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)
Her face puckered with confusion. “You’re not?”
“No!”
“Then what could I possibly need to know before a kiss?” she fired back. “Are you a murderer?”
“No.” I scoffed.
“A kidnapper? Rapist? Do you have three other wives spread around the United States?” She shrugged in obvious frustration.
“I don’t have a single wife, let alone three—”
“Then what—”
“I’m a pilot!” Shit. Shit. SHIT. It fell out of my mouth so carelessly that I wanted to suck it back in, hit rewind on this moment, and do it all again.
She stilled completely. No blinks, no cursing me out, no glares, nothing. I wasn’t even sure she was breathing.
I sure wasn’t.
“You said you were in the coast guard,” she accused softly, still staring at me in what I assumed had to be shock.
“I am,” I assured her, leaning on the console between us. “I’m a search and rescue pilot for the coast guard.”
Her eyes flared, not in fear but with stark, palpable terror. “Helicopters,” she finally whispered.
“Helicopters,” I confirmed, swallowing the rising knot in my throat. “This wasn’t how I wanted to tell you. I was going to explain why I chose my career and—”
“Take me home.” The demand was icy and flat as she turned away from me.
“Morgan, please. Let me explain.” My mind scrambled with panic. If I could just get her to listen, then she’d understand, right?
She opened the door.
“Where are you going?” I reached for her elbow.
She turned just enough to glare at my fingers on her sweater.
I removed them immediately. Fuck, this wasn’t going well.
“If you won’t take me home, I’ll walk. I can see the lighthouse from my deck, which means if I take this trail, the beach will lead me home.” She paused, her hand lingering on the handle.
“I’ll take you home.”
She shut the door, then stared out the windshield as I put the car in reverse—something I wished I could do with the last five minutes of my life. We pulled onto the pavement, and I headed toward our houses. The silence between us wasn’t just tense; it was sharp enough to draw blood—or break hearts.
I had to fix this. She wasn’t just a friend or the woman who lived next door. I cared about her, and I wasn’t willing to let whatever this was between us go without a fight. Fuck that. A battle. I put my mental armor on and prepared to go to war against her past in the hopes that she’d give me a chance for a future.
“When my parents died,” I began.
“No.” She shook her head. “You don’t get to speak. You lied to me.”
“I never told you I wasn’t a pilot.” I turned onto our street.
“Semantics don’t make you honest, Jackson,” she snapped.
When faced with which driveway to pull into, I chose mine, hoping it would give me more time. “I get that. And you’re right. I should have told you sooner, but I knew you’d react just like this.” I put the car in park. “And I wanted you to know me—not just what I did—before we had this conversa— Morgan!”
She was already out of the car.
I killed the ignition and took off after her, catching up midway between our yards. “Please, just give me a chance to explain.”
She spun around and stuck her finger in my face. “You’ve had all the time in the world to do that, and you chose not to!”
I barely managed to stop my momentum quickly enough to keep from running her over, and then she was off again, striding toward her house.
“Kitty, come on!” How the hell was I supposed to get her to understand if she wouldn’t even listen? I chased after her like the desperate fool I was.
“Oh no,” she threw over her shoulder as she reached her steps. “You don’t get to call me that. Never again.” She marched up two of the steps and then paused, going still as a statue.
My feet froze to the very sand beneath them. I knew an approaching storm when I saw one, and she was a cat five hurricane spinning just off my coast.
Her shoulders rose slightly, and then she turned on her steps and advanced toward me. She was a storm all right, and I wasn’t sure I’d be standing after she released all the wrath in those eyes.
“You knew.” She flung the accusation from a few feet away, planting her feet and crossing her arms.
I swallowed.
“You knew I would shut you out the moment you told me you were a damned flyboy.”
“Yes.” This had just gotten so much worse for me.
“You know what happened, don’t you?” She seethed, her jaw clenching.
Fuck. My eyes closed momentarily with the realization that I’d lost this battle long before I’d come clean in the car. I took a deep, fortifying breath and found her staring at me with the kind of loathing that only broken trust could evoke.