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 for Wyatt’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 are you doing?” 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 right here 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 a cornucopia 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.”
“Animal meds are the same as human meds?”
“Not really, but it’s close enough.”
She shrugs, regretting the action. “Oh, okay then. I’m sure they won’t mind.”
Nora’s not worried about antibiotics. She’ll take whatever he wants to give her without question, so long as it’s not an opioid or narcotic. She accepts the pills he places into her palm and swallows them without any resistance.
He moves with a kind of mechanical wariness after that, laying out the rest of the supplies, opening boxes, reading labels by the dull light, and tracing the veterinary handwriting with a thumb as if it could tell him which bottles are safe for future use.
His brows furrow in concentration as he tries to make this feel ordinary, no different than making coffee, but the way he lingers over each bottle gives him away.
Then there’s a flicker of faint hesitation that makes her wonder if he’s merely distracting himself from other things.
“Listen to me, if you can’t take deep breaths, your risk of infection skyrockets. I’m not a doctor, obviously, but Oliver was on a cocktail of pain pills all so he could breathe as normally as possible.”
Ah, there it is. Agreeing with his logic doesn’t mean she’s willing or able to relent. “I can’t.”
“Hear me out—”
“I said I can’t.” Nora bites her lip, her inhales growing shallower by the second. “You don’t understand. I’ve been clean for so long now, so fucking long. I can’t be that person again, and it would be so easy, Theo. It’s who I am below the surface. It’s just waiting.”
“It isn’t who you are. It’s who someone forced you to be. You don’t have to suffer.”
Maybe I deserve to suffer, is what she only thinks instead of speaking aloud.
Her anxious worries land between them, and suddenly the room is full of the old ghosts she thought she’d fenced in. He doesn’t flinch away from them. Instead, he leans forward as if to catch her before she falls.
“This isn’t about getting high,” he continues. “It’s about staying alive. It’s not the same thing, and you won’t be alone. I’ll be with you the whole time. Just like you were with me.”
She only shakes her head, hating herself and her ex-husband, whom she would once again like to drag up from his grave to punish for rewiring her brain so much that she can’t give her body the best chance at survival.
She pictures her past as a series of traps, each one having snagged a hook deep into her skin already.
She isn’t willing to fall victim again. Her fingers clamp around the thin edge of the cot, her knuckles whitening as she tries to keep herself steady.
“I’m not trying to make you do something you don’t want to do,” he nearly whispers. “I swear I’m not. It’s just really hard to watch you suffer when I know we’ve got medication that can—”
“Then don’t watch,” she cuts in. All she wants is to be with him, yet here she is pushing him away.
“Hey, hey. I’m sorry. I won’t ask again.”
Her face cracks and breaks on a hard exhale.
How does she explain how awful this choice is?
How does she make him understand that the only thing as terrifying as losing him is succumbing to the addiction she thought she shook?
“The last time I relapsed, it was the day I found out I lost my daughter. It wasn’t even right away, either.
I resisted for a couple days, but it got me in the end.
It always got me. The only reason I’m still sober now is because Gwen helped me get clean. ”
The principle of the matter is as important as the practical. She has struggled so damn hard to resist all these years. Giving in now will make it all for nothing.
“If you’re worried about not being able to quit. Well, there’s good news about that. We’re in the middle of nowhere. There are no refills up here.”
He’s right, of course. She couldn’t maintain an addiction here even if she tried.
Her ribs flare, and she shivers, shaking her head.
Too damn stubborn to allow herself any relief.
“Let me try to wait until tomorrow. It might ease on its own. We don’t know how bad it is.
I stopped coughing up blood already, that has to be a good sign. ”
“Alright,” he agrees, though she can see how it pains him to watch her writhe without any way to help.
“Just stay with me?”
“Always.”
Theo leans back in the chair, holding her hand that hangs over the edge of the cot while she tries and fails to rest. The penguin appears from somewhere else in the building, waddling over hesitantly as if he can tell that everyone is on edge.
Theo pats his lap, and he jumps right up, letting him stroke dense, oil-slicked fur.