to do successfully if you’re dragging me down a mountainside in the freezing cold.”
He glanced at her as he straightened up and moved across the room to jam his feet into his pair of too-small doctored boots that he’d set neatly beneath his still-drying raincoat. “I’m not going to English Patient you.”
Except that was more of those best intentions they’d been discussing earlier. It was exactly what the actual English patient—Ralph Fiennes’s character—had promised before leaving Kristin Scott Thomas’s character to die alone in a cave, in the dark, while he went to get help. He was certain he’d return and save her, and yet...
Tash must’ve been giving Thomas her own version of an uh-oh face, because he laughed a little then added, “I appreciate your courage and your willingness to stay here, I really do. But we’ve gone past the point of no return in terms of that option. We’re working with a different scenario now. They know where you are, Tash, and I’m not leaving you in a position of undeniable vulnerability. If they cut the air to the pod...? Nah, there’s no viable plan B if you’re alone when that happens. When we go, we’re going together.”
Tasha’s relief was mixed with a sinking feeling. This was her fault. “If I hadn’t panicked and left the pod...”
He pulled her in for an embrace, his arms warm and solid around her as he tucked her head beneath his chin. “It’s not your fault. I should’ve realized you’d freak out when the lights went off but then I didn’t appear. And then when you saw the rifle and thought...? What? I was dead or dying or...?”
She nodded as she held onto him even more tightly, as he held her even closer to his heart in return.
“I could’ve taken the extra minute to tell you what I was doing.” His rich voice rumbled in his chest. “Yeah, the men following me would’ve lost me, but I could’ve caught up to them, led them away from the pod. So don’t beat yourself up, because I messed up, too. This isn’t just on you. I wasn’t thinking about your feelings—only about protecting you. Taking care of you—without your input, which is all kinds of wrong. I also... miscalculated... just how... intensely you care for me.”
Tasha couldn’t help but laugh even as her heart did incredible somersaults at his quiet words. She lifted her head to look up at him. “That was the most Spock-inspired way of saying I didn’t realize how much you love me.”
He smiled down at her, but his amusement didn’t hide the vulnerability in his eyes. “I spent years talking myself out of you and... discounting your feelings. I’m afraid it’s gonna take me a while to catch up to reality. This still feels surreal. Yeah, like, Spock’s-got-a-beard surreal.”
Tasha laughed again. But it was important that she tell him: “When I grabbed the rifle—when I cowboyed up and left the pod, I don’t really know exactly what I thought I was going to do. And when you weren’t bleeding out, outside the pod, I just stood there in the cold, clueless and... and useless—”
“Not useless.” He jumped all over that, cutting her off. “Nuh-uh. Just in possession of a vastly different skillset.”
Her heart really couldn’t get any bigger in her chest, and yet somehow it did.
Thomas kissed her then—swiftly, sweetly—before he released her and essentially set her off to the side. “Let’s see where this door goes.”
He sat down on the concrete floor in front of the open cast-iron door, and using the force of his powerful legs, he kicked the shallow metal back of the little closet. His boots hit with a crash that turned into a clatter as, sure enough, the piece of metal was dislodged into a larger, darker, shadow-filled space.
“Hoo-yah!”
Tasha moved closer to look at what was, undeniably, the entrance to the original bomb shelter’s escape route.
“We need a flashlight,” Thomas said, in near unison with Tasha’s “I’ll get a flashlight.”
“Grab a candle while you’re at it, and your lighter or some matches,” Thomas added.
“Don’t you dare go in there without me,” Tasha called as she hurried into the pod’s living room to grab their jackets, too.
Tasha came back wearing her winter jacket, with her towel hat securely over her head, fastened by the clip under her chin.
“I really don’t think it’ll be that cold in there,” Thomas pointed out as she held out the blue raincoat, the rifle—smart woman—the flashlight, the candle, and Ted’s lighter.