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And Dani freaking hated Sean Riddick for that. For making her body want something her head and her heart weren’t about to allow her to have. Not again. Because she didn’t want a relationship, a man in her life, or a frenemies-with-benefits situation, and certainly not any of those with a man who drove her freaking batty ninety percent of the time and made her worry about him the other ten because he raced into every burning building he could. That was all way more aggravation than any woman needed.
Nope. She’d done the whole relationship thing with a hot-headed warrior and ended up a widow at the age of twenty-eight, thank you very much. So the last thing she needed was to set herself up to be left again.
Sean landed a kidney punch that stole Dani’s breath. Because you’re thinking about him and relationships and Anthony and not fucking focusing. Damnit.
“Shit, Daniela. You okay?” Sean asked, his face blanched, his expression full of regret.
She forced a deep breath but reveled in the pain. Little made it easier to focus than pain. “It was a perfectly fair hit, Sean. I’m fine.” Her voice didn’t sound quite right even to herself.
“I’m sorry,” he said, shoulders down, hands slack at his sides.
The last thing she wanted was sympathy. That reminded her too much of the way people had treated her right after she’d learned that IEDs had taken out a third of Anthony’s convoy. “Let’s go already.”
“Dani, just take a minute—”
“Sean, I’m fine,” she snapped. Of course, she did it in a way that made it clear she wasn’t fine. But whatever. She could handle hot Sean Riddick being an asshole, but not hot Sean Riddick being a good guy. The hot good guy was a whole helluva lot harder to resist.
“Yeah, okay,” he said, not at all sounding convinced. Which probably explained why he backed off on the power of his punches after that. And that just pissed her off even more.
“Stop holding back,” she finally bit out. Because he wasn’t blocking as aggressively anymore either.
He ignored her. His punches felt more like taps.
Dani inhaled to tell him exactly what she thought of that when the whistle blew again, marking the end of the drill. She arched a brow at him and silently told him everything she thought about his treating her with kid gloves. He arched a brow right back telling her what he thought of her I’m fine routine.
“Fine,” she bit out.
“Fine,” he retorted.
Coach Mack gave them their next drill instructions, which fortunately didn’t involve partners this time.
But before she and Sean parted ways, she turned to him. “You know what? Next time treat me like I’m your equal in here, okay?”
Sean’s whole face slid into a frown and something she couldn’t read roiled behind those dark eyes. “Fuck that, Dani. You think I wouldn’t go easy on anyone I just hurt? I more than see you as an equal. Hell, I think you’re a lot fuckin’ better than me.” With that, he walked away.
Well. She blinked. Fuck.
“Everything okay?” a deep voice said from beside her.
And Dani…literally had no idea. She wasn’t sure which had her more gobsmacked—the flash of hurt she would’ve sworn she saw in Sean’s gaze, the guilt and regret she heard in his voice, or that he thought she was better than him.
“Dani?”
She turned to Moses, a former Army Ranger and another mountain of a man who’d joined WFC at about the same time Dani had. “Yeah, everything’s fine.” There was that word again. It wasn’t true this time either. Because now she felt bad about being bitchy toward Sean when he’d just been looking out for her. Apparently. Damnit. “Thanks, Mo.”
Tara was right. Things had gotten more intense between them since the night they’d shared. And Dani wasn’t sure what to do about that. It wasn’t like she could avoid the man altogether. Not when they both belonged to WFC, and not when Sean’s work sometimes brought him to Dani’s emergency department.
Mo nodded and ran a towel over the deep brown of his face and bald head. “You coming out afterwards?”
“Uh, yeah, I think so,” she said. A group of them usually went out to dinner after WFC, and Dani often joined. Her frenemies situation with Sean aside, she liked these guys. And it was the one time in her week when she got to be around people who understood a whole side of her life that her civilian friends really couldn’t.
Even in its quietest moments, going to war was a visceral experience that couldn’t be fully understood without going through it. It was living under the constant threat of violence. It was constantly knowing your actions could lead to life or death for others—men and women you cared about and who were counting on you to have their backs. It was a head game that forever changed how your brain assessed and handled stress, threats, and even basic day-to-day sensory input—noises, smells, flashes of light.
