17. Garrett
Garrett
There was actually one thing I needed to say.
I had made a really dumb mistake during the conference.
I should have introduced him properly. Instead, I had stood in front of a room full of people, forgotten every basic courtesy I had ever learned, and left him to introduce himself because I had been too busy staring at him in that pale green sweater.
Honestly, a few days ago, I might not have cared.
Hell, I might even have thought it served him right.
Dr. Nate Braddock, with his fancy education, his polished accent, and enough letters after his name to fill half a page, could survive one room not being formally reminded of his importance.
Except I no longer believed that was what mattered to him.
The more time I spent around Nate, the more I had started questioning things I once took for granted. That was not an easy thought to swallow, but I was man enough to admit when I might have been wrong. I had made assumptions about Nate. Some of them had already fallen apart.
At the very least, I owed him an apology for the conference. Nate continued staring outward.
“I’m sorry,” I started. “I shouldn’t have done that.” I drew in a breath. I needed to choose my words carefully. I didn’t want to make any more mistakes. “I should—”
He made a sharp, annoyed sound. The expression on his face made the rest of my apology get stuck in my throat.
For the past several days, something in Nate had been softening toward me. Even when he teased, there had been warmth underneath it. He had smiled more. Blushed more.
That softness was gone now. His mouth had tightened.
“I cannot believe you,” he said. Hurt and fury burned together in his eyes, so sudden and intense that I had no idea what I had said to cause it.
I frowned.
“I expected better from you.” His voice grew sharper with every word. “I was there. I watched you enjoy it. So talking about it like this now is frankly insulting.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I genuinely thought you were different.” He gave a short laugh with no humor in it. “I have no idea why. Apparently, I was a fool.”
“Wait—”
“It is the same thing every single time with men like you. Is it truly so difficult to show another person a little respect?”
I could only stare back, dumbstruck. Something had happened here that I did not understand. I had touched a nerve without even knowing it was there, and whatever Nate thought I was apologizing for had dragged him straight into an argument we had apparently been having long before I opened my mouth.
Nate was only becoming angrier. “And another thing.” He raised a finger and pointed it at me. “Being a large man does not entitle you to behave this way. Men like you need to grow up eventually. You are in your thirties. You are a grown-ass man, Landry.”
The last name felt like someone had struck me.
The submersible moved and began to descend. Nate jabbed at one of the controls and pushed a button. “Men like you cannot continue treating people like this just because your ego has been bruised. It is chauvinistic, it is arrogant, and it is exhausting.”
My frown deepened. Who was he talking about? Who the fuck had hurt him so badly? I wanted to get my hands on those pigs.
“I am not—”
Nate’s eyes shone with unshed tears. “If you insist on regretting it, then by all means, go ahead.” His eyes flashed. “But I am not sorry. I refuse to be treated as though I did something wrong or did not know what I was doing.”
I shut my mouth.
Nate turned back to the communication panel. He spoke into the comms and completed one final check. He confirmed our position, systems, and readiness while I watched us get lowered inch by inch.
The water rose toward us through the clear floor. I clutched the underside of my seat. I wanted to ask whether the movement was normal, whether the crane would release us now, whether there was anything I was supposed to do.
Did he think I was talking about last night?
Fuck, no. I regretted nothing. Clearly, somehow I had triggered an old wound in him.
The words had exploded out of him until he seemed to have run out of them, and Nate was acting as if I had finally confirmed the worst thing he had expected all along.
What shocked me was that I was not angry.
If any other man had spoken to me this way, if anyone else had possessed the nerve to sit inches from me and throw accusation after accusation in my face, I would already have felt the familiar heat rising through my body.
I would have taken the challenge for what it was, met aggression with aggression, and let the whole thing turn physical before either of us had time to think better of it.
That was who I had always been. I waited for the anger now. I even searched for it, almost expecting it to gather in my chest, waiting for the moment my temper would ignite and take the decision out of my hands.
Nothing came.
The more I looked inward, the more stunned I became by what I found there instead.
Pain.
Pain so sharp and immediate that it seemed to hollow me out from the inside.
Nate had been hurt by men like me. The thought was unbearable. I could not stand the idea of anyone hurting Nate. Worse, I could not stand the realization that I had done it myself. I couldn’t keep quiet anymore.
“That was not what I meant.”
Nate’s hand moved immediately to the communication panel. He switched off the microphone before facing me.
“Bollocks. That is exactly what you meant. This is not the first time. Do not imagine I have forgotten what you said after the duel.”
The crane lowered us until the acrylic sphere touched the surface of the water.
Nate’s expression had gone beyond anger now. Hurt poured through every line of his face, making his voice tremble even when he tried to hold it steady.
“You said I was pretty. You called me a cheater. You said I used my looks.”
The words landed differently now than they had when I first spoke them.
At the time, they had felt true. I had believed them with the full force of humiliation and desire twisting together inside me. Nate had distracted me. Nate had winked, thrown me off, and then stood there looking victorious without acknowledging his underhanded move.
But now, sitting beside him, the accusation no longer rang true.
It sounded ugly.
Small.
Wrong.
The ocean climbed around the sides of the bubble, turning the lower half of the world blue. The water reached the midpoint of the sphere, the ship and crew above us fractured by the moving surface.
“I have never used my looks to obtain anything. I have worked just as hard as you have. I have earned every position, every qualification, and every fucking opportunity through my own ability.”
His voice broke slightly on the last word, and the pain in his eyes gutted me.
“For you to insinuate that I am some kind of lowlife who slept his way into success or manipulated people into giving me what I had not earned is unacceptable.”
I balked. Never had I insinuated anything like that!
He straightened his spine and lifted his chin. “I never want to discuss this with you again. We are done.”
Around us, the submersible slipped completely beneath the surface. Something inside me snapped. The raw, immediate terror of hearing Nate close a door I had only just realized I could not bear to lose was far more powerful than the fear of being dropped underwater in a floating bubble.
I moved without thinking. As Nate turned farther away, I caught his wrist and pulled his hand across the narrow space between us, pressing his palm flat against the center of my chest.
Nate flinched, but I held his hand against the pounding beneath my… his sweater.
“You feel that?” I asked. “My heart’s trying to beat clean out of my chest. Somehow, I screwed this up, and I’m gonna make it right. But don’t shut me out, Nate.”
His eyes stayed on mine.
The submersible continued its slow descent beside the ship.
Blue-green light filtered through the water and curved acrylic, sliding over Nate’s face in moving bands.
It caught in his pale green eyes and transformed them into something almost unreal, bright and clear against the deepening color around us.
He was so beautiful.
The thought moved through me with enough force to make everything inside my chest tighten around it.
Not merely his face, though God knew that was enough.
It was the fury he had shown me, the hurt beneath it, the stubborn dignity with which he had refused to let me diminish him.
Every part of him struck me at once, and I had no defense left against any of it.
My voice came out softer. “I wouldn’t know how to get back in if you did. I’ve been wrong about some things. Got things in my head and treated them like they were facts.”
We sank farther.
The ship’s hull remained close beside us, a bright red wall through the acrylic, but the surface light above had already begun to lose its strength. Dark shadows moved over Nate’s skin.
His gaze dropped to where his hand rested against my chest. There was no chance he could miss what he felt beneath his palm. My heart hammered so violently that each beat seemed to strike against his hand.
I had never been this nervous in my life.
I had faced men twice as mean as they were smart. I had worked in weather that could kill a person before he finished making one bad decision. I had climbed, welded, cut, repaired, and handled machinery powerful enough to tear a man apart if he lost focus for half a second.
None of it had ever left me this scared shitless. I did not want whatever existed between us to end here, twisted beyond repair before I had even understood what it was. The need for Nate to give me another chance rose inside me with a force that left me reeling.
I wanted him to keep looking at me the way he had over the past few days. I wanted the shy smiles. The warmth beneath his teasing. The softness in his eyes when he forgot we were supposed to be enemies. I had not understood how much those things meant until they disappeared.
“Please,” I repeated.
His expression shifted by degrees as he looked at me, one emotion after another moving across his face. Anger was still there, but it no longer stood alone. Surprise broke through first, then uncertainty, then something softer. He was thinking. That had to be a good sign.
The silence settled between us, but it no longer felt empty. It felt suspended, as though everything depended upon what Nate chose to do next.
A burst of static cracked through the cabin.
Nate startled and instinctively began to pull his hand away so he could reach the communication panel. I tightened my grip around his wrist.
I brought my other hand over his, holding his palm firmly against my chest between both of mine. I shook my head like a stubborn boy. “I’m not letting you go.”
The tension around his mouth eased. The anger in his eyes loosened. He stared at me for another second before twisting carefully in the narrow seat and reaching for the microphone with his free hand.
“Submersible to bridge.”
“We didn’t receive your scheduled check-in. Confirm status,” the communications officer said through the speaker.
He checked the readouts beside him, his eyes moving quickly over the panel. “Apologies. Passing twenty-five meters. Internal pressure stable, life support normal, descent rate steady.”
“Copy. Continue descent.”
Nate left the microphone open.
“Thirty meters,” he reported after a few moments. “All systems remain nominal.”
His voice was composed again, precise and professional, but his gaze returned to me between every check of the instruments.
The light continued to fade.
“Thirty-five meters. We’re clear beneath the hull.”
Through the acrylic above us, the ship had become a broad dark shape against the brighter water near the surface. Its underside stretched overhead for another moment before the descent carried us beyond it.
“Copy,” the communications officer replied. “Continue descent and report at fifty.”
Nate switched the microphone off. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. When he faced me again, he looked much more composed.
“All right, Garrett. You have me.”
I felt relief wash over me at his use of my first name.
“But first, I want to check. Are you all right? I know this is your first dive, and I lost my temper there. Sorry about that. I want to make sure you’re comfortable. Whatever else is happening between us, you are my responsibility down here.”
I let out a long breath. It felt as though I had been holding it since Nate’s face had hardened against me. His hand was still pressed to my chest beneath both of mine, and although nothing between us had been fixed yet, he had not pulled away.
He had not shut me out. He was instead showing kindness and grace. I respected the shit out of that.
“Thank you.” The words felt inadequate, two plain syllables unable to contain the magnitude of what I wanted to convey. “I’m okay.”
“Good. Look around you,” he said quietly. “I don’t want you to miss this.”
I loosened my hold enough to let him move, though I did not release his hand completely. Only then did I look.
The ship was no longer visible above us. In every direction, darkness extended. The submersible’s flood lamps were the only thing illuminating the space around us.
The lights cut two bright paths under us. Below my boots, I could see a portion of the water beneath us, but beyond that there was nothing. No seafloor. No distant shape. No suggestion that the ocean ended anywhere beneath us.
Inside the submersible, it was dark as well. The faint lights from the various instruments cast a glow on our faces. It was eerie and beautiful at the same time. It was like we were at some candlelit dinner in an underworld dimension.
Tiny living things drifted around the sphere.
Some were no more than pale flecks suspended in the water.
Others flashed silver or translucent as the submersible’s lights caught them, their small bodies appearing for an instant before vanishing beyond the beams. They moved above us, beside us, beneath my feet, making it impossible to think of the ocean as an empty stretch of water anymore.
I glanced up at Nate.
“Holy shit.”
His mouth curved into a genuine smile. The sight of it struck me nearly as hard as the sight of the ocean outside. That soft warmth had returned to his face, tentative but real, and some tight place inside me eased in answer.
“We’re entering the twilight zone now,” he said.
I looked down again. Everything I needed to exist was inside this one transparent bubble.
Oxygen. Warmth. Light.
And… the man I was falling for.