“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 clearshhhmessage 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 carryonecandle?”
“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, itwasclever 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 sayI’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...”
