“Back at you,” he said gruffly, and then after a pause, “I don’t want to go.”
“You better go,” she said regretfully.
“Okay. But I don’t want to.”
She sensed his small smile rather than saw it. She laughed softly as he turned over and got out of bed. A sadness came over her at the absence of his solid male warmth, but so did a feeling of happiness, for some reason.
“I got the coffee ready for you last night. Just turn it on.”
“Thanks,” he replied in a sleep-roughened voice.
She heard him turn on the shower, but must have fallen asleep again, because she didn’t recall him leaving.
When she awoke, she saw through the window that the cloud cover from last night hadn’t dissipated. She hoped it hadn’t rained on Thomas and Sherm while they fished, although Sherm would be totally enthusiastic if it did, Sophie thought with a smile as she got out of bed. He’d just say the rain would make the fish bite more.
She was still smiling a minute later when she stood at the kitchen sink sipping her coffee and staring out the back window onto the gray morning. Slowly, the weight of what was happening to Thomas—to what was happening to her—settled on her spirit, dampening her mood. What right did she have to feel so warm, to be so cheerful when things were so volatile and uncertain?
What right did she have to be happy about falling in love with a man who was in the midst of a personal crisis, was quite possibly in grave danger, and certainly was emotionally unavailable?
She set down her coffee cup heavily on the counter, the realization of what she’d just admitted to herself striking her consciousness like a blow.
Was it even possible? To fall in love with someone in such a short period of time? Not in Sophie’s experience it wasn’t. She’d considered herself to be in love a few other times in her life, but it had always come on more gradually than this. In fact, what she was experiencing with Thomas felt unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.
Was it just an infatuation? The result of an unprecedented sexual attraction?
She thought of what she’d said to Andy yesterday when they were speaking on the phone.
You must be having strong feelings, Sophie. It’s not exactly your typical MO with a guy. I can’t help but think it’s telling that you’re going out on a limb like this for Nicasio. Be careful, okay?
Sophie swallowed and stepped away from the counter. Andy was right. It wasn’t her typical MO. Sophie was usually cautious with men, especially at the start of a relationship. She’d been accused of being standoffish often enough that it’d become something she’d come to dread . . . the inevitability of it happening again.
She thought of herself last night, of how she’d responded to Thomas’s volatile, dominant lovemaking. Might as well admit it. She’d been the direct opposite of standoffish. She’d given herself to him without reservation, even in these bizarre circumstances, where caution surely should prevail.
Even in the midst of his crisis, Thomas had ended up showing more restraint than her. It pained her a little, to recall how he’d leashed himself there at the end, how she’d heard both pain and intense pleasure in his climactic groans. She sensed that he sought her out to somehow ease the impact of his trauma . . . to escape it. Recently, she’d experienced a simultaneous desire to do precisely that.
They’d become partners in that unspoken goal.
But Sophie knew his crisis would come to an end. Whatever he’d pushed out of his memory, it would eventually return. Andy was right. The unit that Thomas had belonged to in the Navy required an enormous psychological tolerance for stress. Whatever had happened to Thomas in the past several days—what short period of time was hiding in the darkness of his consciousness—would eventually return, and likely very soon. Localized amnesias from acute traumas typically didn’t last long.
It was one thing to be able to withstand the stress of war and imminent death. But Sophie knew personal loss, family grief—and betrayal?—was a different matter entirely.
Sophie couldn’t precisely see what had caused Thomas’s anguish, but she could see the murky outlines of it through the lens of how he was reacting. He had withstood fifteen years of stressful duty in the military, and not only endured it, but excelled, becoming a high-ranking officer and commanding his own unit. He’d survived three tours of duty in the Middle East. But despite all those years of constant, almost daily stress, events that had transpired in the past few days that related to his family had turned him into a bundle of tightly wound nerves and precipitated an anxiety response in him that he’d never begun to manifest as the leader of a bomb squad.
Sophie didn’t need to know the precise details of what had happened. To see Thomas’s response was sufficient for her to know whatever he’d seen in the past week, whatever he’d experienced . . . whatever he’d learned, had slashed and torn at his very soul.
It might have just been the unexpected deaths of Rick and Abel that had caused his traumatic reaction. But knowing what she knew through Andy’s consultations about the Carlisle family and her cryptic, yet telling conversation with Agent Fisk, Sophie doubted it.
I feel like the ground has dropped out from under me.
Her face tightened with emotion when she recalled Thomas’s anguish after as they’d stood in the kitchen yesterday. In a psychological sense, he’d spoken a literal truth. Thomas Nicasio’s entire world, his foundation, had crumbled and disintegrated beneath his feet.
She walked over to the window that looked out onto the lake. It seemed smooth and gray today, like an opaque mirror. She saw a fishing boat puttering into a cove at the far side of the lake, recognizing Thomas and Sherm by the dark red color of the craft and Sherm’s bright orange fishing cap. Her gaze lingered on the other figure sitting at the back of the boat before it disappeared behind the trees that lined the cove.
He was safe, for the moment. She exhaled slowly, not realizing until that very moment she’d been anxious about his safety while he was absent.
She didn’t know what she should do. All wisdom had abandoned her. It must have, to be falling for a man who could probably never return her feelings, given what he was experiencing.
She could only take each hour as it came.