This time, he will be alone all over again, but Nora isn’t leaving him to suffer on purpose. She is leaving because he begged her to go. How strange, he thinks, to be so willing to face one of his worst fears if it means saving her life.
And then the plane stops.
Chapter 21
Nora is never going to see Theo again.
Ever.
They both know that finding each other someday is only a beautiful lie. It took her this long to crash land beside her soulmate, and now she’s willingly flying away from him in the middle of a global disaster. All the reasons why she should go are clear as ever, but as the plane moves further away, and his outline gets smaller in the window, they matter less than her heart’s desire to spend every minute she can with the man she loves.
In a split-second decision that’s no doubt foolish, she tells Wyatt to stop the plane.
“If you get off, then you’re not getting back on,” he says calmly. “Already waited too long, won’t be able to fly through the snow soon.”
“I understand. I want to get off.”
A few muttered curses later, the aircraft halts at the end of the runway with a jerk, jolting her ribs and prompting a hiss. It feels like the universe is questioning her decision. She ignores it. Faced with the choice of dying alone in some far-off safe zone or here with Theo, she chooses him every time.
There’s no dramatic music to underline the moment, only the loud churn of the engines stalling and the quick slap of her heart against her aching ribs. Her hands shake as she reaches forWyatt’s arm to steady herself when she climbs down. Quickly, she takes the address to Theo’s farm out of her pocket and hands it to the pilot. “If you find yourself needing somewhere safe, that might be a good place to start.”
He nods, helping her onto the ground right as Theo jogs up to meet them, yelling in bewildered shock at Wyatt. “What the hell are you doing?”
“She wants to stay, man. I can’t force her to go. But I can’t wait any longer, either. I’m sorry, I really am.”
Nora has made this decision for all three of them and it ends with the plane turning around, leaving her and Theo behind in a frantic attempt to outrun the storm that already has snowflakes cascading in a thin, fresh blanket.
“What the hell areyoudoing?” He kneels down to cup her face, letting her brace on him for balance, his tone so much softer.
“Can’t get rid of me this easily.” She forces a smile as she tosses his own words back at him. Her effort at lightness is short-lived when that smile turns into a shiver. That’s when he picks her up and carries her back to what might be her final resting place.
Putting so much on this man who feels like home to her when they are still so new to each other may be a selfish thing. She is asking him to either care for her for an undetermined amount of time, or watch her wither away. Perhaps it would have been a kindness to spare him what comes next, but for once, this feels like a good time to be selfish.
He lowers her onto the cot, carefully helping her out of her layers in a way that may as well be a cheese grater along her ribs. Her breathing is shallow and pained, every inhale a struggle as if she’s running uphill.
“Don’t be upset,” she begs. “I know I should have gone, but I couldn’t leave you. I want to spend however long I have left righthere with you. Whether that’s twenty-four hours or twenty-four years. I couldn’t risk that we’d never find each other again.”
“Stop talking like that.However long I have left.You’ve got those twenty-four years and then some. I’m not upset. I love you even more now than I did ten minutes ago.”
She is a ball of misery but the only person she trusts, the only one she cares for, is saying that he loves her, and she leans forward, cupping his neck where his pulse beats hard and tilting her head to capture his lips with her own. They move slowly this time, making up for that quick peck they shared when rushed for time. She’s convinced that she’s never tasted anything better than his kiss. And then her ribs scrape her flesh, and she squeaks, hissing against his mouth.
They maneuver her into a discombobulated position that somehow relieves the smallest amount of pressure. Half on her back, half on her side, with a pillow to curl around.
“You know, when I said the pain was a six? That was a lie.”
He nods. “I figured.”
“It’s more like a twenty-six.”
He winces, threading his hand into hers. “Let me help you? We have something to take the edge off.”
“No,” Nora snaps, dragging her hand back as if he burned her. “I told you I can’t.”
He backs off almost instantly. She expected he would push more, but she’s grateful that he isn’t because all her fight is fading anyway. He simply nods, telling her that he’s going to check the supplies before moving across the room.
“Your wilderness training didn’t offer any insight into the treatment for broken ribs, did it?” she asks.
“No, all I got from that was a crash course on dislocations and head injuries.” She watches him search through a few cabinets and open the fridge, spotting the little vial of red blood that Gwen left behind over his shoulder…right next to acornucopia of animal drugs. “But Oliver broke a rib in a fight at boarding school, and his biggest risk during recovery was pneumonia. He spiked a fever and they put him on antibiotics right away. We’re in luck because there’s enough amoxicillin in here to treat a whale. It might actually be for the whales.”
