She gave him a soft smile. “The foundation means everything to me.”
They ate in silence for a few minutes. Nate was too wrapped up in his own head—to preoccupied with Chloe—to talk. Unlike Nate, her passions ranged far and wide. Her intensity in the bedroom didn’t come from a need to quiet her mind and live strictly in the moment. She had a passion for life. For her job. And that fire translated into the way she kissed, touched, fucked. Nate envied that fire. On his best days all he felt was a gnawing desperation and numbness that he couldn’t escape. He hadn’t loved anything—or anyone—in a long damned time.
“How about you, Nate?” Chloe’s soft voice pulled him from his thoughts. “What gets a soon-to-be non-billionaire fired up?”
“You,” he replied without guile.
Chloe’s cheeks flushed. Damn, he loved the way she looked. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“Did you love the Navy?”
Nate’s gut knotted up. He’d started this. Drawn her into conversation to learn something about her. Now he was agitated that she wanted to know more about him? “I loved the challenge,” he said after a while. “The excitement. And the thought that I was serving a greater good and protecting people. The SEALs were my family for six years.”
Chloe studied him. Her green eyes were round and wide. Her kind, caring expression damned near gutted him. “Why did you leave?”
Nate swallowed against the golf-ball-sized lump that rose in his throat. “I could have reenlisted,” he said. “But I lost two team members and an asset during an extraction mission. Nothing was the same after that, so I got out.”
“I’m so sorry, Nate.” He didn’t want her pity. Couldn’t stand the compassion shining in her beautiful eyes.
“Don’t be.” He immediately regretted the harshness of his response. “It comes with the job.”
The last time someone asked about his time with the SEALs, Nate had answered with a resounding, “Fuck off.” Chloe wasn’t just some curious asshole who thought the job was one big action movie. He sensed her sincerity. The lump in his throat grew bigger. Goddamn it.
“I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose someone in that situation. You prepare for it, sure. But when it happens, it still blindsides you.”
Exactly. Jesus, she understood him like very few people did. “It does.”
“I used to see it a lot. The families that came to Make-A-Wish—they were at the end of the line. They knew what to expect. They’d spent months, sometimes years preparing but when they lost their child, it was always a shock. It still hurt.”
Nick rubbed at his sternum. The familiar anxiety slowly crept up on him, tightening his chest and constricting his airway. His ears rang and his heart pounded. If he didn’t get some air, he was going to throw up. Or pass the hell out.
He shot up out of his chair with enough force to send it toppling to the floor behind him. He didn’t look at Chloe—couldn’t—as he rushed past her and threw open the sliding glass door that led to the balcony. He gripped the back of his neck and laced his fingers together as he took several deep, cleansing breaths. There wasn’t enough fucking oxygen in the world to clear his head. His world was slowly unraveling.
“Nate?” Chloe’s voice caressed his ears, so gentle it speared his heart.
“I need a second.” What a way to make an impression.
“It’s an anxiety attack. It’ll pass.”
“I know it will.” Snapping at her wasn’t going to help anything. She was trying to help, for shit’s sake.
“Come inside. I’ll help you take your mind off of it.”
Nate let his head drop between his shoulders. She could see right through him, couldn’t she? Two nights together and Chloe had his number. Knew why she was here and what he was using her for. Shame welled hot in Nate’s throat. He was a son of a bitch for allowing this to happen in the first place. And he was a low-life bastard because he was going to go back in that room and fuck her again. Fuck her until his brain and body were too spent for anything else. In letting Chloe distract him from his past, Nate feared that he was developing a far more debilitating addiction. Because after tonight, he didn’t think he’d be able to let her go.
*