made the brilliant blue stand out even more. I much preferred her eyes when they were staring me down. But that was exactly the problem.

  The woman on my arm, Georgie’s Russian sister, tugged at me, and I looked down into her face. She was beautiful, too. Not my type, but beautiful. I had always had a lack of attraction to blonde-haired beauties. Freud would have a field day with it being leftover issues from my childhood and the dark-haired mother I’d lost at too young of an age.

  “You are okay?” Raisa asked me, her Russian accent smooth, almost hidden.

  I gave her my very best smile. The smile I’d dazzled many women with before my world had fallen apart.

  I nodded. “Absolutely. It’s a wedding, a party, some of my favorite things.”

  But I had an ear listening to the conversation of the couple in front of me.

  “How’d you know I was looking for Jers?” Truck asked.

  Dani snorted. “Your face is all scrunched up, and I can practically hear your heart trying to escape its chest to run back to her. You have it as bad as Mac.”

  Truck nodded with a smile just as the frazzled wedding planner told them it was almost their time to head down the aisle.

  “It’s true,” Truck said. “So, whose heart have you tied a noose around?”

  Dani laughed as if she’d never heard of such a ridiculous thing, and my throat seized up. The thought of her and someone else. I had to cough to clear my airway, and I saw Dani stiffen and start to turn just as the wedding planner shooed her out the French doors and into the backyard. They paused again at the start of the bright-turquoise runner lining the way between hundreds of chairs. The runner ended at an arch where my remaining best friend stood waiting for his bride.

  Raisa and I followed Truck and Dani, stopping at the French doors just as Dani tossed back, loud enough for me to hear, “I’m not interested in lassoing anyone’s heart. I might just remain a serial bachelorette like Mac had once planned to remain a bachelor.”

  Goddamn, she was doing it to torture me. To make sure the only vision I had was her with other men’s hands on her. It almost made me lose the last ounce of willpower I had left when it came to her, longing to rip her from Truck’s arm and show her just exactly how much she shouldn’t be single for the rest of her days. I must have made another noise, because Truck half-turned toward me, too, before he asked quietly, “Mac is otherwise engaged today. Do I need to take on the role of big brother and bust anyone’s head for him?”

  I wanted to snort. Truck was big and bad, but I wouldn’t lose in any fight he and I might engage in. Dani let out another light-hearted laugh. “God no, that would imply I was actually upset about something. I’ve never felt freer in my life.”

  I was responsible for her wounds. I’d inflicted them the moment I’d said I couldn’t have Tristan find us together. Dani had gone from the flirty, sexy woman moaning my name to the professional, smart-mouthed woman most of the world saw. As much as I’d wanted to, I was unable to take the words back. They were the truth. Tristan would have gone off on me like a time bomb if she’d found Dani in my bed. Because she liked Dani. Because Tristan knew I couldn’t commit and I certainly wasn’t in the headspace to commit even if my work didn’t prevent it.

  I had one job outside my real job these days, and that was to look out for Tristan and Hannah. The night Tristan had delivered Hannah, I’d promised him. It had been an easy promise because we’d both known Darren wasn’t the one who took risks in the field. He was the one guaranteed to come home. Until he hadn’t.

  Now, I owed it to my brother who’d lost his life covering my back while I’d completed a mission we’d both known was all about money and very little about freedom or democracy. While I’d put a bullet through the head of the scumbag militant dictator holding the world’s gold and a new slush of oil at his mercy, Darren had covered my ass and then paid the ultimate price.

  So, yeah, taking care of his wife and baby was my only job, and I couldn’t risk Tristan being mad enough to send me away. To ignore my texts and calls like she’d done while she’d been with her grandmother. I just couldn’t.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  Tristan had reluctantly left Hannah with me while she went to the bathroom. It wasn’t because she didn’t trust me; it was because she’d been using the baby as a shield between her and everyone else all day. With the baby on her hip, everyone’s focus was on Hannah, and they didn’t look too closely at the specter holding her.

  Hannah tugged on the medals hanging from my chest. There was one missing, but I would never put that one on. It had been given for all reasons I could never accept. I watched as the baby tugged at the bright-colored objects, babbling to herself about who knew what. My chest tightened. This golden girl with amber eyes and wheat-colored pigtails had a tiny bit of my heart she wouldn’t give back.

  Before last weekend, I’d been pretty sure the hardened muscle was as burned up as a used briquette. I’d been sure it was going to turn into some form of a diamond before the next decade rolled around.

  Hannah cooed at someone behind me, and I turned to see Dani weaving her way through the tables in the backyard in our general direction.

  “Yeah, you and me both, little one. You and me both.”

  Damn if it hadn’t been Dani who had somehow made my cold heart beat again with blood instead of lava. As if she really was the goddess Athena I’d teased her about being—gorgeous, smart, and able to smite a man to ash. The words she’d spoken to Truck while we’d been standing at the door, waiting to walk down the aisle, hit me again, bringing a frown to my face.

  A frown that required I repeat to myself all the reasons she was off-limits to me. The obligation I had for the family Darren had left behind. My friendship with Mac. The fact that my job was not built for permanent relationships. Relationships and SEALs didn’t belong in the same sentence. After all, it was why Tristan and Hannah were now alone. It was why it should have been me who had died.

  I didn’t have a death wish like the brass seemed to think these days. I just didn’t have the volume of people waiting for me to come home that Darren had. It was the rare person who would say, “I wish it had been him instead of Nash who had died.” Darren had a whole stadium full of people whispering it.

  The lie I was telling myself twitched at the back of my mind.

  I did have someone who would miss me. Who did miss me. We were just as impossible as Dani and me.

  An ache filled me that I found hard to acknowledge. Sweet tea and myrtle and chess.

  I was surprised to find Dani at our table. After avoiding me, she was suddenly at my side, wearing that magenta dress which tortured every particle of my being. She looked like a runway model. A model with a brain the size of Texas. Maybe the entire Eastern Seaboard.

  She was wasting her talent sitting at her home in Delaware while she regrouped. While she took the twelve-year career she’d built and threw it away because some dickwad senator had decided to attack her in an elevator. Last night, she’d said it wasn’t the reason she’d given it up, but I wasn’t sure I believed her. At the end of the day, it didn’t matter what I believed. I didn’t have a right to say one damn thing about how she did or didn’t live her life.

  “You’re going to give her nightmares,” Dani said, tugging Hannah out of my arms without asking.

  Hannah did little to defend me. Her tiny smile turned into giggles as she immediately clung to Dani’s hair with an excited squeal and the word, “Ann.”

  Because she couldn’t quite get the D or the ee part yet.

  “Hannah and I were getting along fine until she saw you,” I said with a grunt of dissatisfaction I didn’t really feel because my stupid-ass body liked having her this close. Close enough that I could smell her unique s
cent. It smelled like sunshine. Like honeysuckle, and lemonade, and hazy days. And it brought more memories of people and a place I’d wanted to forget as if I was once again wandering the scented fields of blooming geraniums.

  “Was he scaring you, munchkin?” Dani said in the baby-talk voice everyone seemed to adopt when holding babies. Except me. I wasn’t sure I knew how to baby talk to anyone. “Where’s Tristan?” Dani asked.

  “Bathroom.”

  Our eyes met for a moment above the baby’s head.

  “I wanted to say I was sorry,” Dani told me, shoulders back, stiff. She meant it, but it was taking a lot out of her, and I couldn’t imagine what the hell she had to be sorry for. I was the asshole who’d slept with her—had incredible, heart-pounding sex—and then asked her to leave.

  “Don’t,” I said, shaking my head.

  “I am. About what I said last night. They’re not going to kick you out, Nash. You’re too valuable to them.”

  I wasn’t ready to walk away from being a SEAL. I was still hoping to get back on active duty. I needed to slay a lot more dragons before I retired my guns and cammies. I wasn’t sure it was going to happen if the psychologist had any say in the matter.

  I stood, bringing our bodies closer together, tantalizing and torturing us both. Wanting to beg for forgiveness in a way I never begged.

  “Dani, I―”

  She shook her head at me right as the song switched from something I didn’t know into the old-time “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” and she swirled away with the baby onto the parquet dance floor assembled over the pool in the Whittaker’s backyard. They had enough money to buy most of the state of Delaware if they wanted, but you’d never know it on most occasions. They never flaunted it except when it came to things like this—weddings and celebrations. Then, everything was done at the highest level of glamour and cost.