Captain McCoy’s daughter Joanna was a teenager now, focusing her intense energy into playing soccer. But in her pre-team-sports days, she’d been a lightning bolt in a bottle, running rings around her brother and their friends, with frequent visits to the ER. Fortunately her mom, Lucy, was a badass who wasn’t at all fazed by her daughter’s propensity to be embraced by trouble.
Come to think of it, Jo was a lot like Tasha, which was probably why she’d been the McCoys’ favorite babysitter. Thomas knew that Tasha understood their spirited daughter in ways most people didn’t.
“Massively bleeding head wound panic-night,” Tash told him now as she slipped her foot gingerly back into her too-large slipper. “That much blood coming from one tiny girl really freaked me out.”
Thomas had arrived at the scene before both the ambulance and the McCoys. He’d found Tasha not just keeping herself together, but keeping Jo and her little brother calm. It wasn’t until after, when he was driving her home, that she’d let herself cry—and at that point, her emotion was mostly relief.
“Heads bleed a lot,” he said.
“Yup. I learned that from you, that night,” she said. “Speaking of bleeding heads, let me look at yours.”
“I’m fine,” he reminded her.
Tasha stood up anyway, tightening the belt of her giant robe as she motioned for him to sit on the couch, in the spot beneath the overhead light where she’d just been. “I just want to look, which is something evenyouhaven’t been able to do, Super-SEAL, so guess what?I’llbe the one to decide if you’re really fine.”
“Itfeelsfine.” Thomas grumbled, but he sat where she’d directed, and tipped his head forward slightly. “I checked it out in the shower—shaved around it. It feels like it’s starting to scab.”
“It is,” she said, her fingers cool against the heat of his skin.
He pulled away slightly and looked at her over his shoulder. “Your eyes feel oddly like fingers.”
“What are you, four, Mr. Literal?” she said. “I just want to look, in medical-ese means there might be gentle touching to further assess. In fact, in my expert assessment—expert, due to having eyes that can see it—you need to put some antibiotic ointment on that because it looks a little angry.Out in the world, something like this could easily get infected.” She tossed his own words back at him. “And—just to be clear—when I saidYou need to put ointment on that, I meant thatIneed to do it for you, sinceyoureyes have neither fingers nor cool Martian expandable stalks that allow you to see around to the back of your head.”
Martian Girl.
That had been one of Thomas’s nicknames for Tasha, back when she was just a kid. It first came out of his mouth on the day he’d found her, wandering alone at the beach.
Five-year-old Tasha had never seen the ocean before. She had no idea how to stay safe on a Pacific beach with its pounding surf and dangerous rip tides. She just ran toward the water, and would’ve splashed on in if Thomas hadn’t stopped her. He’d been afraid that his intensity had scared her a little—running after her, shouting,No!—so he’d quickly switched it up into teasing mode, asking her if she’d just arrived on earth from Mars.
“Go ahead,” he said now, tipping his head down again so she could apply the ointment. “It’s probably best to err on the side of caution.”
“You sure it’s clean enough?” she asked. “Or should I—”
“I scrubbed it plenty in the shower.”
“Okay.” Her robe brushed against him as she reached for the tube of ointment. “My hands are clean, so I’m just going to... I mean, unless there’s another way to do it that will hurt you less?”
“It’s not going to hurt,” he lied. “Just dab it on. But don’t touch the mouth of the tube with your fingers. Drop about a dime-sized dollop into your palm, then seal up the tube of ointment. Let’s keep that as sanitary as we can.”
“That’s a good trick,” she said. “Although now that I have adime-sized dollop, good word, in my hand, sealing the ointment is...”
“Here, hand it to me,” he said.
She reached over his shoulder to hand him first the tube and then the cap, and each time the softness of her body brushed his back.
“So about that night,” she said as he was screwing the tube closed. His fingers fumbled and she noticed because she clarified, “Massively bleeding head wound night at the McCoys’.” She laughed a little as she began to dab the ointment on the back of his head. “You seriously thought I’d bring up Five White Russians night? While we’re sitting here, castaway on a desert isle, dressed only in ridiculous bathrobes?”
“You kind of just did,” Thomas pointed out.
“No,” she said. “Youdid. With your alternative to a classic spit-take.”
Alternative to...? “No, I—” This argument was not something he could win. “Castaway on...?” he asked instead.
“A desert isle. Alone together,” Tasha said. “You know. Trapped in an elevator. Snowbound in a mountain cabin—I guessthat’sreally the closest variation to ‘stuck together in a former bomb shelter that’s now a prince’s sex-pod.’Oh, no, there’s just one bed, but will you look at that mirror on the ceiling!”
“The bed’s all yours,” he told her a tad desperately, because although he was following—she was talking about the romance novels she loved to read and, more recently, to write—there was still definitely something he was missing. What did the bed have to do with it? And ending any and all discussion about that mirrored ceiling was paramount. “I’ll take the couch.”
“Yeah, no, I know,” she said. “I was just... Forget it. It’s awkward, being here like this, but it’s way less awkward than being dead, right?”
