Chapter Fourteen #2
“Go where?” She was surprised by Norah’s lack of urgency, traces of a faint smile still lingering on her perfect face as a beam of sun streaked down, framing her cheeks.
“I was headed to the hospital. They have some medical records for me for some of the new cases I wanted to review. I think we could be doing a better job of symptom tracking.”
Norah shook her head, her eyes focusing. “Yes. Absolutely. That’s a great idea. I’ll go with you.”
Chase had hoped she’d say that. She knew her head needed to be in the game, but it was hard not to be distracted by Norah’s hair blowing wildly in the wind as they started down the bumpy dirt road that would take them to the highway.
They drove in silence, Chase trying desperately to keep her heart from soaring too high, from letting hope overtake her.
She glanced over at Norah, who had one hand up through the open rooftop, letting the breeze drift between her fingers.
She was still smiling as she reached over with her other hand and turned on the radio.
Whitney Houston was crackling through the old speakers, and Norah’s smile grew.
There was a lightness about her Chase hadn’t seen since before Davey died, and Chase just watched her out of her periphery as Norah wiggled in her seat, singing along, treating the moment like glass so fragile that if she moved wrong it might shatter.
She reached over and grazed the bare skin of Norah’s leg and laughed.
As they pulled into the hospital parking lot, Chase reflected on how good she’d always been at casual sex.
There was “before Norah,” when Chase could fuck anyone and feel nothing.
And there was “after Norah,” where nothing meant anything.
But “during Norah” meant everything. And if there was any question in her mind whether Chase could keep her heart in check, she now knew without a doubt she was hopelessly, forever Norah’s.
In spite of the late hour, the camp lights in the central command tent were still blazing.
Norah and Chase had managed to accomplish their goal of tracking down the medical records they were looking for, but Norah knew no one paying any attention would fail to notice they’d taken far longer than expected.
“John’s burning the midnight oil again, I guess,” Chase said. But when they entered the tent, and John’s eyes locked on them, Norah immediately felt like a teenager whose dad had been waiting up for her after a date.
“Hit a lot of traffic on the way to the hospital?” John asked, his wrinkled brow furrowing to his nose. Norah hadn’t known John long, but she picked up on the passive-aggressive nature of the remark—the entire county was in lockdown. There was no traffic. She and Chase had been busted.
“Oh, you know, some,” Chase said, stammering. Her face flushed immediately, and Norah knew there was no point in trying to play this off.
“Look, John—”
John held up a meaty, callused hand complete with sunspots and fingernails that had been chewed nearly to the quick.
“I don’t want to hear it. And honestly, I don’t care. I don’t care what kind of history there is between you two, or what’s going on now. What I care about is keeping my team, and really the rest of the planet, safe. And that’s what you two need to care about too.”
“But—” Chase had regressed to an adolescent version of herself, being scolded for skipping class to make out with a girl.
“You’re both really good at your jobs. We need you. Your focus needs to be here. I’m not going to ask where those lost couple of hours went today. I’m just going to trust that from here on out, you’ll keep better track of time.”
Norah was used to being ridden hard in the military.
She was able to stand stone-faced during bootcamp while her captain breathed insults down her neck one after another.
But she never took them personally. This felt personal.
This was embarrassing. She had let her feelings for Chase distract her from the task at hand, and that was not only unacceptable; it was humiliating.
She was an adult, a professional. She was a medical doctor and a goddamn captain in the US Army, highly trained and educated.
She could knock the top off a Coke bottle from fifty yards away with a nine-millimeter.
She could diagnose rare, exotic diseases seen only in textbooks and figure out how to treat them.
She could lead a team of experts into the swamp to try to extinguish a global pandemic threatening the world.
But she couldn’t keep her pants on for five minutes around Chase.
And worst of all, John had figured out all of it.
“Yes, sir” was all Norah could say. She kept her head high, but when she looked at Chase, she fixed her gaze hard on the toes of her boots, her cheeks still a brilliant shade of fuchsia.
“Good. Now, get some sleep. Both of you.” John stood from his post and walked briskly toward them, stopping just as he passed Chase.
Much to both of their surprise, he placed his hand firmly on Chase’s shoulder and smiled subtly.
“And hey, I’m only going to say this once, but at the risk of undermining everything I just said, it’s crazy out there.
Don’t waste another second dwelling on things that don’t matter, you know, like the past. Either of you. ”
They stood shoulder to shoulder in silence after he was gone. Chase’s lips were pursed tightly, and she shook her head, an amused grin emerging.
“Did we just get called out?”
Norah laughed, her embarrassment easing a little. “I think we did.”
“God, he’s such a dad. He’s been like that to me since we started together,” Chase said. But Norah was still dwelling on the very last thing he said.
She wanted to be careful how she responded next. She didn’t want to stop whatever she and Chase had started, which, she guessed, was some sort of pseudo-casual sex to distract from the imminent end of the world. But she also refused to let it ever distract from her important work again.
“I’m not going to play games anymore and pretend I don’t want what we just did to happen again. I think it’s pretty obvious that I do. But we can’t let it get in the way of what we’re doing here. Ever again. That was just about the most unprofessional thing we could have done and—”
“Norah.” Chase reached out and took her hand, pulling it to her mouth and kissing the back of her wrist. “I know. We won’t. I promise.”
“Good. We should get some sleep. See you in the morning, Chase.”
But Norah didn’t go to sleep. She couldn’t.
Not when all she could think about was Chase’s body pressed against hers and her hands expertly exploring every inch of her.
It was like they’d had sex a thousand times, because they had.
Chase knew her body in a way she could only know after so many years.
But there was also a newness to it all, something fresh and exciting and unknown.
It was the most terrifying concoction of safety and familiarity and danger imaginable.
Norah had to talk to someone. She thought about what she would have done if she were home.
Who would she talk to? Mrs. Brooks? And then it occurred to her—Norah had never had a reason for “girl talk.” Because there had been nothing to talk about. Until Chase, that was.