Page 9 of Secret Twins for My Ex's SEAL Best Friend

“How am I acting?” I asked, leaning back in my seat and sipping my water, avoiding her eyes.

“I’m not sure. Kind of like how you acted when Jeremy dumped you, all unsure of yourself and indecisive.”

Kassandra became my best friend at work and has quickly evolved into my best friend in life.

Sometimes, I felt like Kassandra saw me better than anyone ever has. Sometimes, I thoughtsheshould be the aspiring therapist, not me.

I sighed under her watchful gaze and gave up, avoiding it. “I don’t know. I feel sort of shaken up from class today.”

“So you couldn’t do six whole hours, who cares?” She scoffed and gulped down more of her mimosa. “It’s not like you were getting paid to do it. That instructor was hot, though, huh?” She waggled her eyebrows at me, trying to get me to laugh.

Little did she know the instructor was the problem. I grimaced, pulling my hair out of my ponytail and running my fingers through it. “That was Robert, my ex’s best friend.”

“Wait…theex?” Kassandra whispered in a hushed tone, as though someone nearby might hear us and know who we were talking about.

I nodded forlornly, thinking about how many times in this past year I had mentioned Jeremy. Seeing him the entire year had been a special kind of hell, and seeing Robert had brought back the memory of how painful the breakup was, how blindsided I had felt.

I knew what Robert was saying, but I never knew how seriously Jeremy took it. It had hurt when he told me our relationship was wrong, that we could both get into trouble.

“That’s the one,” I confirmed. “Jeremy. And Robert’s a total jerk, too. He’s rude and standoffish and thinks he knows best.”

“He doesn’t come off like that at all.” Kassandra leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. “I mean, he teaches women’s self-defense classes. He seems like a really nice guy.”

Hearing that sent me over the edge. “Well, he’s not!” I exploded, my mind whirling with the memories of all the times I met him, which wasn’t very many. Any time he was around, he seemed like he was watching me and waiting for me to mess up.

He made me feel like a teenager again, my dad out on deployments, leaving me, my brother, and my mom to fend for ourselves. I always felt so out of place at school.

Other kids didn’t get it. They didn’t understand what that kind of abandonment did to a person.

When my parents ended up divorcing, I stopped seeing my dad at all. It was like the divorce had given him permission to be who he wanted to be, a fatherless man.

He sent cards when it mattered, but without seeing him, they felt like letters from a stranger. It was clear when I’d read them that my mother, bitter and lonely and overworked, had told him everything hard about raising me, and he used the cards to tellme to treat her better. They always did nothing but upset my brother and me. We never showed each other what ours said. I was sure his were just as distant and judgmental.

For the longest time, I had no sense of self. It wasn’t until I decided I wanted to work with vets and heal that part of me that it got better. Talking to these broken men gave me insight into my father, and while it didn’t fix it all, I felt like I understood him through them.

But being under Robert’s scrutiny had brought all that back.

“Look, I was too embarrassed to tell you this back then, but Robert is the reason Jeremy dumped me. He kept telling Jeremy that our relationship was inappropriate, that he shouldn’t date a student, and that he could get in trouble. It was crazy. He ruined our relationship. It was all Jeremy could think about. He started to get so paranoid. He wouldn’t even hold my hand in public, and then, eventually, he said he couldn’t be with me anymore.”

Kassandra regarded me carefully. She nodded while I talked and then sat her glass down and leaned forward, asking, “Do you think he had your best interest in mind?”

I looked at her like she was crazy. “I think he was a lonely, bitter man who thought I wasn’t good enough to tear his best friend away from the bars. He didn’t want some girl getting in the way of their bromance.”

“Delia, you are a badass therapist-in-training. No guy tells you who you are. I know that it felt like you couldn’t trust anything around you when Jeremy dumped you—”

“I thought he really loved me, Kassie. I thought we were going to get married.”

“I get it. But,” she put her hands up, like she was already fending off whatever I might say next, “youareunder Jeremy. It was inappropriate, and he could have gotten in trouble. Plus, he shouldn’t have used his position like that. I’m sorry, but it kind of sounds like Robert was right.”

“He’d love to hear you say that,” I shot back, glowering at her.

Kassandra and I looked at each other for a few minutes, our minds in totally different places. I didn’t know how to explain the feelings that all of this was bringing up for me again.

But she was right about one thing. I was a badass therapist-in-training, and no guyshouldtell me who I was.

I needed to stand up straight and show Robert that his judgments didn’t make me who I was. Whether he thought I was good enough for Jeremy or not, I knew who I was.

I had worked through all these issues after high school. That therapy I’d gotten had been part of the reason I’d decided to go into the field myself. I couldn’t forget all of that because of some guy.

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