Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 145823 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145823 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
That fucking word was the bane of my existence. I gripped the edge of the counter to stay upright.
“And Captain Patterson knows Claire is back, so I’m not parenting by myself. The entire reason I was being left behind no longer exists.” His jaw ticked, and I knew there were parts of that conversation he was leaving out.
“But if Hastings can’t fly?” God, there had to be a way out of this, right? I couldn’t do this again. It wasn’t even in the realm of possibility.
Jackson rose from the stool but stayed a couple feet away. “The guys from Elizabethtown will cover it. We’re just an offshoot of them, anyway.”
Something soft twined between my ankles. Juno.
“Have you told Finley?”
Jackson shook his head and smashed his lips in a flat line. “I told you first.” He took the bottle of water from the counter and slammed the rest of it back, then crushed it in his fist. “I can’t imagine what you’re thinking right now.”
“I can’t.” My breaths came faster, like a steaming locomotive gained speed as it left the station.
“It has to feel just like—”
“No!” I shouted, pointing my finger at him. “No.” I couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t catch my breath. Couldn’t slow my heart. I couldn’t do this. Not any of it.
“Okay.” He laced his fingers on the top of his head and took a calming breath. “Let’s look at this logically.”
“Fuck your logic.” A lump grew in my throat. No, no, no.
“It’s just search and rescue, baby. It simply happens to be a rotation at an air station in the Caribbean so we’re on hand for hurricane season. It’s more like a three-month TDY than it is a deployment.”
Fuck that word. Fuck all of this.
The stitches I’d sewn meticulously into my heart began to pop one by one.
“This isn’t like him,” Jackson said so softly that I almost didn’t hear it.
“I’m sorry?” I snapped, arching my neck slightly to dislodge the damn lump.
“My deployment is nothing like Will’s.”
“We are not talking about Will!” He was already in my damned head as it was.
“Kitty, we have to be able to talk about him, especially with this.”
“He’s not…” I sucked in a breath and rolled my head, but the lump wasn’t going anywhere. It was growing. “He’s not in this conversation.” Because if he was, I couldn’t be. Deployment…I couldn’t do another one. Couldn’t get that news again. God, I could still feel the gum-like texture of the strawberry jam on my shoes.
Jackson took a step toward me, and I moved again, heading straight into my kitchen. He couldn’t touch me. He took every ounce of logic the minute his hands were on me, and I had to be able to think. I had to survive.
“Baby, he’s in every conversation when it comes to my job.”
My gaze snapped to his, and my hand stilled on the handle to the refrigerator.
“He may as well be standing in this room.” He gestured between our bodies. “Right here in between us.” There was such care, such compassion in his gaze, otherwise I might have started throwing things at him. Didn’t he know how hard I was trying to keep that from happening?
My throat constricted, and I ripped open the refrigerator door, grabbed the pitcher of sweet tea, and drank straight from the glass. I gulped and swallowed, but nothing would shake that lump, the tightness that I refused to believe was the harbinger of what I’d been working myself to the emotional bone to get rid of.
I slammed the refrigerator door and put the pitcher on the counter.
“I can’t do this.” I shook my head to emphasize my point.
He winced. “We can do this. It’s three months.”
“No.” There. How was that for setting my emotional boundaries?
“Morgan, you’re reacting out of fear, and I get it. I can’t fathom how you must be feeling right now, and the fact that I’m even asking you to go through this again is…” His face crumpled, and he looked away.
“I. Can’t. Do. This.” It wasn’t possible. I wouldn’t just regress. I’d be on the fucking floor.
“Baby.” He came for me, and I slid right around him, making it to the entrance of the kitchen before he could stop me. “Morgan, nothing is going to happen to me!”
“You don’t know that!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I reached the foyer. “You have no fucking clue what can happen. You just think you do.”
“I promised you that I’d never put a rescue above my own life, and I meant it. I’m the best SAR pilot on—”
“Oh, shut up!” I shouted. “You’re the best? Funny, Will thought he was the best! Jagger and Josh? Yep, I’ve heard those words out of their mouths, too. You all think you’re the best until you fall out of the sky, because when push comes to shove, you’re not the gods you think you are, so don’t you dare stand there and tell me that nothing is going to happen to you!”