“If a woman doesn’t want to tell you about the fucked-up past that she’s barely survived, then you don’t go searching for it, you asshole!”

My eyebrows rose. That was the first time I’d ever heard the woman curse. “You’re right, and I’m so sorry.”

She offered me a look that clearly told me I was an idiot. “I’m sorry doesn’t remotely begin to cover this! You went looking for something you have zero right to know. If I wanted you to know, I would have told you! You. Had. No. Right!”

“I’m sorry, Morgan,” I said again. “I will make it up to you, I swear.”

“You can make it up to me by staying the hell away from me.”

I felt the blood rush from my face. “Please don’t ask that from me.”

“I’m not exactly giving you a choice,” she spat. “What did you think was going to happen? That I’d say it’s perfectly fine that you fly those death traps, and we’d…” She tilted her head. “What exactly do you want from me, Jackson?”

“You,” I replied, taking a step toward her. “I just want you.”

Her chin rose. “I’m not something you can have. Not now, and apparently not ever.”

She was pissed and hurt, and I knew there was a chance those words were simply a reflection of those feelings, but damn did they sting.

“I know that what you’ve been through has to make you scared of being with another pilot—”

“Don’t presume to know my feelings just because you threw Will’s name into a search engine,” she interrupted. “You might know all about how he died, but that doesn’t qualify you to even begin knowing the first thing about him, or the way I feel about him, or you, or anything!” Color flooded her cheeks, and her shoulders rose and fell fast enough that I started to worry about her having another attack.

“Fine, then how do you feel?” I questioned, my voice rising slightly. “Because you never talk about it. You’ve told me that you don’t talk to your best friend and that you can’t open that truck door, but you never go into the why of it. You know everything about me with the exception of how I make my money, and you never give me the same access. You never let me in!”

“Let you in? Like I actually want you to see inside this?” She gestured to her torso. “What do you want to know, Jackson? That I dream about him every night? That I watch the video he left for me before bed or I can’t sleep? That my nightmares are full of the sound of crunching metal and gunshots, but I wasn’t there with him, so my mind gives me a thousand different scenarios?”

“Morgan,” I whispered, reaching for her.