“Of course. We won’t tell a soul. We’ll see you in the morning, sweetie,” her father said.
“Okay. Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad. I can’t wait.” She ended the call and slumped into Ryan.
He wrapped an arm around her and held her against his chest.
“I can’t believe it. It’s like it wasn’t real until now. My parents are coming.” She tipped her head back and met his gaze. “Ryan, my parents are coming.”
He smiled down at her. “I heard.” He wanted to close the distance between them and kiss her. The urge was strong. Her lips were so close. She smelled so damn good.
Instead, he stroked her face and brushed a lock of hair off her forehead. Now wasn’t a good time to take that step. She was vulnerable. Raw. Excited. He hauled her against his chest again and took a deep breath. For now this would have to be enough. Today was not the day to proclaim his feelings for her. Tomorrow wouldn’t be either.
But then, when? She needed to go home with her parents for a while. It was only reasonable. Get reacquainted. Find herself.
He had to give her the space to grow and live. It would be unfair to add his attraction to the pile of shit she was going through. Besides, there was every chance she might never return. If that was the case, he needed to bury his feelings and move on with life.
* * *
The following morning, Emily stood outside the bunker, trying to breathe normally. Ryan’s hand on her back was exactly what she needed. He did it often. His touch soothed every time. It grounded her. It kept her from floating away. He was her gravity. Some day she would tell him how much she appreciated it. “You okay?”
“I don’t know.” She stood next to him, squinting in the bright sun, waiting for her parents to arrive. They would pull up any moment, and as much as she missed them and as badly as she wanted to hug them again, she was nervous. It was going to be the weirdest reunion of all time.
“It’s going to be okay, you know,” he promised. “Just like everything else. Look how far you’ve come. You’re healthy. Cured. Your memory is amazing. Your strength is almost a hundred percent. There are people all over the world in worse shape than you after suffering the forty-eight-hour flu,” he teased.
“Ha ha.” She tipped her face up toward him. “Thank you.” Her voice was soft. Wobbly. She owed him her sanity. He’d been a godsend for the past month. After seeing him several times a day at least in passing and then spending most evenings with him, she was going to miss him. But she needed to put her feelings for him aside and go home with her parents, at least for a while.
She had mixed emotions. Half of her wished he would make a move to claim more of her. It seemed obvious to her at least they were more than friends. However, they had never verbalized it or taken the next step. The other half of her was scared out of her mind about what might happen next in her life and whether or not their lives would continue down the same path.
They hadn’t spoken of the future, but she assumed he had the same doubts and concerns she had. It was good he hadn’t made any move to take their relationship to the next level. Too many variables. Too many unknowns. At least that’s what she told herself.
Everything was about to change. She had no idea what might happen when her parents arrived, but she had options. One of them was to leave with her parents and return to her childhood home, try to pick up the pieces and get to know her family again.
For her, she’d spoken to them at length just weeks ago. Time had frozen with her body. For them it had been a decade. She had so many questions about their lives and what they had done in the last ten years. She would have nothing to contribute.
The reality was she hadn’t been in constant contact with them for several years before she contracted AP12. She’d been serving her country. After attending West Point, she’d gone to medical school. And then she’d been sent to Colorado to do the most important work she would ever have the privilege of participating in.
She wouldn’t trade a minute. She’d made discoveries and helped progress science in a way few people could claim. Even if she had died or never returned to her chosen field again, she had made a difference she could be proud of. After all, it was largely her research that had helped Ryan eventually find a cure for AP12.
“What are you thanking me for?” Ryan asked, his hand sliding down to land on the small of her back.
“For your time. For helping me return to life. For calling my parents. For believing in me and giving me hope.” She lifted her gaze again, squinting in the sun. “Ryan, I’m not sure how I would have reassimilated for the last month without you.”
He shrugged. “You would have been fine. I’m not the only person on the team who could have stepped up to the plate. Anyone would have done it.”
“Yes. But you did it. You were the one, Ryan. And I hope like hell you didn’t do it out of some sense of obligation because it meant more than that to me. And I think it meant something to you too.”
“Of course it did. It meant the world.”
“Now what? I don’t know where to go or what to do with my life. I’m suspended.”
He shrugged again. “You need time. You can do anything. You don’t have to stay here. No one expects you to. You’re free to change the course of your life. Be anything you want to be. The military won’t hold it against you. You’ve served your time. Your service to your country surpasses what anyone else could ever contribute.”
She swallowed back emotion. “What if I choose to stay right here?”
He smiled and reached with his free hand to tuck a length of her hair behind her ear. “Then you stay. I’m sure we can find a spot for you on the team.”
She chewed on her lower lip. She wasn’t sure what she should do. It was too soon. Too fast. Too stressful. This bunker had been her home for a long time, even without the decade in suspension. She’d had an apartment in town, but she’d rarely gone home. And she hadn’t been to it in months after she’d gotten sick. Her parents had come and cleaned out her belongings once she’d been cryonically preserved.
No one had given her family hope. Intentionally. There had never been any guarantee she could or would be reanimated. If her parents had heard about the failed reanimations in Arizona, they would have undoubtedly given up any expectation that Emily could return.
She shifted her gaze to the floor. “I just don’t know yet, Ryan.”
“I get that,” he responded. “No one expects you to.”
The truth was, she felt pulled in several directions. On the one hand, she desperately wanted to reconnect fully with her family. It was as if she’d been given a second chance at life, and she didn’t intend to squander it or take it for granted. She hadn’t spent enough time with her parents or her brother in the last few years before her presumed death. She didn’t intend to waste a moment now.
On the other hand, she had started helping Michelle and some of the others with a few of the newer projects, and working in the lab made her heart beat faster. It had been her life, and a part of her still loved solving the mystery of diseases just as she had before she succumbed to AP12.
Sure, she was behind. She’d seen the doubt on Temple’s face more than once. But Emily believed she could get back up to speed and become an asset if she put her mind to it.
Michelle had become a trusted friend. As had Shelby and Mina. All three of them had been supportive and helpful with Emily’s reassimilation, each taking the time to catch her up on not just medicine but world events and the latest gadgets.
Technology was mind-boggling. In the last month, Emily had learned about e-readers, the advancement of Wi-Fi, the explosion of social media, and the incredible ability to search any topic with amazing speed and accuracy on the internet.
Ryan had introduced her to several new types of junk foods, and she’d had the pleasure of cooking for the entire team a few times. Cooking had been a side hobby she enjoyed in her previous life any time she had the opportunity, which hadn’t been often.
; She knew one thing for sure—she would never permit herself to get so sucked into one aspect of life at the expense of every other one of life’s experiences. She would ensure she got closer to her family and maintained a new relationship with them. She would cook and eat and experiment with foods.
And she would fall in love and make sure she didn’t spend her entire life sleeping alone. Science and medicine fueled her blood on an academic level, but neither of them kept her warm at night, nor did they provide companionship.
Could Ryan?
It seemed like they had started walking on eggshells with each other. There were too many variables to allow herself to get closer to him. And he knew it too. That was undoubtedly why he didn’t bring it up or pressure her. Often, when she looked into his eyes, she was certain she saw her feelings reflected back, but saying something out loud wasn’t in the cards yet.
There were no guarantees they would end up in the same state when the pieces fell into place. And Emily knew for certain the last thing she could endure right now would be a broken heart because she let herself fall for a man whom she could not have long-term.
The man currently stroking her back.
The man who slid his hand up to her neck and tipped her head to meet his gaze.
The man who smiled down at her.
She worried the feelings she had for him wouldn’t hold up in the real world. They were living in an intense environment. Close quarters. Seeing each other frequently. If she stepped out into the real world without him, would their bond weaken? Would she find other men attractive too? Maybe it was just a season of life she was ready for.
Ryan’s brow was furrowed as he stared at her. “I hear a car. I’m going to let you meet them on your own. It would be awkward for me to be standing here. I’ll be right inside the bunker.”
She nodded, choked up. She didn’t want him to leave her there alone. She wanted to lean on him, but she knew it wasn’t reasonable. It wasn’t even rational. Besides, she didn’t have a voice currently with which to protest. So she let him grip her neck and then let her go. She watched his back as he stepped inside and out of sight.
Everything was about to change. Now that her parents had been contacted, there would be a press release, letting the world know someone had been reanimated in a government bunker. Her name would not be revealed, but eventually word would spread and people would find out.
In addition to the press, a group of government officials would be contacting the families of the rest of the cryonically preserved members of the team soon, letting them know their loved ones would be revived in the coming months.
There was risk involved, but it was unavoidable. If the government didn’t reach out to the rest of the families, eventually people would start calling in and demanding answers. After several long discussions with high-ranking military commanders, it was decided that releasing information preemptively was the best plan. Waiting for the media to catch wind on their own would be a disaster.
The sound of an engine yanked her attention back to the driveway in front of her. And then she turned around to face the two people who loved her more than anyone in the world.
Chapter 8
By the following week, Ryan was experiencing a new level of stress he hadn’t faced in his thirty years. Emily had gone home with her parents to a small town in rural Iowa to get reacquainted. He couldn’t blame her. It was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do.
He didn’t try to stop her. In fact, he encouraged her to go. But that didn’t change the fact that she consumed the majority of his waking thoughts. Now, she was twelve hours away, and he was surviving in unchartered territory.
After spending half his life with his head buried in books, he was in limbo. Sure, there were seven other diseases his team was working on, but until recently his entire focus had been on AP12. He had dreamed about the body’s ability to absorb vitamin B-12, the causes of iron deficiencies, and the blood cells that should be produced in bone marrow.
Now, he dreamed about a certain dark-haired woman whose smile lit up his life. He missed her to the point that he couldn’t remember exactly what he used to do most evenings before she was reanimated.
He was glad he’d given her a smartphone. She had mastered the use of his weeks ago, but he wanted her to have her own so she could easily contact him. And she did. Every day. Short texts throughout the day and then long chats late at night.
He hated the fact that tonight’s phone call wouldn’t be as benign as every other night. He had information she was not going to like hearing.
He wished he could address what was really weighing on his mind—that he wanted to pursue a relationship with her. That to him, they were more than friends. That he hated being twelve hours away.
He had to remind himself every day that it wasn’t appropriate to put that on her plate. She’d needed to reconnect with her family, and he couldn’t leave his parents with their impending reanimation. A date hadn’t been set to revive the next person, but it would be soon, and it would be his father.
Now that the team had a better grasp on what to expect with each reanimation, they were preparing by hiring more staff and bringing temporary trailers to the site. There was only one reanimation chamber, and each preserved body needed to spend the first four weeks inside the chamber before being moved to a real bed and spending the next four weeks in an induced coma.
That meant only one person could be revived each month. At that rate, it would take two years to bring everyone back. After the successful revival of Emily, plans were now being put into action to build more reanimation chambers. It would take time, however.
Ryan couldn’t leave the bunker for long stretches. And Emily needed to be with her family and then go on to find herself. There was no guarantee when she made life-changing decisions they would include him or this bunker in Colorado. He had no choice but to work around this problem and hope someday in the future they could figure something out and reunite. It was a longshot. He knew it. It kept him from facing the future head-on.
And it wasn’t just her life changes. He had his own to face. Once they resuscitated his parents, his world would change drastically too. He would want to spend time with them. Get to know them again. Their health would be his number one priority. He didn’t have time for a woman right now.
With this depressing reminder and this evening’s new development that he didn’t want to have to tell her about, he flopped down on his bed and called her. It was late in Iowa, but that was when he usually spoke to her. By ten o’clock she retired to her childhood bedroom to speak to him in private.
She answered on the first ring in that sultry voice he was coming to recognize she only used with him. “Hey.”
“Hey, yourself. How was your day?”
“Exhausting as usual. Every new person I face deals with the same weird level of shock when they see me. ‘You haven’t changed a bit’ is my favorite line, though it’s getting a bit old.” Her soft laughter made his body tingle with the need to touch her.
He’d taken things slowly with her for a multitude of good reasons, but he had grown accustomed to at least having her near him where he would hold her hand or set his palm on her thigh or her neck or her back. And he really preferred to end his days sitting next to her in his suite or hers instead of whispering through the phone.
“I can’t even begin to imagine how stressful that is.”
“And everyone is older, while I am not. It’s weird.”
He sighed. “I hate to add to your stress, but I have bad news.” He’d put this off for two hours, but he had to tell her.
“What?” Her voice rose.
“The media is in a frenzy over you. They’ve been camped outside the compound for a few hours.”
“Not surprising. I listened to the press release. We all knew as soon as the world was clued in to the fact that someone was reanimated at the bunker and actually survived, it wouldn’t take long for the media to go berserk.”
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br /> “Yeah. And it’s only a matter of time before they figure out it’s you. They don’t realize you’re not here yet, but they will soon. You’ve reacquainted yourself with a lot of people. Even with the precautions you’ve taken, any one of them could leak who you are and where your parents live.” They had known this would be a problem. No matter how fervently she requested that her closest friends and family keep her existence under wraps for the time being, it would inevitably get out.
He could hear her sigh. “I don’t want anyone to dictate how I live. It will drive me crazy if the media hounds me for the rest of my life. I won’t be forced into seclusion.”
“Well, for now, you don’t have a choice.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, two government agents are going to pick you up at six in the morning and take you to a secure location. They want to brief you on what you can and can’t say to the media.”
“Seriously?” Her voice rose. “We’ve already had this discussion a dozen times. I’m super clear on what’s classified.”
“I know. I’m so sorry. They just left here about an hour ago. They at least permitted me to be the one to tell you. Besides the need to protect the classified aspects of your existence, they’re also worried about your safety.”
“My safety? Why?” She had met with several government officials a number of times both before contacting her parents and since. She was well-aware of the need to protect the ongoing security of Project DEEP. She would never in her lifetime reveal anything classified. She hadn’t before being preserved, and she wouldn’t now. Ryan didn’t doubt her at all, but this was out of his hands.
He sighed. “They don’t like the picket signs.”
She gasped. “The media is holding picket signs?”
“No. The media has a following already. Protesters.”
“Protesting what?”
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