“The first time I met you, I thought you could be the poster boy for the SEALs, and now I know it’s the literal truth,” she said, still hiding that sexy smile and laugh behind her hand.
“Nah. The real poster boy was Darren.” My heart stopped and restarted when I said his name. I didn’t say it often. It was off-limits at Tristan’s.
Dani’s smile faded, and I wanted to kick myself, but she didn’t say to stop. She didn’t reject the name like it caused her physical pain.
“He was a golden boy, more Captain America than Iron Man. I think the SEALs are probably closer to Tony Stark than Steve,” she said.
As I let her words settle over me, I realized she was right. Darren had almost been too good for the SEALs. “You know, I never once heard him brag about his grades or his stats or his kills. It’s pretty commonplace for our community to hold themselves up as gods and trash talk everyone else.”
“No, you don’t say?” Dani said sarcastically, and my lips quirked.
“Darren never did. Not once. I would be pissed as hell at someone, cussing them up and down, and he’d just shrug, do his job, and keep going. He was always, one hundred percent of the time, the better human being.”
My emotions threatened to overflow. I got up, grabbed another water, and pounded half of it before I sat back down. She’d adjusted, just a hair, so her chin was now resting on top of her knees, and she was watching me as if she could read my story by searching my skin.
“I didn’t know Darren very well, but I’m pretty sure he’d insist you were a damn good human being yourself.” She said it with such sincerity, such conviction, that it struck at the hard corners of my burnt heart and chipped at them, trying to bring the muscle back to life.
I didn’t say anything; I looked down at the water bottle. It wasn’t true. All I’d wanted my whole damn life was to make sure I was there to keep the people I cared about from dying. Before I had to pull a dark-haired woman in a nightgown from a pond again. And I hadn’t been able to reach Darren in time to do that. If I’d been thirty seconds faster…
I shook my head.
“They don’t give a Silver Star to just anyone, Nash.”
My throat locked up at the mention of the medal I’d never wear. The burn of tears hit my eyes, but I wasn’t going to cry in front of her. Not today. Not ever.
“That star means shit, Dani. They gave me a medal for bringing home my best friend’s body…you get that? His body!”
She got up out of the bed, taking the three steps to reach me in the chair, and placed a hand on my chin, drawing my face upward so I was forced to look into her exquisite face. A face showing empathy and heartache that was directed at me. She was hurting…for me. It stunned me into silence. It was Dani who spoke next.
“You brought home two of your men and yourself alive, and you didn’t leave their bodies behind. You single-handedly held back the enemy so that could happen. That isn’t nothing.”
There was nothing more in her words than what had been said in the press release. It wasn’t top secret like the rest of the mission. Mac hadn’t given her some inside news. What she didn’t know was that I hadn’t even wanted to attend the award ceremony when they’d given me the medal. But Mac had reminded me how disrespectful it would have been to the ones who hadn’t come home if I didn’t show up. It would have disrespected the service they had loved and given their lives for. He’d been right. I didn’t have to wear the damn medal. I didn’t have to be proud of it, but I did have to show up.
What I really would have been proud of was bringing them all home alive.
The tears burned harder, and I couldn’t do it. I grabbed her hips, closed my eyes, and tucked my forehead against her stomach. Breathing in and out. Trying to find a sense of calm again. The calm I needed whenever I went out on a mission.
She pushed her fingers through the short strands of hair I hadn’t had buzzed in far too long, running them along the back of my neck and my shoulders and returning to my hair. It hadn’t been sensual. Not the words or the touch. But sitting there tucked up against her wearing one of my T-shirts with nothing on underneath it, knowing if I lifted the edge of the shirt just an inch, I’d see her sweet valley… It was going to be my undoing.
I’d forget everything I’d promised myself and Darren. I’d lose myself completely to her earthly force. I was almost ready to jump, anyway. I was almost ready to find out if I could pull her from her nightmares by repeating what we’d done at Tristan’s when my phone rang. It jolted us both from the touch which hadn’t been an embrace and yet was the closest I’d been to another human being in decades.
She backed away, sitting on the edge of the bed, and I pulled the phone from my back pocket. “Yeah?” I grunted into it.
“The front desk got a letter,” Marco said on the other end. “It was from Fiona.”
“What did it say?” I asked, looking over at Dani as she drank slowly from the water bottle.
“It asked if Dani liked the ipecac syrup,”
