Free Breathless for You: Outback Skies, Book 1 by Lexxie Couper

hell?
    Her back to him, she tugged on her jeans and then began to walk away.
    “Hey?” He reached for her wrist and curled his fingers around it to halt her hasty stride. “What the hell is going on, Tash?”
    She didn’t look at him, just shook off his loose grip, her stare fixed on the plane’s nose. “I need to check—”
    “Bullshit,” he cut her off, his gut not just tight, but knotting. “Tell me the truth, Tash. What’s going on?”
    She drew a deep breath, studying the darkening horizon a million miles away. God, she felt drained. Not just the physical exhaustion of an asthma attack, but an emotional weariness that sapped her will to speak. What would she say that would make Matt understand? What could she say, when she really didn’t understand herself?
    “Two things,” she said, her voice husky as she shook her head. “Two things in my life I truly cherish beyond everything else, and it seems both are to be denied me.”
    Behind her, Matt shifted his feet. “What are you talking about, Tash?”
    He didn’t reach for her again. She was glad. If he did, she didn’t think she’d have the strength to follow through with what she was about to do. But she had to follow through. To surrender now to what her heart wanted was irrational stupidity, and she wasn’t irrational.
    She let out a slow breath and turned to face him, her lungs thankfully open and working the way they were meant to for once. “I’m not staying in Wallaby Ridge, Matt. In fact, as soon as the Flying Doctors can assign a new pilot, I’ll be heading back to Sydney.”
    He stood before her, semi-naked, his spent cock still glistening with her juices, and blinked. “You’ll what?”
    Guilt, grief and dismay rolled through her. Turning back to the horizon and its sweeping sky, she swallowed. “There’s no reason for me to stay in town, is there? I can’t be a pilot anymore, that’s obvious after today. I won’t put people’s lives, your life, at risk again, and if I’m not a pilot, I have no purpose in the Ridge.”
    “You really think you have no purpose in Wallaby Ridge?”
    At his question, she returned her gaze to his face, the confusion in his eyes tearing at her. “I can’t contribute anything to the community, Doc. All I know is flying, and I can see now it was selfish of me to think I could continue to do that with asthma.”
    “And that’s the reason you’re leaving?” His jaw bunched. His stare held hers. “Because you don’t think you can pilot a plane anymore? There’s nothing else , no other reason you can think of for staying in Wallaby Ridge? No purpose at all?”
    She let out a wry laugh, her heart a wretched weight in her chest. “I can’t just be the sexy doctor’s girlfriend, Matt. I can’t just sit around waiting for you to come home after healing people, helping people all day. I’d go crazy, and you’d grow to resent me.”
    “Bullshit.”
    She smiled at his vehement statement, the action at once sad and bittersweet. “You make it too easy to fall in love with you, Doc.”
    “All the more reason to stay, don’t you think? How many people have you come across in your life, Tash, who are easy to love?”
    His question, asked with guarded tone, made her laugh. The sound was as weak as she was. She truly was running on empty fumes. If she didn’t get moving soon, she’d surrender to every impulse in her body and just crumple into Matt’s arms. And she couldn’t do that. Not and still walk away from him and the fantasy life he presented when they got back to town.
    Turning to the nose of her plane—no, not her plane, not anymore—she shrugged. “I’ve never found anyone I wanted to love. Not until you came along. And it’s that reason I have to go. Until I know who I am without being a pilot, I’m just a pretty girl in a tight pair of jeans, poor people skills and a bleak attitude. And that girl, you don’t want to love her. I’m pretty certain you’d grow to hate her very