Page 45 of Baby Daddy SEAL

And it wasn’t like anyone would have anything to say about me taking retirement now either. Henry had been urging me to do it for years. Now I wish I had, to be honest. If I had gotten out a year ago, I wouldn’t be dealing with this now.

Although that would mean that I never would have hooked up with Alison…

I ran harder, trying to rid myself of that thought. I didn’t want to feel glad about the fact that she’d come into my life. Not now. I hated that any part of this felt complicated to me.

No, ultimately, I knew that I couldn’t leave the SEALs. Even though money wasn’t a problem for me, even though I was at a reasonable military retirement age, I wouldn’t be able to leave right now even if I’d wanted to. I couldn’t abandon the SEALs in a moment of crisis. No real man would do such a thing. It would be cowardly, unpatriotic, and completely pathetic.

I’d have to stand by the team until this whole thing was sorted out. Which meant that I would be part of the scandal that was about to break, much as I hated it.

It was for the best. It would probably turn out better for the SEALs with me at the helm. I’d be able to field questions about what actually happened and let people know that the SEALs had just as much integrity as we ever had.

Besides, I was no quitter. I wasn’t the person who walked away when things got tough, and I never was. I was determined to stick it out.

I couldn’t believe I’d let Alison play me the way she had.

She had played me, right? I really wanted to believe that she had, hard as it was to accept because the alternative was believing that a SEAL was corrupt. That was my whole life. My career. My identity. She didn’t seem to understand how difficult it was for me to watch it come apart.

I sighed. This was getting me nowhere.

I veered off the track and paused to stretch for a moment. I finished four miles, but I didn’t feel as if I had burned off any energy at all. My mind was still racing and my muscles were still tense.

I moved over to the weight machines. Sometimes this helps me clear my head. I sat down at the fly machine, set my weight, and began my first set of reps.

I had set the weight too light. I could tell immediately. This was my normal weight, but today I needed something that was more challenging for me. I needed something that was going to hurt so that I could pour all my thoughts and energy into it—I wouldn’t be stuck thinking about Alison and the impending arrest anymore.

I raised the weight and began again.

Now it took so much effort to push through the motions that I was distracted, so I was surprised when I heard my name. “Brian? This isn’t your usual gym day.

I looked up. “Hey, Will.”

Will, one of my lifting buddies, was thirty-five years old, tanned, and stocky. He raised his eyebrows at me. “That’s not your usual weight.”

“Nah, I’m letting off a bit of steam here.”

“Well, you shouldn’t do it like that. You know better. Do laps or something.”

“Already did.”

“Bench, then. I’ll spot you, c’mon.”

He was right—it was dangerous for me to have this machine set at such a high weight, no matter how badly I wanted it.

I got up and followed him over to the bench press. I sat down and Will added weights to the bar for me.

“More,” I grunted.

“No. Not while you’re all pissed off. Do more reps if you need to burn more energy.”

“Fine.” I lay back, picked up the bar, and started jacking it up into the air.

“You want to tell me what your problem is today?” Will asked, watching me raise and lower the bar.

“Work stuff.”

“Classified?” Will was Air Force, he understood the restrictions military life placed on me and didn’t let them interfere with our friendship. It was one of the reasons he and I had always gotten along so well. I sometimes found civilian friendships frustrating because they would tell me all about their day at the office and then get irritated when I wasn’t able to reciprocate.

And this stuff was classified. “Afraid so.” Even if I could have talked about the crime, we’d been accused of without breaking the law, I didn’t think I would have wanted to. It would have been difficult to confide in someone else what the SEALs had been accused of doing, especially someone from a different branch of the military. I knew Will had the same high moral standards as I did.

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