She was right. He was. But did he dare reveal his reasons?
Shit.If he wanted something…more with Jett, he was going to have to suck it up and spill his guts.
The first thing he had to face, was that he’d missed her like crazy since she’d moved out.
“Before I get too far into the weeds, I just want to say that I made a mistake, not giving you…more of myself.” He drew in a slow breath. “I miss you, Jett. In retrospect, what we had together was just starting to feel…special.”
“You think?” she snorted, adjusting the altimeter slightly and checking her gauges. And why did it turn him on that she could have this conversationandoperate an aircraft at the same time?
“I knew that, Trask, and I didn’t thinkIwas making any secret of it.”
“Which threw me for a loop,” Trask confessed. “It all felt so…fast.”
“Maybe,” she acknowledged. “But when you know, you know. So, there’s that.”
Trask was almost afraid to ask.
“Whatdid you know?”
“Uh, uh,” she responded with a huff. “First, you’re going to tell me why you’re running scared. Then, I’ll answer your question about what kind of partner I’m looking for. But unless I hear all the right words from you, I’mnotgoing to tell you what I figured out.”
It was only fair. He’d been the one to blow everything to hell, and even though Jett had left him high and dry, so to speak, he had to give her props. She’d been nothing but cordial to him, ever since.
Trask coughed slightly and unburdened himself. “Here goes. But don’t say I didn’t warn you that I’m somewhat of a mess. I, um, had a…problem during my last few months of service, that kicked my ass,” he professed dourly.
“What kind of a problem?” Jett inquired with a tilt of her head. He could sense she was listening intently.
“A woman problem,” Trask revealed. “And it was messy.”
“Okay,” Jett responded evenly. “I kind of figured there was a bad breakup involved which is what defined your reticence with me.”
“It does. It did,” he concurred. “And it shouldn’t have. That wasn’t fair of me.”
Now that he’d started, he wanted to air it all.
“Audrey was a fellow officer, and we’d danced around our surface attraction to each other for a while. I wasn’t exactly opposed to taking things further with her. She was in a different chain of command and had her own regiment, so there’d be no regulations conflict. My spidey-senses were telling me to take it slowly, but I ignored them. Which was a mistake.”
This was harder than Trask had thought, since he’d been so stupidly blind.
“She made a move after a debriefing one night, waylaying me in a dark hallway. Needless to say, it didn’t take much to rev meup, and we spent some…memorable time together before things morphed into a relationship that spanned the next few months.”
That had been his first mistake. Starting out with all the physical stuff that had him bypassing his brain, before digging a little deeper into Audrey’s psyche. Then he’d let her spin things from sex, into a full-time girlfriend/boyfriend thing.
Which was one of the reasons he’d been so spooked with Jett. Physical needs had once again taken over right away, and they’d basically fallen into bed without “dating” first.
But here he was again, comparing apples to oranges, and it wasn’t fair.
“Audrey was a willing participant with…everything we did in bed,” he managed to reveal without gagging. Because the thought that he’d done anything sexual with the duplicitous woman now made him sick to his stomach.
Jett didn’t hesitate to fill in what he’d neglected to say. “Meaning she liked your dominant tendencies.”
Trask coughed. “She did. But as things progressed, and she preened on my arm wherever we went, I found out we were incompatible in so many other ways.”
“Like what?” Jett asked.
“Like, she wasn’t a stickler for following rules, and I was.”
“Uh, you’re describing me, Trask.”
