“I got this. Just...” Give him space.
She did as he swung one end of the metal shelving unit away from the wall that held the funny little cast-iron door.
“If you really believed I’m not insane,” Tasha said, “you wouldn’t have made that face.”
The belt of his robe had become loosened, and Thomas refastened it as he made another face at her. “What face?”
“The face you made,” she said. “Theuh-ohface.”
“I’m... pretty sure that’s just my face.”
“Then you must be thinkinguh-oha lot when you’re with me.”
He laughed at that. “That is not entirely incorrect.”
“I think you thought I was offering to... What? Surrender myself to the goon squad out there, in a selflessly dramaticIf only one of us can live let it be you-type deal? And yeah, okay, gun to my head, I will definitely beg for your life:I’ll go willingly if you spare him, you know, because Iwouldgo willingly if they... but I wouldn’t... I mean, that’s absolute final-option thinking. That’s plan Z-squared.”
Thomas nodded as he opened the little door, crouching down to look inside. “Good to know.”
“And I know I’ve been loudly repetitive about you notEnglish Patient-ing me,” Tash told him, leaning in over his shoulder to get another look at the weird half-closet as he ran his hands across and around its narrow little dull-metal insides, “and the idea of you leaving me here alone scares me. Badly. But if there really is an escape hatch, we need to use it to escape in a way that actually allows us to escape this entire situation. Not just get out of here, but then get caught a mile down the mountain. So I have to grit my teeth and let you save us. And I’m pretty sure that means me waiting here while you do things that’ll be much harder for you 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 toEnglish Patientyou.”
Except that was more of thosebest intentionsthey’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 anuh-ohface, 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’snotyour 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 wasthemost Spock-inspired way of sayingI 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 exactlywhatI thought I was going to do. And when youweren’tbleeding out, outside the pod, I just stood there in the cold, clueless and... anduseless—”
“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.
