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There was a soft rumble that was almost a chuckle. “Vomit is about right.”
“I’m worried about you. I’d hug you harder but I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, the darkness making it easier to voice the affection she felt towards him. The protectiveness. Exactly when had those feelings started?
“That’s okay. I’ve never been much of a hugger anyway.”
“Oh,” she said, loosening her grip. “Should I—”
“No.” He caught her arms and encouraged her to hug him again. “I like this. It’s not that I’m not into hugs, it’s just that…”
Dani’s belly had a sinking sensation because it seemed like whatever he was trying to say was rough, and she really wanted him to finish that thought.
“I guess it’s just that, well, I didn’t grow up with anyone ever hugging me, so it’s a sensation I’m not used to is all. Shit.” He groaned low in his throat.
Now her belly did a full-on free fall. No one ever hugged him? What a fucking asshole his father was. She had half a mind to drive to Philly and tell the elder Riddick to go fuck himself with a cactus.
“That’s a real fuckin’ sexy thing to admit, huh?” he said, his voice low in the darkness.
Dani snuggled in against his back and moved her mouth closer to his ear. God, he felt really damn good, all big and muscular against her. Sean Riddick had no problems where being sexy was concerned. But she decided to play this another way. “Look, I just want to get to know the real you. Not the short, two-dimensional sex object peddled by Hollywood.”
If his chuckle was anything to go by, the ‘Deadpool’ line worked. “How do you know so many quotes from the movie already?”
Oh, boy, he was going to love this. “Well, I googled funny lines so I could text them to you the other day, and then I got myself hooked and had to watch it again.”
He peered at her over his shoulder. “You watched ‘Deadpool’ again already? Without me?”
“Guilty,” she said, hiding her grin against his muscled shoulder.
“On the one hand, respect. On the other, from now on, that’s an us thing.” The tone in his voice was all teasing, but Dani’s mind threatened to get all spun up on the idea of anything being reserved as an us thing. Even though—damnit she was a contradictory mess!—it was kinda sweet at the same time.
“Think so, huh?”
“Know so,” he said, facing away again. He shook his head. “Watching ‘Deadpool’ without me.”
She couldn’t help but smile. More than that, Sean made it easy to smile. When was the last time she could say that about anyone or anything? It wasn’t like Dani walked around unhappy all the time. It wasn’t that at all. It was that Sean…well, it was like he turned up the dial on her life, making everything brighter and bolder and funnier and sexier.
And that realization made a headache bloom behind her eyes. The damn anniversary was only three days away now—or it would be come morning—and she clearly needed to take some time to deal with her feelings around that whole situation.
In her gut, she knew what the problem was—a letter she’d had in her possession for six years but never opened. Come July, every year, she had to grapple with whether or not this would be the year she read what was inside of it. And the weight of that decision after all this time lanced dread through her veins.
“So the nightmare,” Sean said, pulling Dani from her spiraling thoughts. She lightly rubbed his chest to let him know she was listening. “It’s pretty much the same one every time, which makes sense since it’s not so much a nightmare as it is a memory—a memory of the biggest mistake of my life, one that ended up killing two good men.”
“What happened?”
For the next ten minutes, he spoke in a monotone, describing how he was the leader of a firefighting team battling a shipboard machinery explosion that spread to neighboring compartments and then erupted into a raging inferno when part of the fire reignited.
“It took us seven hours to contain and finally suppress the fire,” Sean said. “Two died. Eleven were injured. The damage was so extensive that the ship was forced to return to port in order to complete repairs. And a fuck-ton of that—including those deaths—was my fault. So, no superhero over here, in case that much wasn’t already crystal fuckin’ clear.”
Dani really wished she could see his face so that he could read the sincerity on hers. But she stayed right where she was. “That’s a terrible tragedy, Sean. I’m really sorry that happened. But how could a machinery explosion be your fault?”
He shook his head. “Not that part, thank fuck for small favors. But it was my call to station two newbies who’d been on the job a grand total of three weeks on reflash watch. Somehow, there was confusion about how long had passed since the fire suppression system had been deployed, and someone opened the sealed door to the compartment too soon and without running all the necessary safety checks. That made the still-hot materials reignite in a massive fireball that killed my guys instantly. Somewhere along the way, I fucked up in preparing them to do their jobs. Maybe I joked around with my team too much and somehow communicated that people didn’t need to take things seriously. I don’t know. Andrew Keaton and Billy Westover were their names. Nineteen and twenty-one years old. They were fuckin’ kids.”
