But they wouldn’t have worked together as a couple. She knew that, deep down. Maybe it came from being a fixer. She fixed people on her operating room table. Sometimes you couldn’t fix people. Sometimes you had to let them go, and a relationship with Gray was a non-starter. She didn’t know how to hold on, and he didn’t want to be a keeper. So that left them drifting apart.
Gray leaned in, curving one big, warm hand around her bare knee, and she realized that she was still in her sleep shorts and tank top. She could say something now. Ask him if it was just her, or if their vacation hookup had become something more than a fantasy. And yet she looked at him and the words died in her mouth. He was the SEAL team leader. Her everyday life had no place for him, any more than there was room for her in his. That wasn’t a blame game, but it was unfixable. She had to let him go.
He looked at her, concern visible on his handsome face. “Are you going to be okay?”
No. She wasn’t.
“I’m fine,” she said instead. “If you could ask Ashley to send my things on to wherever we’re taking Remy, that would be great.”
“Will do.” For a brief moment it looked as if he might say something, but the rotors picked up speed, drowning everything in a wash of sound, and it was time to go. Apparently, her last conversation with Gray would consist of her making arrangements to have clean undies sent after her.
He leaned in and tied her hair away from her face. The strands were sticky with sweat and blood, and God knew she was a mess.
“All better,” he said, but he was wrong. So wrong, but she had no idea how to tell him that. She mumbled her thanks as he popped a helmet on her head and buckled her in. Most medevac birds lacked basic safety equipment, but this one was obviously the exception. She told herself that was a good thing. Remy didn’t need any more injuries, and getting back to her life in one piece was a good thing. Whenever she looked down, the blood streaking her forearms and legs was a visible reminder that life could be all too short.
“Was there something else you wanted to say?” For instance, I want to see you again? She had to yell the words in an undignified roar to be heard over the whup-whup of the rotors, but this wasn’t how she’d imagined their relationship ending. Okay. She hadn’t imagined that part at all—she’d been too stuck on the hot sex portion of the relationship agenda—but this was no Casablanca moment, either.
He shook his head and patted her on the shoulder. Then he buckled her in. “You take care.”
As if she was a dog he’d ordered to stay? She opened her mouth but, really, she was out of words. And options. He backed away, swung out the door and disappeared. And...that was that. Vacation hookup sex? Done and done. Except she’d wanted a last kiss. And maybe some meaningful words to go with it. A phone number. Anything.
Fantasy Island fell away beneath them, a green jewel in the middle of the bright blue Caribbean sea. The weather had finally cleared, and pink-and-orange light shot over the ocean’s surface. The helicopter banked steeply, heading west. The vacation and the fantasy were over.
She didn’t want them to be.
Or she wanted Gray to be sitting here. Not where Remy was—God, not that—but headed somewhere with her. A scrap of pink fluttered in her peripheral vision. Gray had fastened her ponytail with one of the ties he’d used on her. They’d had crazy, hot, fan-fucking-tastic sex. She thought she’d been looking to get over her breakup with Harlan, but what she hadn’t realized was that she she’d actually been looking for Gray. He was more than a fantasy lover.
He just wasn’t hers.
Not anymore.
She turned her head, but Fantasy Island was gone, the ocean sliding away beneath the chopper. Tears prickled behind her eyes and she blinked them away.
She hadn’t thought in terms of forever or mine, and now that it was too late? Yeah. She was all over that. There was something about him and, even when he’d been on the job and running a covert op, he’d made time for her. He’d shown her a side of herself she didn’t know she’d even had. And she liked that new, bold Laney.
And she more than liked Gray.
She loved him.
15
THE BLACK HAWK swung out over the water and headed away. The wash from the rotors that had kicked up stray bits of sand faded, and the windy racket in the palm trees died down. Remy would get the help he needed, and that was what mattered.
Funny, though, how the chopper resembled any other chopper from the outside. The bird tilted, sun glinting off its side, and banked away from the island. The door was shut, so his chances of spotting Laney were slim, but Gray still watched the chopper go until it was a dot on the horizon. He’d helped her load up, had given her the green light to accompany Remy, but he hadn’t really thought about what it would mean. She was gone.