Over the next week, she was pretty much house bound, but there was no need to go anywhere. The guys were dropping food by every day. Terisa or Ailani called every day to check on her, see if she needed anything other than food. Levi was mostly keeping his distance, unless someone else was there, which suited her fine. She needed the solitude to get settled back into herself.

Gradually the sense of disconnect faded, except with Levi.

He’d left her behind.

If he hadn’t kissed her—but he had.

If he hadn’t protected her and made her feel wanted even when they couldn’t be together—but he had.

Despite everything, she’d felt as if someday the status quo would change and they’d be together, that no matter how frustrating and hurtful it was to put barriers in place between them there would come a time when the barriers weren’t needed. Now, she couldn’t let herself believe that he felt the same at all, because he’d left her. The attraction that had so consumed her must not have been as strong for him. She tried to put herself in the same position, and couldn’t imagine that she would ever leave him behind, not knowing for certain whether he was dead or not.

Maybe she was wrong about that. She’d never had to make that decision. That was the problem; because she didn’t know, her heart couldn’t accept what he’d done.

The days rocked on, became a week, two weeks.

She healed. Her feet weren’t in pretty shape, but the swelling was down and she needed only bandaging around her heels and over her toes. Flip flops were out, because she couldn’t get the thong between her toes, but she could tolerate the mule style of bedroom slippers, which Ailani thought of and brought to her so she wouldn’t have to wear the moose head slippers. Jina thought she might be recovering, mentally, because she was amused at the idea that, if any of the guys had injured their feet in the same way she had, they’d be wearing fuzzy mules too.

For the most part, though, she wasn’t amused. She watched TV. She read. She puttered around doing small chores, getting her kitchen organized, doing some online shopping for a new bedspread and shams. She’d devoted herself to GO-Team stuff for over a year now, and she wanted to do feminine stuff, get back the part of herself that had been put on the back burner while she dealt with the intensity of training and being a part of the team.

The daily updates said Crutch was finally improving, enough to be moved out of critical care. Voodoo was transferred to Walter Reed, and in another couple of weeks he was scheduled to begin therapy.

She could drive now, so she visited him almost every day. So did the rest of the team, but they were back to the normal training schedule and came at the end of the day; she didn’t run into them at the hospital. Because of training her contact with them now was mostly texts, asking if she needed anything, but given that she could drive again she was handling everything herself.

She graduated from bandages to Band-Aids, and was able to walk normally. She tried on her sneakers every day to see if she could tolerate them, and one day she could. She was mostly back to normal—whatever normal was.

The day she was released to resume training, Jina knew she couldn’t stay in stasis any longer. Getting herself back to top level would be an effort.

If she wanted to get back to top level.

That was the sticking point, the idea that circled around and around her brain, night and day. She’d never quit on anything. If she’d been a quitter, she wouldn’t have made it out of the desert alive. Nevertheless, the idea of rejoining the team almost made her sick.

She cared about them all; she did. When it came down to it, even though she knew they’d had no choice other than to take care of Crutch and Voodoo, try to save their lives, even though she understood they’d thought she was dead, in the end she couldn’t get past the fact that they’d left her behind. Reason be damned, emotion was trumping reason. She didn’t want it to, she wanted to close the door on yesterday and face forward again, but she couldn’t.

If it were just the rest of the team, she could do it. Levi . . . Levi was the one she couldn’t come to grips with. Her thoughts circled endlessly around the subject, and she couldn’t force herself past it. She was the least important member of his team, and in the end he’d proven it to her. She was desolate inside, knocked down, hollowed out with despair. Levi had left her behind.

Taking a deep breath, she called headquarters and told MacNamara’s assistant she had to talk to him. She’d expected to have to wait a month or so—he was never accommodating—but instead she was told to get there immediately.

MacNamara’s normal expression was a blend of surliness, impatience, and downright hostility, but when Jina sat down in his office he regarded her seriously. “You went through some tough shit,” he commented, leaning back in his chair.

She shrugged, not wanting to talk about it. But for him to even acknowledge her situation was unusual, because normally his attitude ran along the lines of suck it up and do your job. She had, way past what she’d thought she could do, but now she couldn’t. “I want to transfer back to my old job,” she said.

Instantly MacNamara morphed back into his normal self. “Sorry. We’ve spent a lot of money on your training, and I’m not going to throw it away. Request denied.”

She’d expected that, accepted the course she would have to take. She gave him a level stare, then stood and said, “In that case, I quit.”

She’d never said those words before. She’d had to fight with herself to come to this point, because it was so alien to her. She could return to the team, she could force herself forward . . . but she didn’t want to. Hearing herself say the words broke a barrier inside, one she’d never let herself cross before. She was in unchartered territory, but abruptly she felt free and calm. This was her chosen path. She was done.

To her surprise, instead of instantly tossing her out the door, MacNamara leaned back and steepled his fingers, studying her over them. “Don’t be so hasty. Think this through.”

“I have. Through, over, under, around. I’d prefer doing one more mission—with someone else’s team, which isn’t going to happen—just to prove to myself that I have the guts to do it, but for the most part . . .” She shook her head. “I’m finished.”

“Ace made the right call, the only call he could have made with the information he had.”

“I know that. I’m still done.” Knowing and accepting were two different things. She couldn’t even argue that he’d made the wrong decision. He’d thought she was dead in the explosion. She got that. That didn’t alter what she still had to deal with, the emotions she’d felt when she stood alone in the desert and known he’d left her behind. She wasn’t a computer; she couldn’t reboot and start fresh. She couldn’t shove all that into a different compartment of her brain and ignore it as if it had never happened.

MacNamara shrugged. He wasn’t the type who kept beating at something, he had too much going on. “You still don’t get your old job back. I’m not wasting your training. I’ll switch you to drone training, you can be an instructor in that, but not communications. Your choice.”

Her mouth fell open. To say she was flabbergasted was putting it mildly. She loved working with Tweety, loved every bit of the nerdy software stuff and how absolutely cool the little drone was. The flabbergasting part was that no one who knew MacNamara ever expected him to be accommodating. “What? Are you sure? I mean—thank you.”

He scowled at her. “Get out before I change my mind.”

She did. She left in a daze, knowing she had just walked out of one part of her life and entered another. She had quit. And she had begun.