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,
