by Lee,Molly E.
“Breathe,” Liz ordered, her hand pressing against my chest.
I am breathing.
I told my mouth to move, but it didn’t obey. My legs grew heavy underneath me and my world tilted on its axis. One second I was upright, the next I smacked on my side, the view of Connell’s unmoving body filling my vision until everything went painfully black.
My lids were heavy as I peeled them back, my eyes rolling around trying to find purchase. Finally, I focused on what I knew to be the ceiling in our decompression room in my lab, but I couldn’t remember how the hell I’d gotten here.
I shifted in the wicked uncomfortable bed, my head rushing with memories as I laid eyes on Connell, who slept upright in a chair next to me. I gasped, the relief at him peacefully sleeping so much it almost hurt.
Scratch that, it totally hurt. My entire body felt like it’d been torn apart at the joints by sharks and put back together again. But the sight of Connell, with a simple wrap of gauze around his left forearm, made every inch of pain worth it.
I sucked in a deep breath, shifting against the stiff sheets that sounded and felt like cardboard. Fire wrapped around my wrists and elbows like a tight bracelet, and I hissed. Fuck my life. I’d heard horror stories about decompression sickness from fellow divers, but this was horrific. Swallowing hard, I silently thanked my crew for getting us here so quickly. I had no clue how severe my case was, but we all knew the threat of fatality that came with surfacing too fast.
Damn, I hadn’t been thinking straight. I couldn’t see past Connell’s limp body, the blood in his mask, and the fact that he hadn’t had a proper breath in what had to be two minutes. There was nothing to ponder, no risks to assess. I had to save him.
My loud, scratching movements to claim a sitting position were enough to make Connell shift in the seat, and his eyes slowly opened. He didn’t rush to my bedside or gasp in relief. He simply stared at me, pinning me in place with those hazel eyes of his. I half expected him to shrug.
“How’s the arm?” I asked, my throat cracking like I’d eaten sandpaper for breakfast.
He flicked his fingers, glancing down at the gauze wrapped around it.
“Fine.”
I licked my lips, desperate for some water.
He slowly stood up, and I sighed, assuming he was coming to wrap his arms around me and kiss the pain away.
Not the case.
He walked to the other side of the room, grabbing a water bottle and handing it to me once he’d returned. I took it, slightly wary of the distance he kept between us. The water was mercifully cool on my lips and soothed my burning throat which I assumed I’d gotten from being in the decompression room for who knew how long.
“Was I out long?”
He shook his head. “Few hours.”
“So you came to pretty quickly after I lost it?” I took another gulp of water. The stuff was magical, swimming straight to my brain to give me the sharp boost I needed.
“Yeah,” he said, standing next to the bed but not close enough for me to touch him.
“Are you all right? Considering a steel door clocked you so hard you were knocked out?”
“There was an air pocket in the room. Built up the pressure, so when I released it . . .” He reached up and touched the red spot on his head that made his long hair stick together with dried blood. “I wasn’t expecting it to pop out like that.”
“Clearly.” I set my now empty water bottle on the end table next to the bed. “Why don’t you go ahead and scold me. That way we can move on.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked and he flexed his fingers together so quickly his knuckles cracked. “You were reckless. Again.”
“Someone I loved was in danger, again.” He flinched when the word I hadn’t meant to say slipped from my tongue. Damn, he kept telling me to take it slow and I kept revving the engine. “I mean . . . you . . . damn, Connell you weren’t breathing. And your mask was filling up from the tear.” I tried to backpedal miserably.
“I told you I can’t lose you, and yet you fly by the midpoint and surface as fast as you did? Do you know how lucky you are to have only minimal effects from that? I’ve known people who have died from less.”
Fear slid into my insides with a cold bite. “I’m sorry. Honestly, I couldn’t think straight. What would you have done if it were me, motionless in your arms and a hundred and forty feet deep?”
He sank onto the bed, his weight pulling me toward him. He took my face in his hands, the contact from his skin like a breath of fresh air after a really long dive.
I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead to his. “I told you from the start, this gig of mine has risks. You said you understood.”
“I do. I’ve just never cared before about anyone as deeply as I do you,” he said, tracing my lips with his.
My heart raced but stumbled when it registered his lack of the word love. I sucked in a sharp breath, mentally checking myself. Just because I’d fallen for the man didn’t mean he had fallen for me, and he’d been incredibly closed off long before I’d met him. It could be years before he opened up enough to love me.
And knowing that, I still didn’t care. He was worth it. I could wait forever. Now, if I could just stop pissing him off, we’d be right as rain.
“Am I forgiven?” I finally asked.
“I’m still debating your punishment.” He kissed me lightly before pulling back, taking my hand in his.
“I kind of like the sound of that.”
He shook his head. “You would.”
I squeezed his hand. “Don’t be mad, but you know I’d do it again, right?”
He sighed. “Yeah, I know.”
“And with the risks . . . any number of things could put us in that situation again.”
He nodded.
“So you’re just going to keep getting mad over it, punishing me, and then forgiving me?”
“Probably.” He cracked the smallest smile. “I just wish you would think about your own life first, and others second. If you don’t take care of yourself down there, you’re no good to anyone.”
He had a point, but then again it wasn’t the easiest thing to do when I genuinely cared for the people diving with me. Protecting them was instinct. Especially Connell, who had stolen my heart in a matter of weeks.
“Maybe we shouldn’t dive together anymore,” I said. I didn’t like the idea, but it would keep our heads focused, our minds clear.
He took his hand away and stood up. “You don’t want me there?”
I tilted my head. “No. I do, I’m just saying it’d be easier if we didn’t have to see any more life-threatening scenarios either one of us are involved in. Wouldn’t you think?”
He opened his mouth and closed it a few times. “You don’t think you could just manage to stay out of danger?”
“Can you?”
He scoffed.
“Exactly. Our jobs don’t offer those kind of days. Hell, when I go back out tomorrow something could happen to me. It’s the same odds every day in the ocean. You know that. Just as I know every time you’re down there with your open flames and hydrogen bubbles just waiting to connect and blow you to pieces . . .” I lost my train of thought, the ice-cold dread sinking into my bones with the image my no-filter mouth had just produced.
Connell sat back down, retaking my hand. “So basically we’re fucked either way.” He managed to laugh, and I joined him.
“Looks like it,” I said, my chest tightening with the realization that it would never stop. The worrying over him—not now that he owned a place in my heart. Damn, if we stayed together, waiting for him to finish a job would be exhausting. He’d go through the same thing while waiting for me, and it would be this back and forth tangle of worry and fear until who knows what would happen.
And what if he took a job a thousand miles from my next one? How would we make that work?
He reached up and smoothed the wrinkles that had furrowed between my eyebrows.
“Hey,” he
said, drawing me back to him. “We’re not really fucked. You know that, right?”
My stomach sank, still reeling from the barrage of questions that had hit me like a slap in the face. Each one was way too early to think about, and way too soon to ask him about as well. He had only recently connected to me. I would not send him running in the opposite direction with an onslaught of crazy relationship-defining questions.
So I tucked the realistic concerns into a box deep inside my mind and promised to reopen it when the time was right. Because we still had at least three weeks together and had the manner of my site to figure out first. Afterward . . . we’d worry about the real threat to us—which wasn’t the risks that came naturally with our careers but the freaking logistics of them, the where, when, and how. Those would be the things to make or break us.
“I know,” I finally said, but I really didn’t. How could we manage it, when all the odds of survival were against us?
Connell
DESPITE SADIE’S SUGGESTION that we stop diving together, I technically still had a job to do. Regardless if she knew about it—or if Slade knew I was working on legally breaking that contract without jeopardizing her or my careers in the process—I needed to continue to work on her site for as long as possible. It would help me save it in the end.
And not surprisingly, she had wanted to get right back in the water, even though only yesterday she’d had to stay in the decompression room all day.
She swam in front of me, her flashlight illuminating another interior room I’d opened up for her today. Her body moved so gracefully through the water, but her gaze was sharp as a predator’s. She needed a big score to sway Henrick in her favor, but we’d been striking empty. I hated even thinking it, but if that damn plant of hers didn’t produce some real results, even I may not be able to salvage this place.
I knew just as well as she did the damning effect it’d have on the island’s food source but it would be a slow decline, and people didn’t care about ten years into the future, they cared about instant results.
“Find any gold yet?” I asked, trying to break the tension I saw in her shoulders.
“There has to be some around here somewhere,” she said, not bothering to turn around and look at me, instead maintaining her ultimate focus. It was good—the sharper we stayed the fewer dangers we faced, and fuck me if I didn’t want to see her in danger again. Not that I’d been awake for the worst part of the incident, thank God, but seeing her wince and thrash as we got her in the decompression room was enough for me.
“Ethan would’ve found an entire horde already, and some ancient map leading to more too,” I said, taking a jab at that show she loved.
“Who is Ethan?” She turned to look at me then.
“From Unearthed? How do you not know the name of the guy you drool over every Friday night?”
She laughed, her smile filling up her mask and penetrating straight through my core. That is what I wanted more of, not another instance of pain.
“It’s Easton,” she said, shaking her head. “And I don’t drool over him.”
I shrugged.
“Are you jealous of a character on TV?”
“He’s a real dude out there somewhere.”
She swam slowly to me, stopping her momentum by placing her hands on my shoulders. “Seriously? After what we did last night?”
The image of her legs wrapped around me as I made love to her against the wall in her cabin flashed behind my eyes. I could almost feel her there again, and suddenly I wanted to get out of the water as fast as possible.
“No one could touch or top that,” she continued.
“I don’t know,” I said, grabbing a handful of her ass. “I might be able to if you let me.”
Her eyes hooded. “How long have we been down here?”
“Long enough for us to burn through four tanks from the halfway point.”
“Probably wouldn’t hurt to take the new samples topside.” She grinned and motioned her head toward the exit.
“Agreed.” I followed behind her as she used her retrieval line to guide us out. Every day we went deeper into the ship, and every day I learned more about the ecosystem thriving within it. Mom had always loved this stuff and tried her hardest to get me hooked on it, but I never had the passion she had for preservation. I wanted to fix or destroy, whichever was necessary.
Once we cleared the interior of the ship, there was a moment of blindness, where everything was white from the adjustment from dark to light. I blinked rapidly to reorient myself. After a few moments, the cool blue water, the beautiful greens of the seaweed swaying back and forth, the fiery colors of the reef just off the site’s perimeter, all popped into focus, as did the huge dark shadow covering the sandy-white ocean floor.
I instantly glanced upward, Sadie’s movements mirroring my own.
“Shit,” she said, her eyes trained on the small boat pulled up against her larger one above. “Pirates.”
“You have trouble with them frequently?” I asked, wondering how the hell this place could be such a magnet for all manner of predators.
“Once.”
“How’d you get out of it.”
“Liz out maneuvered them, got us back to shore. They didn’t even follow us halfway.”
Acid boiled in my gut. I hated bullies, and pirates were nothing more than a bunch of bullies who thought the ocean had no set of laws or rules. It did, and they were breaking the fucking code.
“We have to surface,” she said, already swimming toward the midpoint.
I followed behind her, wishing I had more on me than my diving knife. We stopped at the halfway point, taking the time necessary to formulate a plan.
“Maybe they think we have cash on board. I’ll just explain that we don’t.”
I tilted my head at her. “That’s cute. I’m sure they’ll apologize for the inconvenience too.”
“What would you have me do?”
“Stay down here.”
“You know I can’t do that.” She looked at her watch.
“I know.”
“Liz could already be hurt—“
“Stop,” I cut her off. “Calm your little heroine complex down, Sadie. You have no clue what is really going on up there. Don’t go rushing off to save anyone just yet.”
She pursed her lips, fixing me with a glare. It would’ve been sexy as hell if
I wasn’t trying to calculate how to take on how many pirates were up there, alone, and Sadie not get in the middle of it in the process.
“Time’s up,” she said and tapped the face of her watch. “Let’s roll.”
I grabbed her ankle as she shot off, stopping her speed. “I surface first. I board first.”
“Yes, sir.”
My heart raced at her tone. Shit, man, even now? I didn’t know if there would ever be a time she didn’t turn me the fuck on. “Remember to call me that later tonight.”
“Sure, so long as you get me out of whatever trouble I’m already in.”
“Seems like it either follows you around or you go looking for it.”
“At least I’m not boring,” she said as we ascended.
“Definitely never would associate that word with you.” I broke the surface of the water, the sun beaming down in bright rays. I quickly pulled off my mask, grabbing hold of the ladder and surveying the small speedboat next to the ship. Seemed a little fancy for pirates.
Shit. Drug dealers?
Sadie pressed against me from behind, silently urging me to climb faster.
“About time,” an unfamiliar male voice snapped as we made it on deck.
Liz, Nemo, Todd, Adam, and Ryan were all sitting in a line on the cushioned bench next to the storage compartment where they kept their gear. Not one of them looked like this was a friendly visit from a fellow diving enthusiast.
Four men stood scattered about the boat, the one who’d spoken the closest to Sadie’s crew. All wore shorts, black sandals, and three without shirts and one wit
h an unbuttoned white T-shirt on. He motioned his hand for us to hurry up, and that’s when I saw the Glock he had kept concealed until this moment.
The boil in my gut flared to an inferno, and it took all of my willpower not to rush the son of a bitch.
“Help you?” I said, my voice even despite the rage I felt. I helped Sadie out of her gear, who looked way too fucking calm as she eyed the gun.
“Doubt it.” He looked straight past me to Sadie. “She’s the one we need, yes? The bosslady?”
I stepped in front of her, but she pushed me to the side. “That’s right. Did you bother asking permission to board my ship or do you break code like that without thinking?”
I clenched my eyes shut. Fuck this woman’s mouth. If I didn’t love her like I did, I’d throw her ass overboard and negotiate whatever deal they wanted myself.
The man raised his eyebrows, his dark skin contrasting against the white of his T-shirt. “I was warned about you,” he said, a smile shaping his accented words. He was definitely a local, but what the hell he wanted I didn’t know, and the longer he took to get to the point the harder time I had holding back.
“From who?” Sadie asked, and had the audacity to put her hands on her hips. Maybe she hadn’t seen the gun in his hand or the looks of sheer terror on the faces of her crew, or maybe . . . maybe she was just insane.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said, shaking his head. “We need to talk some business, you and me.”
“I’m not buying,” she said.
“No, no, no.” He shook the gun in his hand. “We are.”
I slowly moved my hands from their crossed position over my chest, to where my knife still rested on my hip. It would do little good against a gun or the three other men who had drawn their positions in closer once we’d made it on board, but I’d do anything to keep Sadie safe—even when she seemed hell-bent on doing everything to get in the way of that.
She huffed. “You want to buy some old diving equipment? That’s about all I have to offer.”
“Space. We want to rent a space on your boat.”
She scrunched her forehead.
“A lower-level storage compartment,” he continued, walking forward and stopping a few inches from her face.