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.
“I know what happened to Will,” I admitted.
She blanched, her eyes flying wide, then narrowing. “Don’t ever say his name!” she cried, that finger coming at me again. “You don’t have the right!”
“Okay.” This was so far beyond bad that my stomach took up permanent residence in my feet.
“How dare you bring him into this!” Her finger trembled.
“Morgan, he’s already in this.”
She flinched and lowered her arm. “Who told you what happened? I know it wasn’t Sam. She wouldn’t do that to me.”
“No one told me.” I shifted my weight, hoping the motion would appease my need to cross the distance between us and hold her. It didn’t. “I saw the wings that day you had me get the registration out of the truck, and the name on those dog tags hanging from the mirror is the same one on the registration.”
“And you what? Googled him?” she fired back.
“Pretty much.” My lips pressed in a thin line as I nodded, knowing the gathering fire in her eyes was about to come right for me.
“How dare you!” Her hands dropped to form fists at her sides.
“I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have, but you’d just had that anxiety attack and—”
“And you decided that my past was up for investigation? You wanted to see what