I hadn’t given him all of me.
I couldn’t. I probably never would give all of me to any man. Last night with Nash… It was the closest I’d ever been to giving someone my hidden pieces.
The basement was flooded with weak light. It was morning. Double shit.
I sat up, the movement rocking the uncomfortable sleeper couch Nash called his bed. Nash mumbled something.
“What time is it?” I asked.
He groaned. It wasn’t quite the sexual groan of the night before, but it still lit up my body. I ignored it. His hand found its way to my inner thigh, rubbing, tantalizing me, making me remember what it had felt like to be cocooned in arms so strong it was as if nothing could break them. As if he―we―were invincible.
“Tristan is going to be here any minute,” I said, more to myself than him.
“What?” The hand on my leg froze.
“Tristan. She’s going to be home this morning. She stopped just over the border because Hannah was cranky. Otherwise, she would have been home yesterday.”
“Fuck!” He was up in a flash, pulling on his cammies, not even bothering with the briefs which had landed somewhere else the night before.
He had a stack of clothes on a box. I grabbed a T-shirt and pulled it on, and when I turned around, he was staring at me. Green eyes clouded and dark in the morning twilight.
“What?”
“She’ll kill us both if she finds you here.”
I laughed and looked for my yoga pants, sliding them on. “She already knows I’m here. I’ve been watching Molly.”
“No, here,” he said, looking around his space. The space that barely had any mark of him on it but had a whole stack of boxes labeled Darren’s.
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch. She isn’t going to tell anyone,” I said, twisting my hair and pulling the hairband I had left on my wrist the day before over the loose strands, getting it out of my face.
“She can’t know,” Nash said, and that was when I heard the regret in his voice. It had been there last night, and I’d ignored it. Today, the remorse skittered around the brick walls of the basement and collided with my heart. No, not my heart, my pride. I wouldn’t be embarrassed. We’d had sex. So what? We were two consenting adults. It really was no one’s business.
I headed to the stairs, and he caught my wrist, halting me. “Please, Dani. She can’t know.”
His face was full of guilt as if he’d cheated on his wife or girlfriend. It hit me. His relationship with Tristan. He’d always been close to her because of Darren. They had acted like a family. Like siblings. And I’d never thought he’d want more from her than that. It would be slightly creepy, like wanting Vinnie if something happened to my sister Gabi.
But I didn’t understand any other reason why he’d react so strongly.
“She’ll never forgive me,” he said.
I met his gaze as I always did, but what I saw there had me sealing my heart closed. I’d teased him about making himself at home there, but that was exactly what he was doing. Making a home. For him. For Tristan. Their souls had both lost the same thing and were now trying to find relief.
My soul became an ice sculpture. My soul didn’t matter. This moment between the two of us couldn’t mean anything. Which was fine. I’d said it was a one-night thing, and I’d meant it. I had. I just meant it even more now.
I pulled my arm from his grasp and started up the stairs, throwing back over my head, “Don’t worry, Pretty Boy, it wasn’t exactly my finest moment. I’m not going to go wagging my tongue about it.”
When I got to the top, I couldn’t help but slam the door as hard as I could, wishing he’d stay downstairs, but he didn’t. He followed on my heels. I got to the kitchen and realized I’d left the enchiladas out all night. The food I’d made for Tristan was wasted. Tears suddenly overwhelmed me, but I clenched my teeth, blinked my eyes, and tossed the food in the garbage before soaking the dish. I turned to find Nash tossing the empty whiskey bottle in the recycle bin before he returned to the table to pick up the cards. I didn’t think anything of it until he flipped the hand that had been mine over.
I knew the moment it registered to him, because his eyebrows went up, and his hands stilled on the cards―on the three of a kind that had been mine. I’d actually won the hand, but I’d been tired of playing. I’d been tired of skirting around the wave of desire and tension that had filled the room. I’d wanted to know what it would be like to be touched by someone that could set my nerve endings humming just by being in the room.
He looked up, and I looked away for the first time, unable to meet his gaze. I grabbed the crystal glasses from the table and stuck them under the hot water.
“Dani…” His voice was still full of torture—a Navy SEAL how you will never, ever hear them.
I hated it. I hated the regret. I hated I’d let myself give in to my physical needs. I hated I’d given this man—who was already tortured with remorse because he’d come home when his friend had not—one more thing to feel bad about.
I steeled my back, schooled my expression into my poker face, and finally met his eyes. “Jesus, Otter, you act like what we did meant something.”
An undefined emotion crossed his face before he controlled his expression. The emotionless SEAL
