Therefore, it was highly unlikely that Thomas could simply throw up his hands and surrender to Tash’s debate points from last night due to reasoning based on No one else is alive here in the Thunderdome, he might as well accept his fate and start repopulating the human race with a brilliant, gorgeous, funny-as-hell woman who adored him.
The phrase accept his fate echoed as he headed back to the sex-pod—shit, ever since Tasha had called it that, he had to work to think of it as anything else. And that meant when he was with Tasha—which was every damn second he wasn’t out here attempting to facilitate their rescue—he was hard-core policing every stupid thing that came out of his mouth. Don’t say sex-pod, don’t say sex-pod...
Wouldn’t it be nice to just give up and give in?
Yeah, thanks so much for that gem of bad advice, brain. Glad I wasn’t listening to you when I went through BUD/S or I wouldn’t be a SEAL. I would’ve “given in” to the exhaustion and I’d’ve rung out.
But he’d wanted to be a SEAL with a fiery passion. He’d burned to become a SEAL. Similarly to the way he wanted this, to the way he wanted her—
What? Thomas shut that shit down fast. The idea of wanting Tasha in that way was just too damn unsettling.
Except...
What if, like she’d said, he had met her for the first time, just last week in Werewulf’s, while sitting at the bar, watching the same movie and laughing. Their age difference now wasn’t that big a thing. Yeah, she was young, and he’d catch hell from his teammates for dating a woman twelve years younger—but only because he’d given them hell in the past for doing the same. Although, Tash—a college grad—was actually older than most of the women that his teammates dated, since they went on the theory that college-age women would be on board for an easygoing relationship with fewer strings.
And it wasn’t really the age difference that was problematic. It was that Thomas hadn’t met Tasha last week at ’Wulf’s. He’d met her back when she was freaking five. He’d babysat her, for Christ’s sake.
But then she’d gotten older and started babysitting kids like Joanna McCoy, and he’d often still hung out with her, because he’d liked spending time with her. He definitely came to her rescue whenever she’d needed him—but she’d rarely needed him, because even when she was twelve or thirteen, she was going on thirty in a lot of ways.
And yeah, she’d gotten a little wild, breaking a lot of rules and stressing Uncle Navy out while she was in high school—but Thomas hadn’t been around for much of that. He’d been stationed in the sandbox for months and then years on end.
Still, whenever he came back to the States, she was always there, waiting for him at the airport, and she was right. Being with her had always been just so damn easy.
Sister, sister, sister, except, Tasha wasn’t his sister. She was right about that fact, too.
Still, his job had always been to protect her. For years, that had been Thomas’s prime directive: to protect Tasha from all of the assholes who would hurt her, including her alcoholic screw-up of a mother.
Maybe, because he knew how much Tash had loved Sharon despite the relentless dysfunction caused by her mom’s disease... And maybe because he’d always worked hard to temper her excitement at the news that Sharon was coming back home...
Sharon’s getting out of rehab, and she says this time’s the charm! She says this time it’s gonna stick!
Ah, yeah, Tash, well, that’s really great, but you know that’s something Sharon really can’t know, right?
Thomas, this time she promised!
Well, I know she really wants it to be true, but remember what we learned from those Al-Anon meetings? The fact she made that promise means she’s still got more to learn.
Maybe it didn’t matter what Thomas said, because when it came to Sharon, Tasha always ended up disappointed.
And maybe because he knew that Tash had loved him with that same intensity and ferociousness, it had seemed fitting that, after she stopped giving Sharon the power to disappoint her, that he should step into that dominant role and continuously disappoint her, too.
All because of rules that he’d arbitrarily made to help himself clarify and define their very weird relationship.
Sister, sister, not-his-sister. Really, really not-his-sister.
But if Tash wasn’t his sister, what was she?
His best friend. And how weird had that been to be twenty-something with a fourteen-year-old best friend? No wonder he’d been shouting sister all over the place.
And the idea that he might’ve been holding open the parking spot for a girlfriend and a lover in his life...? Keeping it vacant for his tweenage bestie...? Waiting on her to grow up...? Boom. He was back to super-creepy.
Again, no wonder he’d clung so hard to sister, sister, sister.
And while he was clinging and closing his eyes to the fact that time was passing, she’d grown up. She’d left her messed-up childhood behind, working her butt off to break the cycle of dysfunction, to understand the many insidious ways her mother’s addictions and other mental health issues had damaged her. She’d stepped up with courage and optimism, moving on and building a life for herself that was complete without him.
So why did she still want him, then? That conversation last night had been one of purpose and intention. She hadn’t been playing—she’d debated with her very heart and soul.
But what if that was just residual—leftovers—from her shitty childhood? An echo of what she’d once thought she’d wanted?
Except, he was the one who’d intruded—at Alan’s request, for sure, but Tash had made it very clear that she would have preferred any other SEAL as her bodyguard during this trip.
So maybe—and this was a shocker—he could take Tasha at her word. That their being thrown together like this had opened her eyes and made her realize that she still wanted him in her life. Maybe, especially when all hell had broken loose, she’d seen just how strong their childhood bond still was—that the friendship and trust they’d shared was solid, unbreakable.
Fate had thrown them together back when she was much too young, during a time when neither of them were ready for more than that friendship, but now was indeed not then.
Tasha wasn’t his sister, and she was no longer a child.
She’d kept her distance for years—appropriately giving him space after the night of the White Russians. She’d accepted his no with both grace and respect. And then she’d grown and matured, while he’d stayed mired in the past, unwilling and unable to see her as more than the girl she’d once been.
What did that say about him, wanting to keep treating her like a child even though she was clearly an adult? Some men treated all women like children, and how creepy was that?
What if he could just let go of the past, and meet Tasha, as very much his equal, here in the present?
Thomas found himself thinking about last night, and the way her hair had shone as it caught the overhead lights, the smile that curved her graceful lips and made her face light up with amusement, the faint lines at the sides of her laughing eyes. Even without any makeup on, she looked her age, with her grown woman’s body beneath her clothes and the blanket that she’d wrapped around her shoulders.
And this was where, always in the past, he’d start feeling uncomfortable, like he needed to smack himself for thinking about Tasha as a woman. And no, not just as a grown-up, adult woman—he absolutely could see that she was that—but instead as a woman that he, personally, found to be physically attractive.