Page 33 of Damaged Desires

“How long?” I asked.

“Until you can tell me you have a reason to live.”

“I can do that now.” I had a whole list of reasons. Tristan and Hannah being right at the top. After all, who would look out for them if I died? I had no intention of being another casualty in Tristan’s life. If I did, Darren would be on the other side, breaking me apart.

Inez was shaking his head. “I’m not talking about the whole ‘I want to save people. I want to protect our country and our world’ bullshit you SEALs spout. I’m not talking about the ‘For Something Greater’ punchline. That’s a movie theme; it’s not life. It’s not a reason to wake up and get up and smile each day.”

Our SEAL motto from his lips was enough to make my blood explode. Him thinking it was a punchline proved how little he understood. Those words were a cadence that had been the saving grace of every SEAL I knew over the years. Those words allowed us to enter live gunfire without looking back. They werethereason, and now he was demanding I find something else.

???

The bar was crowded and loud, making the hair on the back of my neck stick up with every loud crash of glass. Some group at the back was celebrating by breaking the bottles as they emptied them. A weird twist on the Jewish wedding ceremony. A huge tub was on the ground, and every time they finished, they’d stand up, shout at each other, and toss them in.

It was something stupid my friends and I might have done years ago when I was seventeen and thought I knew everything. Thought I’d seen everything. Thought I knew what it was going to take to get my bird?my Trident?when I’d known shit.

I was three drinks in by the time Mac joined me, his naval uniform making the women in the bar chase him with their eyes, unaware of the gold band that was on his ring finger and the woman at home who commandeered his body and heart. He sat down next to me and ordered a beer, saying nothing until he had his bottle in his hand.

“To sacrifice,” he finally said, raising his beer toward me.

I clanked mine with his. “Hooyah.”

“To what do I owe this unexpected Nash visit?” he asked.

I wasn’t in D.C. much. I avoided it like the plague on most occasions, but I’d had limited choices after I’d left Inez’s office. When I’d gone back to the academy, the officer in charge had called me in and informed me I was officially placed on leave until Inez cleared me. I’d intended to make the drive back to Church Beach and hole up in Tristan’s basement like normal, but instead, I’d found myself on my way to D.C., calling Mac.

“Can’t I just want to see my friend? How was the honeymoon?” I smirked.

Mac’s face broke out into a smile so huge and bright he could have stopped a whole herd of deer in its shine. “Worked damn hard the whole time,” he said.

“Worked?”

“Worked at making a baby.”

I paused with my bottle halfway to my lips. “A baby?”

“Yep.”

“Mac the Daddy. MacDaddy.” I couldn’t help a laugh. “Shit, watch out, world.”

“Well, hell, I figured if you can take care of Hannah, I sure as hell can raise my own.”

My smile disappeared.

“Did she finally kick you out?” Mac asked as he watched my face sober up.

“Tristan? Nah. I’ll head there after this.”

“How many have you had?” Mac asked, looking at the pile of money I’d stacked up next to the coaster.

“Not enough to put me under for the night.”

Mac was silent for a moment. “Did you ever consider that having you there only makes it harder for her?”

His words stabbed at me. They might as well have ripped open the wound I’d incurred on that god-awful op and let me bleed out. Did I make it harder for Tristan? The idea had filtered through my brain a million times. I wasn’t an idiot. I was the guy who’d come home when her husband had not. But we were also a family. We’d been a family for almost as many years as I’d been with my actual family. And we both understood what had been lost. The better human being. We shared that grief.

More importantly, I was determined to be there whenever she needed me to help pick up any pieces of her life that she couldn’t deal with. Pick her up when she fell apart, even when she rarely let me see her that way.

Right now, it was me who was falling apart.