Depths of Salvation (Love on the Edge) (20 page)

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.