Page 13 of Damaged Desires

She snorted. “What haveyoubeen drinking tonight?”

I didn’t reply. Instead, I moved to the kitchen to finish cleaning the mess Bo Peep had left before I’d taken her up for her bath. To my surprise, Dani followed me. She jumped on the counter, watching me wash things and put them away.

“What happened at Little Creek?” she asked.

It didn’t surprise me Dani had heard that things had gone down. Mac had his ear to the ground for every tidbit he got about me and the SEALs these days. It was his way of trying to make up for what we’d lost.

“An asshole happened,” I said, catching myself before I said more. There was something about Dani that had me wanting to tell her my truths. The truths I didn’t tell anyone. Not even Darren had known some of them.

“Do you mean yourself or someone else equally asshole-ish?” she teased.

I turned toward her, arms crossed over my chest. “I’m not an asshole.”

She didn’t bat an eye, gazing at me. “You’re right. I take it back. You’re a flirt. Player. Egomaniac and an otter. But you’re not usually an ass, even if that is Mac’s favorite nickname for you.”

“Why’d you decide to leave D.C.?” I asked just to even the playing field. To let her know I’d heard about her walking away from Matherton’s team just like she’d heard about me. To let her know I didn’t want to talk about my departure any more than she wanted to talk about hers.

She didn’t get a chance to respond before Tristan came in, flustered with a worried energy pouring off of her. My body automatically responded to it, ready to move where needed.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“My grandma took a bad spill, cracked her hip. They’re going to do surgery on her tomorrow.”

“Oh no!” Dani said.

“Mom’s upset,” Tristan said, waving at her phone before sliding it in her back pocket. She turned to the cupboard and started grabbing things and throwing them into an oversized diaper bag. “She can’t leave Bailey while her husband is in South America building that stupid bridge. There’s no way my sister will survive the triplets on her own. She’s barely recovering from her C-section.”

“So, you’re going?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm to counter her nerves.

She nodded.

“How long are you going to be gone?” I asked.

“I don’t know. A couple of weeks at least. When Ted gets home from South America, Mom can join me in New York.”

“New York?” Dani asked, surprised. Tristan’s parents lived a few blocks over from Tristan’s rental, so it was easy to assume her grandma was close by. I’d met the woman only a handful of times, but she was the spriest eighty-nine-year-old I’d ever met. She wouldn’t let you forget it, either.

Tristan took in the items in the diaper bag with a frown. “Yeah, Grandma lives in a small town upstate.”

She looked up from the bag to Dani before turning to me. “Can you look after Molls for us? I don’t want to take her. I don’t know what my schedule will be like with Grandma at the hospital, and you know how she gets if she’s left alone too long. I don’t want her to destroy Gram’s house.”

My heart rocketed to a stop. Shit. The one fucking time she actually asked me for help, and I couldn’t say yes.

“You know I would, but I’ve got to be on base on Monday.” Her crushed face had me backtracking. “Let me see if I can make arrangements to bring her with me.”

It wouldn’t have been the first time a SEAL team had a dog with them.

Dani snorted. “The therapist will love that. Bringing Darren’s dog to your first session.”

Tristan’s hand holding another can of baby formula dropped, and she looked at me with huge eyes. “What’s she talking about?”

The question was delivered to me, but I didn’t know how to answer it. I didn’t want to acknowledge how bad I’d fucked up before I’d landed on her doorstep Friday night.

“You didn’t tell her?” Dani’s voice was full of reproach.

“Tell me what? What the hell is going on, Nash?”

“I punched Dainty,” I told Tristan. I’d talked about the new team with her some, enough for her to know the guy had been driving me completely batty before Friday’s debacle.