Damaged Desires: A Frenemy, Military Romance

by LJ Evans

  “Oh my God. Is he okay?” she breathed out.

  “He is.” I didn’t feel like getting into the whole part about me being hit and pressed her instead. “Do you need to talk about what happened?”

  “Nothing really happened. I just feel like…we both need some space,” she said, but it was elusive, as if she didn’t want to come out and tell me about it. “Honestly, I’m glad he’s there with you.”

  “You’re glad he’s with me?” This surprised me because I’d expected her to be…not jealous…but proprietary over him. She relied on him for a lot more than just helping with Hannah and the dog. Their relationship was convoluted. I couldn’t decide if they were friends, family, or much more.

  “He needs someone to smack him around a bit, and I think you’re just the person for the job.”

  I laughed. “Well, I don’t know about hitting him, but I don’t intend to take any of his shit.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  I was glad I’d called her—for me as well as her. I told her to reach out whenever she needed it, reminding her I was up at all kinds of hours these days, but I knew she wouldn’t. Tristan was as much of an enigma as Nash on most days.

  My feelings for Nash being in Florida were almost too mixed up to peel apart.

  A sharp knock on my hotel door brought me to the peephole and a blurry vision of the man himself on the other side.

  I swung it open enough to stare at him without inviting him in.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “Did you even check who it was?”

  “I’m not seven, Otter. I don’t need a lecture on stranger danger.”

  He was cataloging me again. Every tell. Every hair. Every breath. It was maddening and stupidly tantalizing at the same time.

  “When are you leaving?” I asked in response to his silence.

  “I’m not.”

  I crossed my hands over my chest. “What do you mean, you’re not? If you went through their plans, then you’ve done your duty. Go back and figure out how to fix your own life.”

  He didn’t rise to the bait I’d laid out. His position mimicked mine—arms over his chest, making the muscles and tattoos on his arms flex.

  “Are you leaving?” he asked.

  I scoffed. “Why would I leave?”

  “Because it isn’t safe. Last night you were collateral damage.”

  “I’m not quitting,” I said, gritting my teeth. Last night had been awful. It had triggered my feelings of powerlessness and caused my emotions to run rampant in the elevator. It had brought back all the feelings I’d hated most after Fenway’s attack. But I hadn’t backed down when he’d originally assaulted me, and I certainly wasn’t going to back down now when I’d accidentally been hit by firecrackers aimed at my friend. I’d support Brady any way I could. Skittering away like a mouse with a light shined on it was not me.

  I wasn’t a mouse.

  The muscle in his cheek flexed as if he were trying to hold back the words he wanted to say.

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  “This isn’t a poker game, Athena,” he said, pushing on my button just like I’d tried to push his.

  I stepped back and let the door shut in his face before I said something I’d regret. I was fuming on the inside. Fuming that he’d used the poker game against me. Fuming that he’d asked me to quit. Fuming that I’d let Fenway impact me again. Fuming that someone who had worked for Brady was now threatening him.

  I let my emotions drive me through the pile of work I had to do, trying to shake off the negative press. I was limited in what I could say because of the nondisclosure agreement, especially when I hadn’t even been fully read in on it myself. I spent an inordinate amount of time on scheduling social media posts for the next few days, looking over the list of VIPs for the next day’s concert, and pretty much redotting my i’s and recrossing my t’s.

  After I’d done as much as I could, I ordered room service and turned on the TV. My phone rang, and I saw, with surprise, that it was Bee.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey,” she said back, and then silence drifted over us. I loved Bee, but we didn’t really have the kind of relationship where we called and told each other everything. Mac and Georgie were the people I opened up to the most. I’d always had a shield up with Bee because she’d been hurtful with her words more than not. Because she’d never defended me to her friends or the people in her life, starting in high school all the way to her husband, Thomas, who enjoyed being snitty at my expense.

  “You okay?” I finally asked when she hadn’t said anything and the quiet became painful.

  “Me? I’m fine. I was actually calling to see if you were okay.”

  Surprise wafted over me. “You were?”

  More silence, and then she said, “I feel like I pushed you into this job, and now you got hurt.”

  I almost had to smile because it was really Bee making it about her again, trying to lessen her own guilt. I said, “You didn’t push me into this job. You didn’t even know about it.”

  “But I was all over you to get a job.”

  She had been.

  “You just wanted what was best for me,” I told her, swallowing back my initial reactions.

  “I did. I do. Are you going to be okay?”

  The last thing I wanted was my family to continue to worry about me. “I am. Nash is down here fixing the security problems.”

  “Nash?”

  I rolled my eyes. “You know, Mac’s SEAL buddy.”

  “Is he the blond or the dark, tattooed one?” Bee asked, and I wanted to strangle her for not knowing. For not remembering that the blond she was talking about was dead and that she’d just had drinks with his widow barely a month ago. For not remembering that the “dark one” had barely escaped with his own life.

  “The tattooed one,” I retorted drily. “He’s the one that didn’t come home in a body bag.”

  “God, don’t get all snippy. I’m sorry I don’t remember all your and Mac’s friends. It’s not like I deal with any of those people on a daily basis.”

  She was getting her back up, and I sighed. She was clueless, but she’d called to check on me, and that said more about our relationship than anything. We loved each other, even when we couldn’t always stand each other.

  “I know, Granola Fart,” I said quietly. “Thanks for checking on me.”

  “Don’t get dead, Gooberpants. Who else would I have to fight with?” she teased, but there was a sentimentality behind the words I normally didn’t hear when she talked to me.

  “Thomas. You love fighting with him,” I told her with a small grin and was rewarded with her snort.

  “True. That man makes me boil and burn all at the same time.”

  I grimaced. “I’m not sure I want to hear about your sex life, Bee.”

  She chuckled more. “Someday you’ll find your own ignition switch, and you’ll completely understand.”

  Which only brought to mind the man who’d already ignited me. Whose face I’d slammed the door on. A face I didn’t want in front of me as I tried to unwind and go to sleep.

  After Bee and I hung up, I searched the channels for something that would let me forget the world for a little while, but nothing kept my attention for long until I ended up on the Discovery channel. It was a show that just so happened to be on the renowned Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training. It was a living hell for those who went through it. The show had been filmed for the anniversary of the creation of the Navy SEALs.

  I rolled my eyes at the coincidence. Fate was talking to me tonight, meaning I couldn’t escape Nash. Plus, the show had already pulled me in. Even my desire to fling more doors in Nash’s face couldn’t alleviate the awe I felt watching the program. Not only because of the physical endurance required of them but the mental fortitude. Their loud “hooyahs” echoing around the darkened room gave me goosebumps. Finishing the int
ense seven months of training was only the beginning. They didn’t even get their Tridents—or birds, or Budweisers, as they were nicknamed—until they’d completed months more of post-training and had gone before the Trident board.

  The show didn’t talk about the sniper training, but I knew, from a life spent as the daughter of a Navy man, that snipers were the best of the best. Sniper school took the elite SEAL requirements and amped them up another thousand percent, and even then, not everyone who signed up passed the training. It made me more curious than I wanted to be about snipers—and one particular sniper—and I found myself scouring the web for books. I came up with a handful. It was a much-debated topic on whether a SEAL was betraying his brothers by talking about the teams, their missions, and their consequences, but I was glad I could download a few to read.

  For some reason, my damn body and brain wanted to understand the man who had gotten under my skin like no one else. I hated that it made me feel as if I were still a teenaged ugly duckling trying to be noticed as she drooled after Bee’s boyfriend. I thought I’d put those feelings of inadequacy behind me in college, after I’d lost the braces and my gawkiness and found men who were interested in me as much as I was interested in them.

  But not a single one of those men had ever heated me to the point where all I could think about was their hands on my bare skin. Nash did that by just glancing in my direction. It was ridiculous. I hated it, but I didn’t, and it gave me a new appreciation for Bee and Thomas’s relationship that I’d never had before.

  I fell asleep reading one of the books, which only allowed thoughts of a tattooed body to follow me into my dreams.

  Nash

  TROUBLE

  “The thought of all the stupid things I've done.

  And I never meant to cause you trouble,

  And I never meant to do you wrong.”

  Performed by Coldplay

  Written by Berryman / Buckland / Champion / Martin

  Tanner was a fucking idiot. I’d had to take a break from him and his nonsense as he’d argued endlessly with Garner about me being there rather than letting me do the job I’d come to do, which was to improve the entire detail. His ego was twice the size of any SEAL or Ranger I’d ever met, and he didn’t have any of that behind his name. A four-year stint in the army. That was it.

  Leaving the room, I’d found my way to Dani’s door, determined to convince her to get the hell out of this place with its shitty security team and high-risk scenarios. I couldn’t blame her when she’d let the door shut in my face. I’d known all along she wasn’t someone to quit, and now all I’d done was increase the wall she’d built up between us.

  I dragged a hand over my scar. I was doing nothing right with any of the women in my life these days. Those thoughts had me storming back into Tanner’s room and demanding I be given access to every bit of security they had as well as any intelligence on the stalker.

  “Have you signed the nondisclosure agreement?” Tanner asked with a smug grin, knowing I hadn’t, because nothing had changed in the twenty minutes since I’d left the room.

  Brady’s manager, Lee, was working on getting it updated or some shit like that. I had one of the highest security clearances there was to give in the military, and yet, this guy wanted to hold back vital intel because I hadn’t signed my name on a legal piece of garbage. I tried to keep my cool.

  “Fine, keep the shit about Fiona Ross, but I need access to every other aspect of this detail. If I’m going to be sticking around, I’ll need to modify more things than the basics.”

  His entire posture tightened, and he stared at me with narrowed eyes.

  He handed me a sheet of paper with their websites, passwords, and high-level coverage plan. “You have this on paper? Where it can easily be found?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I printed it out for you. From our encrypted site. Shred it when you’ve done whatever you SEALs do with the data.”

  His disparagement of my military family was enough to cause my temperature to go up a couple of notches, but what it meant was that he hadn’t qualified for the Rangers. He hadn’t qualified for any special ops, and he was butthurt over it. I’d seen it a million times since getting my Trident.

  I left him and his shitty attitude for my room where I spent most of the night going through their personnel files and their plans. I made notes, typing up a document I sent off to Garner and Tanner in the early hours.

  After, I tried to get some sleep, but it was pretty much hopeless.

  When the light was starting to break into the dark sky, I donned my workout gear, heading down to the hotel fitness center to see if I could eke out some of my tightness by putting my body through the paces. What I found had me freezing in my tracks. Dani. Her back to me, legs pumping, earbuds in as she stared at the track on the electronic screen attached to the bike. Her butt was shifting on the seat, her back glistening.

  It was heaven and hell.

  She sat up as the course ended. She was in another one of those half workout tanks like the one she’d worn when we’d played strip poker together, and that image did all the wrong things to the body I’d told to stand down weeks ago. She stretched her arms, which made every muscle on her back pull taut as she got off the bike and then proceeded to bend over to stretch her legs, putting her toned butt right in my line of vision.

  Damn. This was going to be harder than I’d thought. Keeping my distance from her. Doing the right thing by her and Mac and me. I was a fucked-up SEAL who had too many things to set right, and even then, I’d still be a SEAL. I’d still be the person who would leave and might come back in a body bag. Tristan’s words from the other night weren’t going anywhere. She’d asked Darren to quit, and he hadn’t. There was no way in hell I could do that to anyone. It only added more reasons to the endless stack of why I couldn’t do a relationship, and Dani deserved a relationship with whomever she let in her bed.

  She deserved more than just wild nights of sex.

  Dani wiped at her sweat with a towel, drank down half a bottle of water, and then turned toward the workout bench. She finally caught sight of me, and her hand flew to her heart, eyes going wide.

  “Holy shit, you have to stop doing that,” she said.

  “Why are you here without one of the detail?” I asked because it was the one thing I could focus on rather than her toned body, hot and sweaty in ways that just continued to remind me of our night together.

  She bristled, and I barely held back my smirk.

  “Why would I need a bodyguard? It’s Brady who does,” she said dryly.

  She went to the weight machine, adjusted the dial, and sat down, ready to do a series of overhead presses. My curiosity got the better of me, and I moved over to take a look at the setting.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “What does it look like?” she said, breathing in and out as she lifted the bar, opening up her chest and causing the muscles I could see contract and expand in the most beautiful way.

  I couldn’t keep my eyes from dragging over her, starting with her arms above her head, down to her shoulders, continuing down to where her breasts were pushed out as she lifted. She met my gaze when I reached her eyes again, and the heated look there was almost more than I could stand before she closed them against me, hiding her reaction as much as I was trying to hide mine. I shifted my eyes to the setting she’d chosen.

  “Do you always use this much tension?” I asked, voice going down an octave.

  “Why?” she asked full of Dani’s sass and storm.

  “It’s impressive,” I told her the truth. I shifted so I was leaning on the bar she wasn’t lifting, and it drew my body closer to hers.

  She snorted, deflecting the compliment. “Just because you’ve been surrounded by mostly male bodies on the SEAL teams, doesn’t mean females don’t push themselves, too.”

  She did a series of reps, switched position, did more, and then got out of her seat to go
to the pull-up bar. I was still watching. Fascinated. Stuck. It wasn’t like I hadn’t worked out with female Navy personnel before, but there was something about Dani―the woman who’d had her legs straddled around me while I’d been inside her―pushing her body to the shaking point that was almost too impossible for me to bear.

  “Are you going to stand there staring? Didn’t you come down to workout?” she asked sarcastically.

  “I did, but now I’m thinking the time might be better served teaching you some self-defense,” I told her, unsure where those words had come from but realizing the truth of them. If I could give her some moves to match her strength, she’d be a helluva lot safer.

  “Again. I’m not the one who needs protection,” she said flippantly.

  As she went to pull herself up, I cringed at her form. In an instant, I had my hands on her, pushing in on her stomach, the other on the top of her back, and she dropped down, facing me with a glare and a beautiful flush that had nothing to do with the exercise.

  “What the hell?” she demanded.

  “Your form is crap. You’ll hurt yourself if you continue doing them that way,” I said. I hadn’t removed my hands even though she’d landed on the ground. The scent of her washed over me. The scent of lemon and grass and the mint of her toothpaste because our faces were a breath away.

  “Jump up,” I told her.

  She stared at me, and I could see the war going on inside her head. The desire to pull away and run. The desire to stay. The desire to just flip me off and tell me to go to hell.

  Finally, her stubbornness won out. She pushed my hands away, grabbed the bar, and waited for me to touch her again. I talked her through the placement of her stomach, back, and shoulders, and then watched as she did ten with barely a tremor.

  “Just when I thought Dani Whittaker couldn’t astound me any more, you drop ten pull-ups like they’re nothing,” I told her. The honesty of my admiration hung in the air.