He wasn’t listening to her. He tore off the gown and yanked his T-shirt on.
“Gage,” she tried again, moving toward him. “You’re scaring me. I thought everything was back to normal. Completely. And then I get a call and hear you’re…” The truth hit her so hard that she felt it like a smack to the face. “I love you,” she whispered.
“What?” He cupped her shoulders and pulled her back enough to look into her eyes.
“I love you,” she murmured, fighting back tears. “You have to be okay.”
He shook his head and broke eye contact. “I love you, too.” He kissed her cheeks, and then he stepped away from her. “But I have to get back out there.”
It wasn’t enough. Even admitting her feelings for him wasn’t enough to convince him to stay—and it was breaking her heart. “You’re hurt. Aren’t other people looking for the parents?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean anything. I need to be out there.”
Her heart sank. Nothing she said, nothing she did mattered—Gage had made up his mind. He would leave. He didn’t care about his health, he didn’t care about her feelings, he didn’t care about anything other than finding that little girl’s missing parents and making her family whole. And maybe that made him a hero, but it also made the truth undeniable.
“I can’t do this,” she said.
He froze in the middle of tugging on his jacket and finally met her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“It means I. Can’t. Do. This.” He had to go. No, he didn’t have to—he was choosing to. She cared about him. He’d already hurt himself and was still going back out… She didn’t know what else could happen.
“You don’t have to worry about losing me—”
“—if I let you go now,” she finished.
Gage stiffened. “Chloe, you’re not making sense. I know you’re worried, but this isn’t that bad. I get banged up all the time.”
“You can barely walk, and you want to go back out and scale cliffs?” She cupped her forehead, reality hitting hard. This was the one thing she’d never wanted to face—Gage getting hurt. He could die. She wouldn’t know until well after. What if she couldn’t get to him? She’d be stuck there, waiting.
Waiting on him.
Waiting for the next phone call.
Waiting to see if he’d choose to come back to her.
Waiting to see if he survived the next mission.
Waiting.
“I can’t.” She loved him so much it hurt, and she didn’t know what to do. There was no way to make it better. No way to cling to someone who couldn’t be held. She was losing a man she never had the right to hold on to in the first place, a man she knew better than to reach for. But he’d tricked her into opening her heart to feeling something more for him, and now her soul was paying the price.
“Chloe,” he whispered, and pain sliced through his dark eyes. “We can make this work. My job is dangerous, but it’ll get easier to deal with.”
“You could have been hurt worse. Died, even.”
“This isn’t the first time this has happened,” he said. “I always come out okay.”
Her gaze snapped to his. “What do you mean this isn’t the first time?” Her skull felt on the verge of imploding. It seemed so obvious—of course he was putting his life on the line every time he went out there, but she had to ask. “How many times have you come close to dying?”
The muscle in his jaw ticked. “Once.”
Her lungs shut down. This was real. He had almost died. “When?”
“Few weeks ago. Before I came to Beaufort.”
Her mind went numb and her breath caught in her throat. So recently?
“Is that what motivated you to do—to want—all of this?”
He nodded. “But I’m fine,” he added.
“Really?” she said loudly. “Because you don’t look fine. You look like you’re injured and you’re trying to go out anyway.”
“I know my limits,” he growled.
“Clearly,” she said sarcastically. He was a hero. He had to go, had to be out there, no matter the risk. And she knew better than to fall for a man like that. He’d always put himself in danger—which made him someone she could never be with.
Flashes of what could have been, might have been, flickered through her brain, and she fought the urge to retch. He could have died, and she would have never known until he was already gone.
“I love you so much,” she said again. Anger heated every word, because reasonable or not, she was pissed he’d shown her how much she loved him. How much she’d always loved him. “And that’s your fault. You made me love you. And now you’re offering nothing in return.”
“I’m offering you everything I’m able to give.”
“Which is what? You leaving? Coming in and out of my life with no guarantee you’ll ever come back?”
“I’ll come back to you. I’ll always come back, you just have to wait for me.”
And there it was. She had to sit back and wait while he took her heart and soul with him every time he left.
She had to get away from him. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.