The Game Plan (Neighbor from Hell 5)

“We’re still banned from Vegas, sweetheart,” Trevor said, cutting off his wife, who looked more confused than ever.

“Wait,” she said, frowning. “I thought the ban was lifted,” she said, looking around the table and undoubtedly making note of the fact that none of the men at the table could quite meet her gaze.

“There, um,” Danny said, clearing his throat, “was a small incident there a year or two ago that may have resulted in the ban being reinstated for another ten or fifty years.”

“Wait a minute,” Haley said, her eyes narrowing accusingly on her husband. “Didn’t you have a layover last year in Nevada on your way to that convention in Texas for your father’s construction company?”

“I-I might have,” Jason said, swallowing nervously as he threw a panicked look Danny’s way, but Danny was a Bradford and knew a thing or two about saving his own ass even if it meant that he had to shovel questionable food into his mouth to give himself the excuse that he needed to keep his mouth shut. Trevor apparently had the same idea, because he suddenly couldn’t seem to get enough of his wife’s cooking.

“And when I asked you about the breaking news alerts that kept flashing across the bottom of the television screen about the emergency shutdown in Vegas you swore to me that you had nothing to do with that,” Haley said, her murderous glare cute, but a clear warning that Jason and anyone dumb enough to open his mouth was in deep shit.

“Wait a minute,” Zoe said, and just like that, Danny knew that Trevor was truly fucked, “you went on that trip, too!”

Every Bradford male who worked for Uncle Jared went, but Danny didn’t bother to point that out since he was home free. It was times like this that he was actually glad that he wasn’t married, one of the few times he had to admit. Unlike his cousins who had fought going to the altar with everything that they had, Danny was more than ready to settle down and start a family.

In a few months he was going to be thirty-two years old and he was still alone. He’d always thought that he’d be settled by this point in his life with at least one kid on the way, but apparently life didn’t always turn out the way that you expected. He certainly hadn’t expected to do half the shit that he’d done so far.

When he’d been a kid he’d always thought that he’d follow in his father’s footsteps and go to medical school, join his father’s practice and get married, but at seventeen all his plans had changed when he’d fucked up. He’d been a cocky kid, too damn cocky. Not only hadn’t he studied for the SATs because he’d been sure that he was going to ace the test right off the bat, but he’d also decided that he’d celebrate a pre-victory the night before by stealing his father’s beer out of the refrigerator in the garage and proceeded to get drunk.

Really drunk to the point that if his father hadn’t found him passed out on the bathroom floor that he probably would have died of alcohol poisoning. After he was rushed to the hospital and had his stomach pumped, his father, angrier than he’d ever seen him before, dragged him to school and forced him to take the SAT exam when all he wanted to do was to curl up next to a toilet and die.

One month later he’d received his test scores and learned that he scored a pathetic 490, total. He could have taken the test over again, but that would have meant a delayed acceptance to college and starting school in the spring instead of in the fall with all his friends. His pride had taken a hit with that score. Unable to handle the embarrassment of that fuck up, he’d begged his father to sign a release so that he could join the Marines, but his father had refused. His father didn’t believe in fixing one mistake with another.

Pissed that the plans that he’d had for his life were ruined and foolishly blaming his father, Danny had stopped trying in school. He’d no longer cared about his grades, his family, friends or anything for that matter and had started focusing on getting the hell away from his father. The morning that he was supposed to graduate, he grabbed a duffle bag, filled it with clothes, emptied his meager savings account and hitched a ride out of town.

A week later with a fake ID in his hand, he walked into a Marine recruitment center and enlisted. It had taken the Marines less than a month to knock him on his arrogant ass and strip away every cocky assumption that he’d ever had about himself. They tore him down and kept him there until he was ready to grow up and be a man.

Joining the Marines had been the most foolish decision of his life, but it had also turned out to be the best thing for him. Once he’d managed to get his head out of his ass, he’d worked hard to become the soldier that the Marines wanted him to be. They’d also turned him into the man that he never would have been if he’d continued acting like a spoiled brat. He’d worked hard, earning rank after rank until he found himself leading a Special Forces team. He would still be there if he hadn’t caught a bullet a little too close to his spine for the Marine’s liking and one through his right palm, destroying his ability to pull the trigger quick enough to make him anything more than a liability.

So after ten years of serving his country, twelve surgeries to save his life and to make sure that he wouldn’t end up in a wheelchair for the rest of it, he’d come home to a father that wanted nothing to do with him, no education to open doors for him and no hirable skills. If it hadn’t been for his family, he would have been truly good and fucked.

His mother, brothers, uncles, aunts and cousins had pulled together and made sure that he’d had whatever he needed to get through the last of the surgeries. They’d brought him to physical therapy when he needed a ride and there had always been someone to hold his hand when the pain became too much. They’d been there for him every step of the way, making the transition from damaged soldier to civilian easier for him and for that alone he was eternally grateful.

He always had an invitation to dinner, someone willing to drop everything to help him out and the reminder that he wasn’t alone. It made things a hell of a lot more tolerable for him, but some days…

It wasn’t enough.

Some days he longed for a home of his own and not just an apartment that his cousin rented to him for practically nothing. He wanted a wife that looked at him the way that Haley and Zoe looked at his cousins. He wanted children that ate him out of house and home and made him smile even when they were going out of their way to piss him off.

He should be happy that he was alive and had a good job, and he was. He just wished that there was more to his life than work, his books, eating dinner every other night at one of his uncle’s or cousin’s homes and looking forward to pissing off his cute little neighbor. He needed to get off his ass and start dating again, but he just couldn’t seem to force himself to get interested in any woman long enough to ask her out.