Chapter Fifteen #2
If he keeps filming, we keep the viewers. We keep the hype. If he helps her, the world goes blind, and the campaign fails.
There’s no decision.
Screw the donations. Save the mama.
“Put the camera down, Cole!” I scream at the monitors, my voice useless against the thirty feet of Pacific between us.
And yet, somehow—as if the current has dragged my desperation down to him—he hears me.
The shot lurches, then dips.
He lets go.
The feed spirals, a nauseous blur of bubbles and splintered light. The screen flashes with fragments:
Cole planting his boots on the machine.
Sienna yanking the harness taut.
Their bodies battling the water’s relentless pull.
The signal stutters, cracks as the image erupts into static.
Then—
Black.
“Feed’s gone!” Blaze shouts.
Panic should be ripping through me, but right now, I’m all instinct and execution. My phone slaps into my palm, fingers typing wildly like I’m cheating time itself. The link appears, and I shove the device at Blaze, pressing Go Live.
“We’re live again. Start talking!”
Blaze studies the rigid, unmoving crane cable. His eyes snap to the audience count: twenty-seven.
Shit.
My stomach plummets. A live rescue with twenty-seven viewers. I messed up. I chose the mission over the metrics, sabotaging my promotion.
Blaze pushes whatever goofy, golden-retriever cocaine tornado that usually lives inside him aside. He locks onto his viewers, and his tone shifts.
“Aight, so, bad news. We lost the underwater cam. We’re flying blind, but we’re still here, bros.
Real talk? I don’t have kids. That’s just…
that’s a fact about me right now. But that mama?
She’s down there and he’s up here and she can’t get to him.
That’s the only thing in her head. Getting to him.
And she can’t. I think that’s probably—yeah. That’s the worst thing there is.”
I paste the new link everywhere.
Chat.
Newsletter.
Pinned comment.
Main channel community tab.
If there is a digital surface available, I am slapping this link on it.
The chat starts repopulating:
FOUND YOU
we’re here for you
donating again
Blaze I’m LITERALLY SOBBING
SAVE THE MAMA
Blaze swallows hard, his eyes all glassy but fixed on the lens. “I don’t know if we can pull this off. I wish I could promise you a win, but… I got no magic words, fam.”
The viewer count doesn’t just climb; it erupts.
1,000.
20,000.
95,000.
The donation ticker spikes, numbers flashing upward in blinding, glorious jumps—hundreds of thousands of dollars in real time. My breath catches.
They showed up.
They came. Not for the clickbait. Not for the algorithm. Not for the newsletter strategies I obsessed over.
They came because we gave them something real.
“Dr. O,” Blaze says, “how can we tell if that hook is locked in? I need answers, man!”
“Sienna will deploy a surface marker buoy,” Orson says, his gaze glued to the waves. “Specifically, a bright red inflatable tube. Which, when it surfaces, will confirm the hook’s placement and authorize the lift.”
Blaze whips the phone toward the water. “You heard the man. Red tube. Eyes peeled for red. If you spot it before I do, flood the chat. GO!”
The chat responds:
RED WATCH
I see nothing yet
COME ON BLAZE NATION
WE GOT THIS
I should be glued to the comment stream—counting viewers, tracking donations, analyzing every spike and dip. My career depends on it, but my thoughts are stuck on Cole.
He dropped that camera like it was nothing.
When the moment came, the real one, the one that mattered more than him winning, he didn’t hesitate. He winged it. And it was the right call.
I trusted him more than my own plan. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?
“LOOK!” Blaze yells, jabbing toward the waves.
A burst of neon red punches through the surface. A tiny, hopeful beacon.
“LIFT!” Orson shouts into the radio. “Buoy confirmed! Crane up, NOW!”
Seawater pours off the metal in heavy sheets, crashing back into the swells. The cable locks, vibrating with a tension so thick it raises the hair on my arms.
The crane groans, arm bowing as it drags the weight upward. The harness bites into the rusted casing. The operator steadies it, knuckles white, the whole rig protesting as if it might give. Finally, the trapped animal clears the rail.
“Move!” a woman shouts.
The crew explodes into action—a whirlwind of saws and muscle. Metal screeches and sparks fly as a cutter tears into the warped drum. A large man jams a bar into the gap, prying with all his weight. Another braces the side, boots skidding on the slick mix of seawater and oil.
Orson booms, his voice a volume I didn’t know he had. “Clear your hands! Watch the—”
The drum gives with a SCREECH. The metal splits, and the sea lion mother’s lifeless body spills onto the deck.
She lands heavy and stays motionless, her fur dulled with grime.
“Quiet!” Orson shouts, and the chaos stops like somebody hit pause. “Only trained personnel near the animal. Everyone else, back away.”
He’s kneeling beside her before the words finish, already working. “Airway first. Respiration. Sea lions can recover from extended submersion, but we have to act fast.”
With a nod to his team, they heave her onto her side, angling her snout to open the airway. Orson’s fingers find her pulse point beneath the flipper. Ear to her chest. Waiting.
Blaze stands motionless. The crew halts. On my screen, the comments go eerily silent, thousands of people across the globe suspended in the same breathless moment.
We need a miracle.
Orson brushes the corner of her eye, then flashes a light into the pupil.
“She blinked,” I whisper, unsure if it really happened.
Then—
A broken, gurgling inhale. Life fighting its way back.
“She’s ALIVE!” Orson exclaims. “We need to stabilize her core temperature, administer oxygen, and gauge her neurological baseline. Let’s start monitoring vitals for secondary complications, now!”
The team moves as one. A blanket settles over her. The oxygen mask seals with a sharp click. Gloved hands brace her head, immobilizing it with gentle precision.
Her tail twitches, a weak but unmistakable slap against the wet deck.
Once.
The team sees it, and for the first time, their shoulders drop with relief.
Blaze makes a sound that isn’t quite a word, a choked, sob-laugh that vibrates through the phone.
And the chat roars to life all at once:
SHE’S ALIVE
I’m bawling
OH MY GOD HE SAVED HER
Donated again
BEHOLD! THE POWER OF DR. O AND HIS MIGHTY SCEPTER!
And the donation ticker—
Holy freaking shit!
It’s unleashed.
I know the rhythm of a surge, the arc of success. I’ve never seen numbers move like this, not merely rising, but snowballing. The counter is lagging, gasping to keep up with the wave of people throwing money at a miracle they dared to hope for.
My attention shifts from the screen to the deck, where the real moment is happening. Blaze’s camera holds on Dr. Echols, still kneeling beside the sea lion mother.
“You’re doing great,” Orson murmurs to the animal, fingers adjusting her mask. “That’s it. Just like that. Breathe, girl. You’re safe.”
I’m buzzing on adrenaline and relief. I only realize I’m smiling so big when my cheeks start aching.
God, I wish Cole were here.
To see this. To witness the proof of what he set in motion. What we did.
Movement catches my eye.
The dinghy bobs alongside the ship’s hull. Sienna grips the railing and swings herself onboard as though gravity is optional. And right on her heels—
Cole.
My chest fills like a sail.
He ascends from the dinghy, methodical, one rung at a time. His broad shoulders tighten with every pull. Water beads along his jaw, trails down his neck. He grips the rail and heaves himself over.
His gaze sweeps the deck in a quick pass, then stills. On me. Only me.
I don’t hesitate.
I run.
Dodging the crew, leaping over ropes and gear, straight to him.
I launch myself into his arms. I don’t care that he’s soaked in freezing Pacific brine, that my blouse is ruined, that the world is spinning too fast. My leg hooks around his thigh, my face buries into his neck, and his massive, wet arms lock around me.
“You did it,” I choke out against his skin. “Cole, look!”
I point to the mother sea lion, where Sienna crouches beside Orson. Her hand rests on the gray, heaving flank of the life they just saved.
Cole exhales a breath he’s been holding since he went under. “I feared we were too late.”
Then the haze of the moment lifts, and reality slams into me: I’m wrapped around my co-worker like a koala, with a global audience watching.
“Oh. Shit.” I scramble back, fingers raking through my mess of hair, my cheeks flaming. “Professionalism. Right. Adrenaline is wild.”
Cole doesn’t move. He stands there, dripping, watching me with a half-guarded, half-gutted expression.
“I dropped the camera,” he says, his voice rough from the dive. “On purpose, Ivy. I killed the feed.”
“Good. You trusted your gut and used your hands for what mattered. That’s what I count on you for.”
He stares at me like I punched him in the nose. “And the livestream?”
“Built a new one from scratch,” I shrug. “Spammed the link until the algorithm got FOMO.”
The tension in his shoulders eases. “When I let go, I knew you’d find a way to fix it.”
“At this point, it’s literally my job description,” I say with a smile.
We’re locked in place, the space between us crowded with everything we’re not saying. He took the risk because he knew I’d have his back. He trusted my strategy as much as I trusted his impulse. We are finally in sync… a team.
EXCEPT—
We’re still rivals.
One job. One winner.
“Look,” I say, the words feeling rushed. “You’ve earned the promotion. Jumping into that water like that? Risking your life? That’s not my skill set. I’m a spreadsheets-and-structure kinda girl.”