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!”

That drew him up short, and we faced off in the entrance hall.

Throwing my head back, I stared at the lofted ceiling, praying for my throat to open, but it wouldn’t. I was a little girl caught in the middle of a hungry boa constrictor. Tighter and tighter it drew, taking my air supply.

“Maybe we should sit down? I’m getting worried about you over here.”

“You’re worried?” I spat back. “You’re deploying. I’m the one you expect to sit here and wait and worry, and I’m not going to do it! Not again. No!”

“Kitty, please listen to me. I’m not going to a war zone. I’m going to the beach.”

My heartbeat wasn’t a bass drum anymore. It was a staccato snare, and my breaths came so fast that the room around me felt distant, but I forced my mind to work. “Twenty twelve, four dead. Twenty ten, three dead. Two thousand eight, four dead. Two thousand four, six dead—”

“Fuck,” he swore, low and soft. “I know what happened with every single one of those crashes.”

“Coast Guard. Search and rescue crashes,” I added between gasping breaths as my back hit the wall. “You can’t. Make. Me do. This again. I won’t. Not for you. Not for. Anyone.” My head buzzed.