Damaged Desires: A Frenemy, Military Romance

by LJ Evans

  It reminded me of the parties my mom used to throw before she’d drowned. Before she’d been lost to me and everyone else. I wasn’t sure why Mom was so close to me the last few weeks. Images of her from so long ago that I shouldn’t even have them anymore, but I did. Mom laughing, shaking her black hair into my face as she tickled me. Dad’s booming chortle joining her. Images and reminders floating about my brain, haunting me. Making me think of home and a house even bigger than this one that no one knew about. No one knew I had enough of my own money to buy a good chunk of Delaware if I chose. I liked it that way. No one needed to know.

  I watched as the goddess Athena twirled on the dance floor with the baby. The hours we’d spent together were burned into my brain cells.

  Tristan sat down in the seat next to me that she’d vacated a few minutes ago, and I dragged my eyes from the goddess back to her. Tristan looked like she always looked: tired. She still wasn’t sleeping. At first, she blamed it on the baby. But we both knew Hannah had been sleeping through the night for a long time now. Tristan wasn’t sleeping for many of the same reasons I wasn’t sleeping.

  Even worn-out, Tristan was still cute. She’d hated it the other night when I’d called her that, but you didn’t have to be a runway model to be considered adorable. Lovable. Darren had loved her so damn much. Enough that they’d taken the risk to be together, even though it was exactly that—a risk. A risk that they’d lost. Brutally. Harshly.

  “Why aren’t you dancing with her?” Tristan smacked the back of my head, Gibbs style, in a move she had done often after picking the bad habit up from Mac. There were few people I let get away with it. Tristan was one of them.

  My eyes went immediately back to Dani and the baby.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’re so stupid, Nash.”

  My body reacted to those words, tensing.

  I hated being called stupid. Tristan knew it from my years as her husband’s best friend. That one word was enough to set me off on edge because the stereotype of SEALs as meatheads with guns was so untrue. Our jobs were much more about our brains than the muscles we wore like a suit. But I guess stupid was a fair turnaround for calling her cute, even if I’d only said the words in my head.

  “Why would I want to dance with Dani?” My voice deepened when I said her name, and I cursed myself inside for giving that much away.

  Tristan laughed, but it wasn’t a nice laugh, even though she was nice. She was so goddamn nice people didn’t know how to handle her, but to me, ever since Darren’s death, she’d been harsh and cold. I couldn’t blame her. I’d come home alive. Her husband had come home in a box. My presence was a reminder of that, and yet, I was bound by a promise not to leave.

  Georgie’s singer friend, Brady, did the one thing I’d been longing to do. He smiled and pulled Dani and the baby both into a dance with swinging hips and swishing hands, happiness radiating from all of them.

  “It’ll be your fault if you lose her to him. He’s famous, has a gazillion dollars, and could fly her to Paris at the drop of a hat,” Tristan said dryly.

  I ignored the prod because I knew Tristan would never truly approve of me with Dani. She wouldn’t wish what she’d lived through on her friend. I watched as longing coursed over Tristan’s face while staring at the three bodies on the dance floor. If Darren had been here, that would have been them.

  “Do you want to be flown to Paris?” I asked, wondering if she’d ever let anyone sweep her off her feet again. It wouldn’t remove me from my obligations, but Darren would want her to be loved and cherished. To be happy. I knew it was too soon; a year was nothing when they’d been together since she was fifteen. But someday had to be in the cards for her.

  “Me?” Tristan sounded surprised, but she finally drew her eyes back to mine. “This again? Really, Nash? No. I don’t want to be flown to Paris or anywhere.”

  “Where was Darren planning on taking you the next time he had leave?”

  She froze. I’d mentioned him when I wasn’t supposed to. It was our unspoken rule. We didn’t say his name or what he would have been doing. We didn’t talk about how we both missed him so much it was like a knife digging into both of our sides. We didn’t talk about how I’d come home and he hadn’t.

  “Sometimes, I really hate you,” she said, getting up and moving to the dance floor where she took Hannah from Dani’s hands, claiming her shield, putting the baby between her, her feelings, and the rest of the world. She took the baby to the dessert bar and left Dani in the hands of the rich, famous, country-rock star, Brady O’Neil. Before today, I’d liked his songs. Now, I’d never be able to listen to them again without seeing her with him.

  Perhaps that was for the best. Get her out of my system in a way having sex with her had not. I was damn sure never going to repeat the mistake we’d both made. I knew a hell of a lot about resistance. About rejecting your body’s natural instincts. I knew how to withstand physical and mental torture. She wasn’t mine. She’d never be mine.

  But then again, you know what they say about never… They say, don’t say it at all.

  Dani

  VULNERABLE

  “If I show you all my demons

  And we dive into the deep end

  Would we crash and burn like every time before?”

  Performed by Selena Gomez

  Written by Bellion / Johnson / Gomez / Johnson

  I was sweating in a very obnoxious way. Even my grandmother, who believed women should sweat to show the men in their lives that they could do even more than the men could do, would have wrinkled her nose at me.

  The humidity that had been hanging around as summer bled into fall had not relented for Mac and Georgie’s wedding, which seemed somehow blasphemous. The humidity and the fact that I’d been dancing my ass off with one Brady O’Neil were the reasons I was a gooey mess. The only comfort I had was that the chart-topping, swoon-worthy country singer was also a sweat-lathered mess.

  We were two of the few single people at the wedding. There were a handful of Mac’s Navy buddies. A handful of our cousins. And the two people I couldn’t be around right now. Well, really, the one. But he was always with Tristan, and I couldn’t do it tonight.

  I’d apologized. I’d let that weight off of my conscience and then departed again before my body decided it wanted a repeat performance of last weekend. It was my fault I was in this predicament to begin with. I’d been the one to suggest the game. I’d been the one to dare him. I’d also been more drunk than I’d been since college. But it wasn’t an excuse. I’d dared him on purpose. I’d wanted to feel something. Anything. Anything but the sterile beat of my own heart that had been with me for over a year now.

  Damn Russell. Damn Nash. Damn Senator Fenway. Damn men.

  I was determined not to be that person. I wasn’t going to be bitter or drowned in sorrow, and I certainly wasn’t going to pine away after a man who wanted someone else, regardless of the reasons for it. I just hadn’t understood it until he’d all but shoved me out of the house.

  I swallowed half of a water bottle just as Georgie found me. She looked gorgeous, her slim, white dress sparkling in the twinkle lights. The gems spread over it with a heavy hand could have been gaudy, but on Georgie, they just looked perfect. She could easily have been a model, like her mother, but instead, she was trying to change the world by working with our lawyer friend on immigration reform.

  “Thank you again for getting my mom here,” Georgie said as she hugged me. She was radiating happiness and joy.

  “Thank the douche at the State Department who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants,” I said with a shrug.

  “The unfaithful of D.C. Does it ever end?” she asked, sighing.

  “Not unless you get out, like me.”

  “We haven’t gotten to talk much lately. You okay?”

  Somehow, it had been Georgie and not any of my family members who’d seen my weak moments in the last year. She’d bee
n the one to suggest I see a therapist about it all, and I had. I still had work to do, but I knew I was going to be okay with time.

  “I’m good. Better now that I’m not in D.C.,” I said, meaning it.

  “Anything on the burner for jobs?” she asked.

  I scoffed. “Not you, too.”

  She grimaced. “We all know that you coming to a full stop isn’t going to last for long. It isn’t your style.”

  She was right. I’d been bored in the week I’d been home before I’d gone to Tristan’s. I’d been bored at Tristan’s. And if it hadn’t been for the wedding this week, I would have been bored this week.

  “Any guy on your horizon?” Georgie asked.

  Brady was making his way through the crowd toward us, and I couldn’t help but smile at him. One of the good things about Brady was that he was always happy. You’d hardly know he was famous by the way he acted, accepting everyone, talking to everyone. No I’m-too-famous-for-you vibe ever came off of him. Georgie saw my smile, and she frowned.

  “Not him. I love Brady like he’s my brother, but you know he’s never serious—not about anyone—right?” she asked.

  I laughed. “Absolutely. I’m not falling into his bed, if that’s what you’re worried about. He’s very much not my type.”

  And he wasn’t. He was all floppy. A puppy dog with a smile. Like some huge golden retriever or something. The one who made my blood pump harder than it ever had before was dark, moody, and taken—and not by me.

  When Brady reached Georgie and me, he stepped between us and threw an arm around our shoulders. His sweatiness, as apparent as mine, made Georgie protest.

  “Ick, get your smelly pits off me, my shoulders, and my dress. I have no desire to smell like Brady sweat tonight.”

  Brady’s eyebrows went up and down. “No, I’m sure Mac would hate you coming to bed smelling like another guy.”

  He removed his arm from her shoulder but not mine. “Dani here doesn’t seem to mind my smelliness.”

  “I grew up with a smelly brother, and I’ve been dancing as hard as you. It would be hypocritical of me if I protested,” I said with a shrug.

  “Are you coming back to the dance floor?” he asked.

  I couldn’t help my eyes darting to a table in the corner of the yard. A table where I could feel dark-green eyes taking me in. It didn’t matter. What was done was done. “Maybe. But I need to catch my breath for a few more minutes.”

  “Did you really fire your PR manager?” Georgie asked Brady. It had been in all the tabloids recently. The woman had done something Brady wouldn’t talk about. He’d just come out and asked the news to respect his and her privacy, and that had been the end of it.

  “I did,” he said, smile fading in a way so not him that it raised my natural curiosity. The curiosity that had served me well on The Hill, eking out morsels the senator could use to his advantage.

  “And you won’t tell us why?” Georgie asked before I could say anything.

  “You always were such a gossip,” Brady teased.

  “You work at a hair salon for as many years as I did and asking people questions about their lives becomes second nature.” She shrugged.

  Brady leaned in and whispered, “She stole a bunch of money from me.”

  We both stared in shock. It was the last thing I’d expected to hear from him.

  He continued, “But if you say that aloud to another living soul, I’ll have to send a hitman after both of you, because we signed a nondisclosure agreement.”

  “She stole money from you?” I repeated, stunned. It shouldn’t surprise me. There was so much money passing around, above, below, and next to the table in D.C. that it was almost a given someone would be taking from someone else’s pocket. But it hadn’t been outright stealing. It had been back scratches and handshakes with dollars attached.

  Ava joined us, her thick, dark hair twisted up but somehow still escaping its confines. “What are you all talking about that’s made Georgie look so serious? No one should be this serious on their wedding day.”

  “They were fighting over me. You know how it is. Married or not, the women can’t leave me alone,” Brady tossed out.

  Georgie smacked him on the shoulder, and Ava rolled her intriguing, dual-colored eyes. “The women or the men? Which is it this week?”

  Brady laughed and shrugged. “I’ve never actually bedded a man. Can I help it if they flock to me like sheep to the shepherd?”

  “More like a wolf,” Ava said in her husky voice. “And you torture them with your flirting and then leave them stranded.”

  “Fun is fun,” Brady said with a wink.

  Georgie and Ava couldn’t be alone for too long without the men they adored seeking them out, and now was no exception. Mac and Eli joined us, wrapping the women in their arms. They were all so insanely in love. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t witnessed it firsthand with Mac and Georgie myself. There was just something that had drawn them together. The universe. Their DNA.

  A natural draw you couldn’t resist. My eyes flicked to the corner of the yard again. He wasn’t there this time. Tristan and the baby were at the table alone.

  A hand hit my shoulder, and I knew as soon as it did who it was. I hated my treacherous body for knowing it before I even looked. I hated my treacherous body for so many things these days.

  “Dance with me?” he asked in my ear, the heat of his breath coasting over my skin and waking up every nerve ending I’d been fighting in the last twenty-four hours.

  The music was slow. Sultry. Which meant his request was a dare. Like I’d dared him to play a game we shouldn’t have played. I wanted to say no. I wanted to tell him to go put his hands on anyone else—or preferably, on the one person he wanted them to be on. But I wasn’t going to make a scene. The argument Truck had caught us in the night before had been bad enough.

  My magenta dress that was supposed to ward off confrontation wasn’t doing its job. True, Georgie had chosen the color for the bridesmaids’ dresses, but it was still supposed to send signals of peace and not conflict. Peace was the last thing I felt as I let him take my sweaty, sticky hand in his.

  I let him lead me to the dance floor, and I let my traitorous body tuck itself up against his. I could feel eyes on me again. This time, they weren’t his. It was Mac and the others. When we twirled, I looked over Nash’s shoulder to where my brother had Georgie pulled up against his chest. Our eyes met over the distance, and I knew exactly what Mac was thinking. It was the same thing I was thinking.

  What the hell was I doing with Nash Wellsley?

  Nash twirled me back the other way, and all I could see was a vacant table at the corner of the yard. “What are you doing, Nash?” I sighed, and before I could stop myself, I added on, “Shouldn’t you be dancing with Tristan?”

  He frowned as if my words confused him and then said, “You keep running away before I can say what I want to say,” he said.

  I stiffened. “I haven’t been running.”

  “You forget, I’ve been trained to stalk, hunt, and chase. I know when someone’s running. Especially from me.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I swear to God, you Otters have bigger egos than politicians.”

  “Confidence isn’t the same as ego.”

  “Potato, potahto,” I said.

  “Are you ever going to let me apologize?” he asked, his voice going down a notch, causing my loins to squeeze together reflexively.

  “God. It was sex, Nash. Good sex, but that was all it was. I’m sure you’ve had more than your fair share of it. Isn’t the SEAL motto women, beer, and fun?”

  “It wasn’t good sex, Athena.”

  I wasn’t sure what hit me the hardest—the denial we’d had good sex or the nickname he’d started calling me last weekend. I wasn’t sure I could handle either. It hadn’t been just sex to me. It had been one of the best sensual experiences of my life. He’d brought me to the brink over and over
more damn times than any one man had done before. Not on his own. Not without me directing exactly what I needed and wanted. So, for him to think it had just been ho-hum…it stabbed at the wound I was already trying to heal.

  Even though I knew my face didn’t reflect my thoughts, Nash read them anyway. Just like he’d found my tells that no one had ever found before. He spoke low again as if he was afraid to say the words. “What we did to each other… I could do that every night for the rest of my life. It wasn’t just good. It was earth-shattering.”

  As if to prove his point, I could feel his arousal against my leg as his thoughts went to the same place mine did. To skin on skin. It gave me little pleasure to know his body was as much of a traitor as mine.

  I was just getting ready to give a snide remark when Brady tapped Nash on the shoulder.

  “Sorry, I’m going to have to claim Dani from you. I have to leave in a few minutes, and I have some business to discuss,” he said.

  Nash looked like he wanted to object, like he wanted to punch Brady square in the nose, but then Tristan came up to us as well. Hannah was passed out on her shoulder, and Tristan had the diaper bag in her other hand, clearly on her way out.

  “Is it okay if we leave?” she asked Nash.

  His face was unreadable as his arms dropped from my waist, taking my soul with him. I felt empty and small without his arms around me. I felt vulnerable.

  “Sure,” he said. “Let’s just say goodnight to the old married couple.”

  He turned back to me and said, “Goodnight, Dani. Be well.”

  Then he left, and Brady took his place, and nothing felt the same. It took me a minute to collect my thoughts, to recover my brain, and to take possession of my body again. Brady seemed to understand I needed a second, because he didn’t dive in until I met his eye.

  “Did my brother send you to save me?” I asked Brady.

  He smiled. “No, not at all, but I could tell he wasn’t too happy with you. What’s that all about?”