Page 12 of Submitting to the SEAL's Protection

“Glowy?”

“Yes, glowy.” She pointed a finger at Rita. “You know, like you’ve been getting you some.”

Rita laughed. Some days Keanie reminded her of her sister, and then others, she was like a completely new breed of late-twenties female. “Where do you pick this stuff up at?”

“Chad, mostly.” They shared a laugh. “He thinks it’s fun…like he got to corrupt me or something.” Keanie waggled her eyebrows at Rita. “Little does he know.”

It was funny, what she said, but Rita couldn’t help but flash back to a conversation she’d had with Tuck early in their relationship. They’d been lying in bed after an impressive amount of bedroom calisthenics, and Tuck had told her that her “lessons” were paying off. When she’d asked what he was talking about, Tuck had told her that he was molding her into his perfect woman: one who would learn to do any and everything that he wanted to keep him happy. At the time, when their relationship was still new enough that he was still playing the role of a gentleman, she’d laughed it off, certain that he was just teasing her. She hadn’t taken it for the red-flag warning it was.

But she really should have realized that something wasn’t right when two weeks after that conversation, he decided to go through her emails and got upset over some emails he found from an ex-boyfriend. Three-year-old emails, at that. He accused her of cheating and didn’t believe her protests, even when Rita pointed out the timestamps on the emails. Why did she still have the emails? Did she still have feelings for him? Why hadn’t she moved on? Rita had grown so frustrated with all the questions that she had finally suggested he simply delete the messages and be done with it. While Tuck did just that, he continued to grumble until Rita dropped to her knees in an attempt to distract him. Afterward, he’d patted her head and called her a “good girl.” She couldn’t put her finger on what was bothering her about it at the time, but she’d felt really yucky about the whole thing.

Rita jumped as the waiter cleared his throat and placed her meal in front of her. She hated how thoughts of Tuck could so easily send her to a dark place. Mentally shaking herself off, Rita grabbed her fork and dove into her stuffed bell pepper. She let out a satisfied sound. “This is delicious,” she told her friend.

Keanie nodded. “Did I not tell you?” They sat in silence for a few moments, enjoying their food, but before long, Keanie had circled back to their previous conversation. “Okay, so what about dressing room guy?” she prodded.

“Jared,” Rita told her. “His name is Jared Michaels.” As quietly as she could, Rita filled Keanie in on their encounters at Jared’s home and in the mobile office at the jobsite. Keanie’s eyes grew wide. “Wow,” she breathed out. “You certainly don’t do anything by halves, do you?” She frowned a little. “Didn’t you say that your ex was really controlling? This guy sounds pretty much the same. Should I be worried about a pattern here?”

As Rita chewed her food, she shook her head. She swallowed and said, “While I’ll admit that they have similarities—they both have dominant personalities, and they like to be in control of certain things—that’s where it ends. Jared isn’t anything like Tuck.”

“What do you mean? If he likes to be in control, doesn’t that mean he wants to control you?”

Rita shook her head. “Jared’s only ever like that in the bedroom,” she said and blushed again. “He doesn’t seem to have any of that ‘must control every aspect of my life’ personality.” Rita found herself smiling. “You should see him with the volunteers. Despite somehugeblunders made by a couple of them, he’s never yelled at anyone or started any arguments. Tuck would throw a fit if anyone around him made the slightest mistake, especially if it was a mistake that he’d be expected to fix or that would impact his own deadlines.” She looked down at her plate, suddenly not very hungry. “I don’t see Jared ever punching a woman in the face either.”

Keanie sucked in a breath, and Rita realized that she’d never said that out loud before. She’d told her roommate that her marriage had been bad, but she’d never gone into specifics about the extent of the abuse. “He hit you?” Keanie asked.

“It was a long time ago, and I’m fine,” Rita assured her friend. At Keanie’s disbelieving look, she added, “I’d really rather not get into it now, okay? Can we please move on to something more pleasant? Please?”

Keanie nodded slowly. “Agreed, but I’m going to need to hear the whole story. Soon.” Rita knew that she could tell Keanie that it wasn’t any of her business and her friend would drop it, but Rita also knew that her demands didn’t come from a place of morbid fascination. She genuinely wanted to know if Rita was all right. In true Keanie fashion, she UNO-reversed the conversation. “So, do you call him ‘Daddy’?”

Rita just about choked. “What?”

“Does he ask you to call him Daddy?” Keanie asked again, as if that was a completely normal question to ask someone while in a public place. Stabbing at her food, Keanie pointed her loaded fork at her friend. “Did I ever tell you about the time Chad took me to Vegas?” When Rita shook her head, she continued. “We were staying at Harrah’s in Vegas, and we had gotten back to our room after this beautiful dinner.” Keanie laughed. “I kept getting scared that he was going to propose. I was already crazy about him, of course, but we’d only been dating for like three months then…anyway, we were in bed together and things were getting all hot and heavy. Then Chad asked me, ‘Who’s your daddy?’”

Snorting, Rita put down her fork. “And?”

Keanie rolled her eyes. “And nothing,” she said. “The jackass found himself off the bed and on his ass on the floor.”

“No, you didn’t.”

Keanie nodded. “Oh, yes, I absolutely did. I knocked him off the bed and flat out told him that he wasnotmy daddy.” She shuddered. “My dad died the year I graduated high school.”

Rita felt a wave of sympathy for her friend. “You do know that’s not what he meant, right?”

“Well, I do now, but then, no.” She laughed and said, “I remember standing over him while he was staring up at me in shock, telling him that I didnothave daddy issues and that Ineverwanted to hear that again.” She shrugged. “Then I climbed into bed, turned out the lights, and went to sleep.”

Rita stared at her friend before she burst into laughter. “Please tell me that you didn’t say that.”

Keanie nodded. “I did…In fact, we didn’t even have sex again until we got back to LA.”

“Did you at least let him sleep in the bed with you?”

Keanie crossed her arms. “Nope. I woke up the next morning and found him stretched out on the couch. We’ve been together for almost five years now, and he’s never even said the word ‘daddy’ around me since then.”

Rita laughed until she cried; she sat there hugging her stomach. “I can’t believe you said that,” she panted out through her laughter. “That’s too funny. I’m dying here. I’m pretty sure you made my evening, concert be damned.”

Keanie smugly picked up her fork again. “Glad I could help.”

“Oh, you did. That’s great.”

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