“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.