by LJ Evans
“I’m fine. Just a little shaken,” I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice.
I was pretty damn sure I hadn’t convinced anyone, but just as my lungs got to the point where they were actually burning, the elevator dinged on my floor.
Marco got out so I could get past.
“Do you need me to come with you?” he asked.
I shook my head. I wasn’t the one needing security. I needed to get to my room and break down in solitude. The last thing I wanted or needed was someone thinking I was just going to be a liability on the tour.
I headed down the hall, searching the numbers on the doors. I realized about halfway down that I’d gone in the wrong direction. I headed back the other way, and by the time I locked myself into my room, my vision was beginning to blur.
I let myself drop down on the bed, my shoulder hissing as it made contact with the comforter, but it was good. It allowed me to come back to where I was. To the chemical, cleaning-product smell of the hotel. To the noise of a TV on in the adjoining room. To the fact that I was thousands of miles away from D.C. in a totally different space.
Eventually, the tremors stopped, and my heart rate slowed. My breathing evened out, and I was hit with waves of exhaustion. I would have been dead on my feet regardless of how our evening had ended, but the attack and the elevator had drawn every nerve to its endpoint.
I undid the zippers on my boots, slid my feet out, and then slipped under the covers. I left the lights on and just let myself drift away.
♫ ♫ ♫
“Shake It Off” was blaring on my phone and vibrating against my butt cheek. It took me a few minutes to adjust to where I was and why my alarm was going off in my back pocket. I pulled the phone from my jeans and groaned when I saw the time. It was 4 a.m. I’d been out for less than four hours, but I knew there would be no going back to sleep once the alarm sounded.
I pulled myself to my feet and into the bathroom.
My makeup from the day before felt ten inches thick, but you’d never know it from the image in the mirror. I looked like I had when I’d set out from Wilmington yesterday. The makeup was hardly smudged, which just meant I hadn’t moved a hair once I’d fallen asleep.
At least the nightmare hadn’t invaded my sleep.
I twisted to take a look at the mark on my shoulder, relieved to see it had faded almost completely. It was still tender but was much better than it could have been.
I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and then dug through my suitcase for my workout gear. When I left the room with my keycard and phone in hand, I eyed the “emergency exit” sign at the end of the hallway with longing. I had no desire to get back in the elevator.
I put in my earbuds, turned on the meditation app once more, and waited for the elevator to show up. When it did, I placed myself right by the door as I hit the mezzanine button to take me to the fitness center. I listened to the ocean with eyes closed and was grateful when the doors opened with no one else getting on.
Soon, I was on a bike, zooming my way through the mountains, with the coach on the bike’s workout screen. My body was throwing off the tightness it had held since the night before. After a forty-five-minute ride, I moved over to the weights and began a routine I’d been doing for years. One I could do without too much thought but that required enough muscle concentration my brain couldn’t deviate to other topics.
My phone sounding out Mac’s ringtone in the quiet of the room had me jumping, almost dropping the weight in my hand. I set it down, wiped my face and hands with my towel, and then hit the “on” button.
“It’s ridiculously early. Why are you calling me instead of sleeping with your wife?”
“What the hell, Dani?” His voice was full of anger and concern.
There were only two things that could have him sounding that way. Either he found out about Nash and me, or he’d found out about last night’s incident. I wasn’t quite sure how he would have found out about either one because there’d been no witnesses to either debacle.
When I hadn’t responded, his voice turned soft, more concern than anger. “Tell me you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.” Which was mostly true. I was back to my normal self as much as I’d been over the last year.
“When I turned on the news and saw the fire hitting you, I… I kind of freaked out.”
I sat down on the weight bench. “It was on the news?”
“You didn’t know?”
“It was after midnight. How could it possibly have hit the wire already? Hold on while I turn on the TV.”
I looked around at the TVs that were stationed in the room, silent. I found a remote and sifted through the channels until I hit an early morning show. There I was, being hit in the back of the head with a rope of firecrackers, the spark setting fire to my jacket, me dropping it, and jumping into the limousine, Marco and Trevor shoving Brady in.
Then, the anchor came back on. “This arrived in our station’s email box with a note from Brady O’Neil’s supposed attacker. The email said, ‘You can’t replace me and win.’ So, it seems that the happy-go-lucky country musician, famous for his charm and his role on Fighting for the Stars, is not quite the clean-cut American hero everyone wants to believe.”
I shut it off. Shit. I was going to have to be all over this. How could they be blaming Brady for this? As if it was his fault that someone was stupid enough to throw a firecracker at him—and miss, to boot.
“Dani?” Mac’s voice was all concern.
“I’m here,” I said, but I was already typing a text to Lee and Brady.
“The fireworks hit you. Are you hurt?”
“I have a small burn on my shoulder. It isn’t any worse than the million flat-iron burns I’ve had in my lifetime. I’m fine, but I’m going to have to go. I need to get ahead of it.”
“Hey. Stop. Breathe,” he said.
And I did. My anxiety from last night had now just turned into anger. It was just like a year ago, when I’d woken up to my parents at Mac’s and my door and the news showcasing the attack on me in an elevator. I’d gone from anxious to a fire-breathing dragon. It was the same now. No one was going to make Brady out to be the bad guy on my watch.
Nash
FIX YOU
“Tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace.”
Performed by Coldplay
Written by Martin / Berryman / Buckland / Champion
After drinks with Mac in D.C., I sobered up over a meal and then drove out to Church Beach. It was late, and I let myself in because the lights were out. Molly came bounding down the stairs to greet me, jumping off the last step so I had to catch her or let her hit the ground.
“Hey, girl, you miss me?”
I scratched her chin, ran my fingers over her fur, and then set her down.
“Nash?” Tristan’s tired voice called out quietly, coming around the corner at the top of the stairs and looking down.
“Yeah. Sorry I woke you.”
We both knew I probably hadn’t.
“Why are you here again?” she asked.
“Go back to bed. We can talk in the morning,” I said quietly. I didn’t want to have another conversation about being put on leave.
Tristan stared at me for a long time before rubbing her forehead and turning away to head back to her room. Molly didn’t follow her; she followed me down the stairs to the basement and the uncomfortable pullout couch. The couch I couldn’t look at without seeing Dani’s naked body straddling me. Eyes full of passion and sin. Eyes full of lust and desire.
My goddamn body wouldn’t let me forget it. But I had to. I had to get her out of my head because nothing had changed since we’d been tangled in these sheets. Nothing would be changing. I lost my clothes and climbed into the bed with Molly curling up next to me. She was snoring before I was.
It felt like I’d barely closed my eyes when the dream st
arted. The nightmare.
I was looking through my scope at the asswipe we’d been sent to take out. He was moving in his home office, drapes open as if he didn’t have a care in the world. I checked the setting one more time, put my eye back to the scope, breathed in and out, letting the calm take me, before slowly pulling the trigger and watching as the bullet ran through the night, through the glass, and into his head. He slumped forward on the desk.
I’d just picked up the shell casing and was turning to head back when the gunfire started back at the location I’d left the team. They’d been watching my back at the edge of the road. I fought the immediate instinct to take off at full speed, knowing that the one advantage they had would be me surprising their attackers from behind.
Gunfire was replaced with an IED going off, and I picked up the pace but still moved quietly enough to keep my presence a surprise, the sound of guns increasing my hope even before I hit the scene. When I arrived, I’d gunned down four of them and was plowing my way through to my guys when the sight hit me. The bodies. The blood. Bull was on the ground, blood pouring from a leg wound, but he was firing into the onslaught.
I kept laying down fire from the back as I edged toward my team. And that was when the second IED went off, shrapnel hitting me in the shoulder, throwing me to the ground. I lay there dazed for a moment before shaking it off. My weapons still in hand, I stood up and faced the black shadows coming at me. I fired, the shadows fell, and I was heading for my team again. What I saw made me want to empty my gun at every shadow that approached.
The sight before me and the slamming of a door ripped me from my nightmare. I lay for a moment, hand on the warm spot where Molly had once been, and I heard her nails tapping on the kitchen floor above me along with Tristan’s soft voice and the baby cooing.
My heart rate was racing at a pace unheard of for me.
The image of my friends, my brothers, blown into parts I’d had to haul on a tarp back to our evac location. The pieces I’d picked up, covering myself in their blood even more than my own.
I pushed the heels of my palms into my eyes, wishing it had just been a nightmare instead of a reality. I ran fingers along the scar from my neck, along my collarbone, and out to the end of my shoulder. It had torn into some of my tattoos. They were now twisted and deformed, but they would remain that way. I would never have them fixed. They were a permanent reminder.
I got to my feet, forced myself to head upstairs to the bathroom, before joining the females in the kitchen. Hannah was in her high chair, shoving pieces of pancake into her mouth. She saw me and smiled. “NaNaNaNa.”
I bent and kissed the top of her head. “Morning, Bo Peep!”
She offered me her pancake, and it was a moment of déjà vu from her offering me her noodles before they’d taken off for New York.
Tristan turned, took me in with a scowl, and then went back to washing the dishes.
After the nightmare, this image made my heart topple over with anguish, because Darren wasn’t here to see it. He couldn’t come into the room and kiss Hannah and then his wife. I was full of anger and sadness at having had to pick up the pieces of my best friend so there would be something to bury.
Mac’s words from the day before came crashing into my head. Did you ever consider that having you there only makes it harder for her?
When Tristan dried her hands and headed back toward me and the baby, I reacted. Not that I didn’t know what I was doing—I did—but it was more spontaneous than calculated. Like being on a mission and having to change plans on a dime. When she neared me, I pulled her up against my body tightly. Because I needed to prove Mac’s words wrong. Because I needed to prove she needed me. It wasn’t sexual. It wasn’t anything more than basic human contact. She needed to let her defenses down, let someone carry the load with her.
She froze.
“I feel like I’m failing you,” I said quietly.
“Don’t,” she said, muffled against my chest but not returning the hug.
“It’s been a year, Tris, and you can’t even say his name.”
She pushed hard, and I let her go, not wanting to. I wanted to see her fall apart so she could start the journey out from the dungeon she’d been living in. I was selfish enough to want her to fall apart so I could be the one to pick her back up.
“As if you’re doing so much better,” she said sarcastically.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Hitting your teammate, getting put on leave, this―” She waved her hand around the room, but all I could register was that she knew about the leave.
“How’d you hear?” I asked.
“Mac. He wanted to make sure you made it here.”
“He should have minded his own business,” I growled.
“Like you? Like you’re minding your own business?” she threw back in my face.
“That’s different.”
“How?” she asked. “How is it any different?”
“Because I need to make sure you’re okay. I promised him.”
“I am okay. As okay as I’ll ever be without him,” she said, emotions clogging her voice.
“You can’t live like this forever. It’s a half-life. Hiding behind Hannah, barely leaving the house. He wouldn’t have wanted that. He’d want to see you move forward. To feel happiness. To feel love,” I insisted.
“Stop!” she yelled. “That’s enough! Neither you nor Darren gets to decide how I grieve. How or if or when I move on. I get to decide what happens to me. And if I’m happy living the rest of my life hating him, and missing him, while at the same time honoring him, his memory, and our love, then I get to make that decision. It’s my goddamn life.”
Her shaky, angry voice made the baby go quiet. Even Molly had stopped thumping her tail. Tristan grabbed the wipes and cleaned off the baby’s face, but she left the rest of the mess, unlocking the safety straps and picking up Hannah. She had the baby on her hip when she turned back to me. We stared each other down, and―whereas yesterday, with Dr. Inez and Mac, I hadn’t blinked once―seeing Tristan’s pain and Hannah’s scared eyes as she took in her mom’s voice, it made me look down and away. Failure.
Tristan sighed a tormented sigh. “This isn’t working, Nash. You coming here, trying to assuage the guilt of losing him by trying to be some kind of savior to me. I don’t need to be saved. He did.”
Fuck. My chest turned inside itself, the scar across my collarbone felt like it had been opened up all over again. Burning. Destroying. “Tristan…”
She looked like she regretted her choice of words, but she didn’t apologize. Instead, she said, “Go home, Nash. Wherever that is. Go there.”
That just stabbed at me more because she didn’t know where I was from. Darren had been the only person since I’d arrived at Annapolis as an undergrad whom I’d voluntarily told. It was in my personnel file, but no one asked, and I didn’t tell. Darren had allowed me to make his family my own for over a decade. Because the place I’d grown up wasn’t a home at all. It was full of disappointments—mine of them, and theirs of me. People who’d let each other down.
I didn’t want my past to repeat itself. I didn’t want to let Tristan down.
“You and Hannah…you are my home,” I told her the truth.
Tears flew down her cheeks faster and faster. “You can’t take his place.”
Was that what she thought I was trying to do? Trying to be her husband? No wonder she scowled and growled at me. I didn’t want to be him, and yet, I did want to fill the void he’d left behind. It was a fine line to walk. And truthfully, it was probably part of the reason I’d panicked when Dani had been in my bed. Like I was a husband who’d cheated on a wife who wasn’t mine and who I didn’t want that way. We were so screwed up. I was so screwed up.
Maybe Dr. Inez was right that I had shit to figure out. Maybe Mac was right, too, that I needed to give Tristan space to heal some of her scars without me ripping them open.
Tristan stopped at the entryway. “I love you, Nash. You were his brother, and you’ll always be my brother, but I can’t look at you right now and not think of all the things I don’t have because he loved you and the SEALs more.”
“That isn’t true,” I growled.
“Isn’t it? I asked him to get out. After I got pregnant. I asked him…”
She couldn’t even finish without the tears turning into sobs, and I gulped, holding back my own. I hadn’t known. I reached for her, trying to comfort her, but she stepped away.
“He wouldn’t give it up… he wouldn’t leave any of you behind. But us. We were okay to leave behind.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. I didn’t know how to take an image I had of the best man on the planet and twist it to see that he’d somehow failed the one person I knew he’d loved most. I didn’t want that to be my image of him.
She left, and I let her go.
♫ ♫ ♫
“Fuckity, fuck, fuck!” The swearing brought me out of my light sleep in a bed I wasn’t used too. It took barely a second for me to place my surroundings: the loft in Mac’s apartment in D.C. with my military duffel by the stairs. It was all I carried with me when I was on the move, and now I was just that. Baseless. Homeless. I’d left the majority of my things at Tristan’s, in the basement with Darren’s boxes, because I didn’t know where to take them, and a part of me was still hoping that, with some time, she’d just let me move back in.
Mac and Georgie had been gracious enough to let me stay while I got my shit together.
I pulled on my cammies and a T-shirt before heading down the stairs to see Mac standing in front of the three TVs on the wall of the condo, remote in hand. The TVs were a leftover from Dani staying on top of the political world. I came to a standstill next to him, eyes drifting toward the televisions and freezing.
It was as if thinking of Dani had materialized her. Even though all I could see was the back of her, there was no mistaking her graceful sway and her dark silky hair. As she walked toward a limousine, a wall of red hit her in the head. She fell forward, the object on fire, falling to the ground, and exploding in a sea of sparks and sound. Dani flung off her smoldering jacket and scrambled into a limousine.