say I’m in love, and I didn’t know that was shorthand for This new guy will solve all my problems if I can just make the sex good enough to make him want to stay. I think, maybe because the truth we were living was so bleak, that I dove into the fantasy. I remember she always used to say ‘I love you, too,’ comes before ‘Let’s get naked,’ although I’m pretty sure that didn’t always work out for her, because she was a lying-piece-of-shit magnet. But it increased our likelihood of moving in with some old rich guy for a coupla weeks or months. Still, it was always in my head—a hard and fast rule. Except then I turned eighteen and I was so damn certain that you’d been telling me that you loved me for my entire life, so...”
“Well,” Thomas said, clearing his throat. “Thank you at least for waiting until then. That’s... terrifying to think about. I mean, not that dealing with a naked eighteen-year-old wasn’t bad enough.”
“You really never told Alan or Mia?” Tash asked. On the plane, he’d said he hadn’t, but she still didn’t quite believe it. Although, it gave her hope.
“Mia emailed me, a few days after that night,” Thomas said. “I’m pretty sure she would’ve called if she could’ve.”
SEAL Team Ten had gone wheels up the day after Tash’s birthday, so Mia didn’t have the option to call.
“She asked a bunch of questions,” he continued, “that I evaded by saying she should talk to you. She ultimately sent me a Don’t mess with Tasha lecture—it was pages long—ending with her version of If you hurt her, I will hunt you down and kill you. So yeah, she definitely knew something was up since I was the one who drove you home when you were so wasted. But I never gave her any details. I figured it was up to you to tell her or not.”
“Thank you,” Tasha said. “For treating me like an adult—because I was an adult.”
He narrowed his eyes and made a Hmmm sound.
“Okay, so maybe I wasn’t quite there yet, because climbing into your bed was an incredibly childish thing to do, and God, I’m so sorry I disrespected you that way, I really am, but I just want you to step back and think about why you didn’t tell Mia or Alan. You know, say, Get a handle on your crazy niece, Admiral, she’s out of control.”
“Yeah, in what alternative reality would I say that?” he protested.
“The one where you disapprove of the age difference between Jake and Zoe even though you know how much they love each other,” Tasha shot back. “The one where you drew an indelible line between you and me, and wrote adult on your side and forever-a-child on mine. The one where you refuse to step back and give a hard look at the sister-sister-sister you’ve been whispering to yourself whenever I’m in the room. The one where the future locks tightly into the choices and decisions you made in the past, even though the present—right now—looks completely different because here we are, absolutely, both on the adult side of your imaginary line.”
He was shaking his head as he looked at her. Just a little, just a constant, persistent no.
Before he could shut her down with an argument she couldn’t debate, like I’m really sorry, Tash, because I just don’t feel the same way that you do, she grabbed her book and scrambled back to her feet.
“Don’t say anything,” she told him. “Not right now. Just think about what I said. Sit with it. Sleep on it. We both need to sleep, so I’m going to bed.”
She beelined for the bedroom, and when he spoke—“Tasha, I just... can’t...”—she pretended she didn’t hear him and closed and locked the door in the face of whatever it was that he couldn’t or wouldn’t do.
Even though she knew damn well that his sentence, I just can’t ended badly for her with the words force myself to love you the way you want me to.
Until tomorrow morning, when he said it—until the moment that she emerged and let him say it to her face—she’d stay right here in her hope-filled fantasyland of maybe he would.
Yeah, and all she needed was a pink settee, and she’d become a Russian princess for real, too.
Chapter Nineteen
Wednesday
“What’s the deputy’s plan if Ted tries to jump the fence?” Rio asked as Dave rejoined him on the tarmac.