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She looked up at me. “You’re not still worried about me being hurt, are you? Don’t you think we’d know by now?”
I tried to figure out how to put into words the way I was feeling. “I was flying that plane,” I said finally.
“I know you were. You got us down safely. We’d have been dead if not for you.”
“Maybe, but if anything had happened to you, it would have been my fault.” A shiver ran through me at the thought.
“Jake… no. Come on.” She reached up and cupped my cheek. “No, it wouldn’t.”
“If I hadn’t landed the plane safely—”
“Jake, there was asecond parachuteup there. You could have bailed out when the pilot did. You could have left me. Do you think I could have put that plane on the ground? I wouldn’t have had any idea what I was doing.”
“Well, of course, I wasn’t going to leave you.”
“I know you wouldn’t have,” she said quietly.
“Did you ever think that I might?”
“I might have thought that if you’d asked me a few days ago.”
That one hurt. “Really?”
She leaned her face into my chest. “No,” she whispered. “Not really.”
“I wouldn’t ever leave you in danger, Olivia. Fuck. I know I haven’t always been the nicest to you. I know that. But I’d never dothat. I couldn’t.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” she said. “You’re too noble. No Navy SEAL would leave a civilian to die.”
“Do you really think that’s all I was worried about?” I asked her. “Do you really think it’s the fact that you’re a civilian that made me want to help you?”
“You’d have done the same thing for anyone.”
I didn’t know whether that was true or not, but there was one thing I knew for sure. “I wasn’t even thinking about the fact that I’m a SEAL when we were on that plane,” I told her. “I wasn’t even thinking about my duty.”
“You weren’t?”
“Are you kidding? I was thinking aboutyou, Olivia.” I sighed. “You have no idea how I feel about you, do you?”
“You think I’m annoying, I know that.”
“Yeah, I think you’re infuriating. And stubborn. And you never shut up. And you’re sexy as hell. And I don’t know what the fuck I would do if anything ever happened to you. It would wreck me.”
Her eyes searched mine. “You’re saying you saved me because you care about me?”
“I’ve been trying to tell you I care about you for weeks. You don’t listen to anybody.”
“But neither do you,” she pointed out. “Every time I tell you what I want, you tell me that I’m wrong. You tell me you know better. You dismiss me.”
“Like I did when we were kids, you mean?”
“Not exactly like, but…”
“I get it. It’s hard for you to see me any differently.” She’d made that point well enough. “Okay, then, tell me. I’ll listen.”
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me what you want. If I really cared about you, what would I do to prove that to you? Tell me.”
