Page 13 of Secret Twins for My Ex's SEAL Best Friend

The panic attacks had been getting worse as Corinne had gotten older. There were a few years there when she was young, and I had coping skills and my business was thriving, where I felt on top of the world.

Lately, the more she approached middle school, the more it felt like all of the good was slipping away from me again. It was unmanageable and scary, and I didn’t know how to calm my nerves.

I closed my eyes against the warm crown of her head and inhaled, smelling the Target perfume she wore. I could afford something better, but she wanted a perfume that smelled like bananas per some TikTok video she saw.

She was safe.

And I was safe.

five

Delia

The weekend after that first class, I arrived back to class with butterflies in my stomach. I pulled up to the local library and sat in my car for a moment longer than necessary, not really sure why I was there. I half hoped that Robert wouldn’t be there at all and half hoped that he would be.

I couldn’t understand why I was so tangled up about him, why I wanted him to see me and simultaneously wanted him to disappear. I hated him, but my body wanted him, that much was obvious.

Sighing, I got out of the car and walked to the door alone. Kassandra had decided to skip this class after giving herself a gnarly hangover at work when a group of guys came in and kept buying her shots. She had been reprimanded for the drawer being wrong at the end of the night.

I knew she felt hungover, but I also thought she might have just needed to recover emotionally from her fuck up.

When I walked in, I saw Robert setting up, putting the padding and the gloves on tables in the corners of the auditorium.

He saw me, and I thought I could see a brief moment of annoyance that I was there. It strengthened my resolve against him. He might not want me there, but I wanted to be there, so goddamnit, I would be.

“Oh, hi, Thor,” he called out, his voice echoing through the large, empty room.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, dropping my water bottle and bag into a corner of the room and sitting down.

“Oh, just talking about your hammer there,” he quipped, pointing to my knee. I nodded at him, rolling my eyes, and went to sit down.

“Do you want to help?” he asked, a tinge of annoyance in his voice, as though I should have offered.

“Not exactly,” I replied.

“Figures,” I heard him mutter under his breath.

“Hey, what’s your problem with me exactly?” I asked. “I have a reason to be mad at you. I can’t understand why you think you have a reason to be mad at me.”

He closed the distance between us, a stack of name tags in his hand. “Now, what reason is that? What have I done to you?”

“Are you kidding me? You were a dick when I was with Jeremy, and you’re a dick now. You ruined my relationship, and then, because that wasn’t enough, you’ve decided you should ruin this experience for me as well.”

He twisted his mouth, and my eyes flickered to it for a moment, remembering the way I had touched myself, picturing that mouth up against mine.

A brief flash of fire went through my body, lighting me up between my thighs, and I cleared my throat. “Anything to say for yourself?” I asked, looking up at him.

From where I was sitting, his crotch was eye-level with me, and I willed myself to keep my eyes focused on his green eyes, to not look at anything but his face, as hard as it was.

Robert’s look was hard, not gentle or caring, and his jaw tensed. I wondered what it was that he thought of me, even though I wished I didn’t care. “In that…situation, none of us were the best version of ourselves. I think we can all admit that.”

I laughed, looking away and focusing my eyes on a nearby wall. “I don’t admit that, actually.”

“Of course you don’t.” He nodded like he was done with the conversation and turned to walk away.

I wasn’t letting him get away that easily. I exploded, “Why do you think I wasn’t the best version of myself? What did I do that gave you that impression?”

“Well, for starters, I assume you don’t normally fuck your supervisors. Maybe I’m wrong about that, though,” he shot back, the words falling out of his mouth so easily.

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