Page 31 of Raven's Curse
Greer stared at him. “Are you going to stand there while I get dressed, too, or…”
He blinked, as if he hadn’t even realized she was naked behind the thin fabric before carding his fingers through his hair. “I’ll call Foster. He’s already at the hangar since we’re on call for the next few days. Get us a lift to Providence.”
“I can drive.”
“You heard Shirley. It can’t wait.”
His boots didn’t even make a sound as he turned and walked out, vanishing through the door. Greer leaned against the shower wall. If this was an indication of how the day would progress, it was going to be another long one.
Chase stopped outside the autopsy room when Greer raised her hand before slipping inside. It had only been twenty minutes since they’d left her apartment, but it had felt like hours, each minute crawling past until he’d wanted to scream.
He glanced at the large silver doors. Rhett was back there. Spread out on one of the cold, stainless steel tables. Reduced to a number on a file. The sum of Chase’s failures.
Foster moved in beside him before turning and leaning against the wall. He rolled his right shoulder a few times as he shook out that hand before shoving it in his pocket. He didn’t talk, just stared at Chase until the man’s unspoken questions grated on Chase’s last nerve.
He grunted, shifting over to steal a peek through one of the windows, not that he could see anything important. “Whatever’s burning a hole in your ass, buddy, just spit it out before you pop some of those screws in your shoulder lose from the strain.”
Foster glanced at the closed door, then back to him. “Not sure you really want to hear what I have to say.”
“Since when has that ever stopped you before?”
“Fine. What the hell’s going on between you and Greer?”
Chase straightened. He’d expected Foster to talk about Rhett, about Chase’s obvious fixation on everyone’s safety. How he hadn’t really slept, had barely eaten, since that night. Hell, his undeniable spiral into the abyss Greer had mentioned. Not this. “Nothing.”
“Seriously? That’s your answer?”
“Yes, seriously, because it’s the truth. Nothing’s happened.”
“Which I suspect is the issue because if it had been any colder inside the chopper, my damn instruments would have frozen.” Foster pushed off the wall. “You barely looked her in the eyes, and there’s no missing the freaking walls between you, despite the fact you’re dancing around her like a damn satellite, trying to protect every angle. I’ve never seen you this hyper-focused about someone’s safety before. Not even after Sean died. So, I’ll ask again. What the hell’s going on?”
“Of course, I’m focused on her safety. Someone killed Rhett. Killed that nurse. For all we know, they’re targeting Greer.”
“Or this is all about Rhett, and they killed Stacey because she overheard something damning he muttered while coming out of that coma.”
Chase clenched his jaw. “I can’t afford to take that chance.”
“Why? When you’ve made it clear she doesn’t mean anything beyond a friend to you.” Foster shook his head. “And honestly, that’s up for debate, right now.”
“What are you even talking about?”
“You. Sabotaging the best thing that’s ever happened to you, because you haven’t dealt with the past.” Foster paced the width of the hallway before facing Chase, again. “We’ve all got demons, buddy. And we’ve all been fighting them since long before that damn flight. It took me and Zain nearly losing Mac and Saylor to finally pull our heads out of our asses. And Kash had to nearly drown before he grew a set. But you…”
Foster snorted. “You’ve been quietly treading water, pushing it all down while pretending you were healing. That you’d found some form of inner peace, all the while being secretly relieved Greer wasn’t ready to commit. That you could stay in the friend zone while you waited for some kind of abiding forgiveness. Then, Rhett miraculously wakes up, and all the guilt you’ve been hiding finally starts to lift. And for the first time in your life, you took the kind of risk you can’t train for. Until some bastard stole it.”
Foster loomed closer. “I don’t know what’s going on inside your head, but if you don’t shake it loose, she’s gonna run. Not just from you, but from Raven’s Cliff. From everything. Because if I’ve learned anything about Greer, it’s that she’s not the kind of person to come between others. And she knows, if she stayed, there’d always be a wedge between her and us, regardless of what we said.”
He tilted his head when Chase went to break eye contact. “I know you don’t think you’re worthy, and I get you need time to work through this. Just don’t take too long, brother, or the only woman you’re ever going to love will be long gone. And you’ll have to spend the rest of your life knowing you had your happy ending, and you threw it away because you were too fucking scared to believe you deserved anything other than endless suffering.”
Foster straightened, clenching his hand as he rolled his shoulder, visibly pushing down some of his tension. He held firm, still standing too close, when the doors opened on a whoosh, cold air tinged with a slight chemical odor spilling out along with Greer.
She held one of the doors ajar, gazing between them as if she wasn’t sure if she should interrupt or go back inside. “Everything okay out here?”
Foster stepped back and plastered on a fake smile. “Golden. You finished?”
Greer looked at Chase, lips pursed, some of the color draining from her face before she sighed. “Dr. Pike’s willing to edge into one of those gray areas I mentioned last night, if you think you’re okay to come in and hear what he has to say.”
Chase moved forward, Foster’s words still ringing in his head. Thoughts he’d unpack once he’d had some time to process them without the stain of Rhett and Stacey’s deaths tainting them. “Totally focused.”
