In the Likely Event(28)

The sudden silence made me look around at the other passengers, but they were gone, all evacuated through the emergency exit across the aisle.

I was alone.

They all left me.

I forced out a scream, the sound garbled as the water rushed up my thighs and the floor lighting failed. There wasn’t enough air, enough time. I was going to die in here. The fuselage sank faster and faster, water rising around my chest, but the stupid belt was stuck.

Looking left, I saw the emergency exit open, but I couldn’t get there.

This isn’t right.

He wouldn’t leave me. He never left me. Not until I—

“Izzy!” Nate jumped through the doorway, splashing into the freezing water, then unhooked my belt with one flick of his hand, but he looked different. Thicker. Older. Harder. The name tape on his Kevlar read Green.

This was a dream.

With a gasp, I shot up in bed, my tank top soaked through with sweat and my heart pounding as I struggled for breath. My ribs squeezed like a vise, but I forced air in and out through my lungs. That was all it ever took to escape the nightmare. I just had to realize it was one.

Falling out of bed, I hit my knees and the carpet stung my bare skin.

This was real.

“My name. Is. Isabeau Astor,” I managed through the narrowing passage of my throat. “I was a passenger on flight 826.” There we go. That was a full sentence. “We hit the water. I made it out.” The words had been drilled into me through years of therapy, though they always took different forms, depending on the nightmare. “I swam to safety. I survived.” By the time I finished, my throat had opened enough that I could take a deep breath. Then two. “We survived.”

I glanced at the clock. It was four a.m.

Fresh air. I needed fresh air.

A beep alerted me that my door opened, and then it slammed shut, but the scant amount of moonlight coming in through the windows didn’t give me much visibility.

“Izzy?”

“In here.” My shoulders slumped in relief. There was only one person that voice could belong to.

“You screamed.” His shadow filled my doorway, and I could tell his weapon was drawn.

“It’s just me,” I assured him, wrapping my arms around my midsection.

He walked right by me, clearing my bathroom and then the area next to the window before flicking on the light on the nightstand behind me. “Fuck.”

That word was the only warning before there was a sound like him holstering his weapon. Then he lifted me into his arms, holding me close against his chest.

“I’m okay,” I promised, but that didn’t stop me from melting into his familiar embrace. He wasn’t decked out in that thick Kevlar vest anymore, not that I expected him to be at four in the morning. There was soft black cotton and a steady heartbeat against my cheek.

“Yeah, seems like it.” He walked us into the living room, then sat on the couch, holding me in his lap and clicking on the table lamp next to us. “Shit, you’re soaked.”

I should have moved, should have scooted to the other end of the couch, but instead, I tucked my legs up and curled into him for the simple reason that there was nowhere safer in this world.

“It’s just a nightmare.” I shivered as my skin chilled beneath the beads of sweat.

Nate reached over his shoulder and pulled the blanket from the back of the couch over me, then wrapped one arm around me. His other hand stroked up and down my arm in a soothing, repetitive motion. “Would a hot bath help?”

“No water.” I shook my head and barely kept myself from arching my face into his neck. It should have been illegal to smell that good, all fresh soap and spearmint.

“The plane,” he guessed, resting his chin on the top of my head.

“The plane.”

Minutes passed in silence as my heart rate slowed to match his. That was one of the things I loved about being around Nate. We didn’t have to fill every empty second with chatter.

“Do you ever get them?” I asked, knowing I should move off his lap, out of his arms, and yet unable to make myself.

“Not really anymore.” He continued the slow, steady strokes up and down my arm.

“What changed?”

“It became one of the lesser traumatizing things I’ve seen,” he said softly. “But if I do get them, they’re usually that I can’t get you out, or that you slip away in the current. Never gets past that, though. I’m perpetually battling to get you to shore.” His hand paused, and he squeezed my shoulder. “What about you? How often do they still happen to you?”

“Depends. Usually only when I’m in the middle of something really stressful, or something that’s out of my control.” Like right now. “Feels like I went through years of therapy for nothing,” I tried to joke.

“If they happen less than they used to, it’s worth it.”

I somehow doubted he’d acted on that sentiment in the last three years, given how opposed he’d been to it before.

Moments passed, and the impropriety of it all struck me straight in the chest. “Is this how you comfort every assignment you’re given?”

“Hardly,” he scoffed, shaking his head, and I knew that if I looked up, I’d see that slight smile curving his lips. The one that always made me ache to kiss him.