No, but he didn’t want to make any promises, so he said, “We’ll be ready for anything.” He handed her a flashlight and one of the larger candles before grabbing the rifle, the day pack, and a soft bundle of other supplies that he’d wrapped and secured. He led the way to the utility room. “But I’m hoping that the hostiles got hold of info about the power lines without accessing the full design plans for the shelter. It’s a good bet that’s gonna take them longer to find, especially since it was likely intentionally kept from public records.”
He stepped back to let Tasha go first through the little cast iron door to freedom, then humped the pack and the bundle into the little nuclear fallout “mudroom,” too.
“Is this...? Whoa, it is. It’s your bathrobe.” She moved both the bundle and the daypack out of the way, giving him space to climb through the door, too.
“Yup.”
“Goodbye, sex-pod,” she said as he swung the door closed behind him. “We’ll remember you fondly, particularly your heat and your bathroom. Although this—” she picked up the bundle “—is a nice souvenir.”
“Your robe is in the bundle, too. In case we need more layers.”
She laughed softly at that. “In case. Maybe I should just wear both of them right now, and you can just roll me down the mountainside.”
“Blow out the candle and...” Thomas put his finger to his lips in a clear shhh message as he prepared to open the bigger door that led into the tunnel.
But as darkness enveloped them completely, Tasha breathed, “Wait! Please?”
He heard her move, felt her reach out to touch him, her hand warm against his back. “I didn’t get to say thank you—I didn’t get to say anything because I cleverly fell asleep,” she whispered. “Before. On the sofa. It was... I was... Thomas, my heart is...”
He turned and kissed her—she tasted minty fresh—and he had to smile. She’d brushed her teeth while she was in the bathroom—of course she had—and his not being surprised in the least about that made him happy in a way he’d never felt before. Happy—and determined. He finally knew what he wanted—a life with Tasha by his side—and damn it, he was going to fight for it.
“We’re gonna get through this,” he told her softly. “But right now we need to be quiet, okay? As I open the door. In an overabundance of caution.”
He felt her nod, felt her pull back—but she kept her hand on him, just lightly now.
So he did it. The release of the lock made noise—there was no way to do it quietly, so maybe their not-talking was moot. Although he did need to listen and listen hard.
There was no noise, no flurry of movement, no light in the tunnel, no immediate attack.
So Thomas opened the door another slight inch—ready to slam it closed with the full weight of his body behind it, and secure the lock, if necessary.
Still nothing.
He opened it even further, still using the door as a shield between their bodies and the tunnel.
More silence and stillness.
He switched on his flashlight and peeked out around the edge of the door.
The tunnel was empty—at least down here at their end—the beam bouncing off the walls that curved into both floor and ceiling.
As Thomas turned back, he saw that Tasha had already relit the candle. She’d picked up the daypack and was slipping her arms through the padded straps that would allow her to wear it on her back. He stopped her. “I got this.”
She let him take it, but immediately picked up the bundle.
“And that,” he added. “I got that, too.”
“What,” she scoffed, “I carry one candle?”
“Yes,” he answered. “And maybe that way we won’t have to go too slowly.”
“Ouch,” she said, but it was obvious that she knew he was right as she let him take the bundle from her arms.
“I’m guessing—from the fact that every time I turned around you were reading a different book, that you haven’t been sleeping well,” he told her, leading the way into the tunnel. He kept his voice low, hushed. “So yeah, it was clever of you to sleep. Even just for an hour.”
“But you didn’t,” Tash whispered back.
“Navy SEAL. I’ll—”
She cut him off. “Don’t you dare say I’ll sleep when I’m dead. That’s not funny today. Or any day, really.”
“Noted.”
“It just feels like bad form to have such incredibly great sex and then fall asleep and not...”
Thomas glanced at her, eyebrow raised in anticipation for the end of her sentence.
“Talk,” she said. She cleared her throat. “More.”
“As in hold a debrief or a Q&A or, I dunno, maybe even a follow-up debate?”
Tash laughed softly. “I’m feeling intense socially-trained pressure to apologize, but I’m not sorry. About our awkwardly timed debate, I mean. Too many people just shut up and have sex despite all the noise in their heads and... That’s not me.” She made an impatient tsking noise. “Well, it’s not the me I want to be. The me that I can allow myself to be when I’m with you—because I trust you so completely.”
Damn, hearing her say that... The emotion he was feeling was overwhelming. He suddenly understood exactly what she’d meant when she’d said, My heart is... but then couldn’t finish. Because he’d never felt anything like this before either.
“I’m glad,” he murmured.
“Me, too,” she said. “So, no regrets?”
He shot her a Seriously? look and she smiled.
“You changed your mind really fast—about waiting. I wanted to make sure you didn’t have, I don’t know, whiplash...?”
“It’s not whiplash,” he told her, “because that shit hurts worse in the aftermath. This is more like... leaping backwards, blindfolded, into the ocean, off a really high cliff. You’re disoriented and it’s terrifying, and hitting the water is... shocking, to put it mildly. But just like that, you’re submerged, immersed, and it’s cool and peaceful and... You’re in it. Deep. And yeah, you gotta figure out which way is up so you can breathe, but once you get that handled, it feels so damn good.”
“Leaping,” she said, “is a generous word. I’m pretty sure I pushed you off that cliff.”
“Nah,” Thomas said. “If anything, you jumped first, shouting Follow meeeeee!” He let his voice trail as if falling, and she smiled, but it was despite herself, and he could tell that she still didn’t quite believe him. “I left that cliff of my own volition, Tash,” he continued. “Deciding factor was the pants.” He gestured down to them. “A woman makes you pants like these, that’s a major statement. Turns out it’s a relationship goal I didn’t even know that I had.”
She was laughing now.
“Really, though,” he said. “I don’t lie to you, remember?”
Tasha nodded, her heart right there, in her eyes, for him to see. Funny how that no longer scared the hell out of him. “If you want,” she told him, “we can go faster.”
Thomas nodded. “You set the speed.”