Chapter 25
CAMILLE
I dressed for work like armor—clean tank, cutoffs that still smelled faintly of bleach and sun, hair braided wet down my back because I didn’t have patience for the mirror.
The sky was the color of a healing bruise. Heat already pressed its palm to Charleston. The city likes to test your resolve before breakfast.
The facility breathed me in. Pumps low and steady. Pen water ticking against rubber. The particular quiet that means the animals are deciding to let you try.
Miguel stood hip-deep in the big pen, forearms wet, eyes on the bottlenose we’d pulled off Kiawah.
She floated in the sling like a tired queen, chin high.
Becca crouched on the dock with her clipboard.
Tamika leaned on the rail of the quiet room, watching the little Kogia the way you watch a baby with a fever—calm on purpose.
“You look like a person who slept,” Tamika said, without judgment.
“A few hours,” I said. “Don’t tell my mother.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I did my rounds before I let anyone talk me into feelings.
Kogia calf first: eye clear, blowhole lip free of grit, respiration high but even.
I touched her with two fingers behind the eye the way I’d done a hundred times yesterday.
The tiny muscle there answered. Present.
Then the bottlenose. Her pectoral had tone, if I asked nicely.
Every third breath hitched. Every tenth was clean.
Progress in the language I could live with.
“Okay,” I said, “rotation change in twenty. And then you three are off feet for a while.”
Three sets of eyes gave me the exact same look. It translated to: not a chance .
“Home,” I insisted. “Sofa. Shower. Naps.”
Miguel shook his head, the corner of his mouth tugging. “Nowhere I’d rather be.”
“Same,” Becca said. “I’ll sleep when she does.” She tipped her chin at the Kogia and the sweet optimism scalded me.
Tamika snorted. “I tried to leave last night. Got to my car, sat there, walked back in and took radio watch until two. Don’t fight us, Camille. It’s a losing game.”
I made a face to hide the way my throat went tight. “You will hydrate. You will eat protein that wasn’t born in a fryer.”
“Oui, chef,” Tamika said, saluting with her water bottle.
“And my father?” I asked, trying to sound casual, failing.
“Your father,” Miguel said, “was here late. Carried the load like a twenty-year-old and tried to pretend he wasn’t happy about it.”
Becca’s smile went soft. “He hummed to her.” She gestured toward the big pen. “Just stood there with his palm on the sling line and hummed like he does when he’s measuring something he loves.”
The image hit me straight in the ribs. “He did?”
“Yeah,” Tamika said. “You left him a job and a daughter who lets him be useful. Don’t you dare cry. I’m not mopping tears before coffee.”
I didn’t cry. I did have to look away. “Fine," I said. “Tell me again why you won’t go home.”
“Because it’s better here,” Becca said simply. “Even when it’s hard.”
“Especially when it’s hard,” Miguel added.
I swallowed around the burn. “Okay. But tonight, when the day’s work is done—you three get out. Not a bar. Go be human for a while so I don’t have to write your obituaries.”
Tamika arched a brow. “Says the doctor who took last night off.”
She was teasing. Not upset.
Becca’s face lit with unholy delight. “How was it?”
“Unprofessional,” I said.
“Hot,” Tamika translated.
Miguel didn’t bother to pretend he wasn’t listening. “Did he say please and thank you?”
“Out,” I said, pointing at the dock. “Go.”
Becca laughed and scuttled. “That’s a yes.”
“You can file this under community engagement,” Tamika said dryly.
“Go,” I said, but my mouth had already betrayed me into smiling.
The laugh took some of the ache out of my body. I stayed with the Kogia long enough to feel her breaths smooth a little more. I was writing notes in the margin of the log when the air in the aisle shifted. Not a wind. A presence.
He stood just inside the door, the morning pushing a hard rim of light around him. Jeans, T-shirt, boots, yesterday’s scruff. Jacob looked like a man who’d jogged through a forest fire and then realized the smoke was inside his chest. Eyes too sharp. Shoulders drawn tight like wire.
“Hey,” Tamika said, the friendliness in her voice careful. “Marine.”
“Hey,” he managed. His gaze found me and didn’t stop.
“I have work,” I said, before he could get a word out. It came out too crisp, defensive in a way that made me wince at myself. “I was with you last night. I owe this place?—.”
“I know,” he said quickly. “It won't take long.”
He didn’t explain the rest. He didn’t have to.
That look—like someone had pulled the ground out from under him and he was pretending gravity had new rules—overrode my impatience.
I set the clipboard down. I nodded at Tamika.
She nodded back, understanding without intrusion.
Becca gave me a look that said I could step outside without the world falling down.
Miguel was already moving to cover the line.
“Ten minutes,” I told the room, and slid past Jacob into the small hard light by the loading bay.
We stood with the river wind in our faces and the smell of iodine in our throats. He didn’t reach for me. Points for restraint.
“What happened?” I asked.
He pressed his tongue to the back of his teeth like he was keeping something big from spilling out. “I told you I’d tell you my last name.”
He said it like an offering, not a trap.
“Okay,” I said, slow. “I’m listening.”
“Dane,” he said.
Charleston practically put that syllable on its money. Dominion Hall had a wing full of it. The word hit a dozen places in my head at once.
“As in the Danes at Dominion Hall?” I asked. “The ones who can buy and sell my facility without looking up from a menu.”
He didn’t confirm or deny.
His mouth twisted. “I got some news this morning that I wasn't ready for. It’s about family.”
The word family thudded in my chest in a way that wasn’t about me.
For a second, I considered what it meant that his last name paired him with that mansion on the harbor.
Then I looked at his face—shock still drying on it—and I understood the only useful thing: he wasn’t ready to make the sentences I wanted.
“I’m not asking questions,” I said, softer. “Not now.”
He let out a breath like he’d been waiting for permission he couldn’t bring himself to ask for.
“Thank you.” His eyes searched mine, checking for something brittle.
“I want to be clear. I want to be with you. I want to face whatever this is with you. I know that’s fast. I know last night doesn’t earn me claims. I just—” He broke off and shook his head once, frustrated.
“I don’t want to do this alone anymore.”
I surprised both of us by stepping in first. I put my palm flat on his chest, where a small warm grief lived. His heart beat against my hand like it had decided to go on, anyway.
“I assumed,” I started, then stopped because assumptions are the shortest road to trouble. “When you walked in here and I saw the look on your face, I would have thought you were drowning in Lily again.”
He shook his head. “Different thing. Lily is always there. This is—new. And ugly. And not my story to tell without thinking first.”
“Okay,” I said, because okay is a kindness. “What can you do right now that won’t break you?”
He blinked at me like I’d handed him fresh air. “Give me a job. Mopping. Hauling. Anything.”
Relief is a holy thing. I almost laughed.
“We have a meeting with the Navy at fourteen hundred. Before that, I need hands. We always need hands when the strandings stack. You can help Miguel adjust the shade rig. You can run soft hose across the pen without spooking anyone. You can help Becca with electrolyte mixes and not get precious about the smell. You can stand on the dock and be gravity when tourists wander in with too many questions.”
He nodded, the muscle at his jaw easing like the room had handed him a weight he could lift. “Roger that. Consider me furniture you can move.”
“It’s less romantic when you say it that way,” I said. “But fine.”
He caught my hand before I could pull it away. He didn’t squeeze hard. Just held it the way you hold a line keeping something you love from drifting.
“I’m sorry about what a mess I am,” he said, voice low. “I didn’t mean to walk in here with my guts out.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’m glad you came to me.”
His phone buzzed against his pocket. He checked the screen—unknown number, local—and his posture changed, surprise sliding into focus.
He answered, turning half away out of habit.
“This is Captain Jacob Dane … yes… I’m in town …
the doctor’s with me … she’s right here …
okay—coordinates? That corridor? … yeah, I know it …
weather’s good … wheels up when?” He listened, eyes narrowing with purpose.
“Understood. We’ll be ready. Thank you.”
He hung up and I could feel the shape of whatever he’d been before he was mine ghost his shoulders. Not secrecy. Competence that had been waiting for an assignment.
“What?” I asked, because there’s a tone men get when the world has handed them a lever.
“That was the Coast Guard,” he said. “The crew chief from the helo that pulled me out is running a flight along your corridor. Two seats open. He wants to give you eyes. Says there’s something he wants to show you.
Could hand you clues on the strandings.” He watched me the way you watch surf for a rogue set. “Come up with me?”
It wasn’t a question as much as an invitation into a different kind of breath.
A hundred practical thoughts tried to shout at once.
The pens. The meeting with the Navy at 1400.
The way my palms sweat in helicopters even when my brain behaves.
The stupid little superstition I carry about leaving my animals, as if my body near them is what keeps them alive.
And then the other side of the scale: The thin ribbon of data that never feels like enough when you are standing ankle-deep in the problem.
I looked through the doorway at my crew. Tamika tipped me a tiny nod. Miguel had his hands on the shade rig and the exact patience that makes things possible. Becca, bless her, raised the clipboard without looking up.
They’d hold.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. McGuire. 1400 still good? We’ll keep it tight.
I texted back with a speed that felt like pulling a line clean. 1400 still good. I might step out for eyes on the water. Will ping you if timing shifts.
I slid the phone away and met Jacob’s gaze.
“You trust them?” I asked. “The Coast Guard?”
“With my life,” he said without performing it. “Twice.”
“Then, yes,” I said, and the word made something in my chest stop bracing. “I want to see it from up there.”
He smiled—quick, wrecked, real. “I’ll hit the shitty motel, take a shower, try to look like someone you’d let near a helicopter.”
“Do that,” I said. “And maybe pack a bag, so you can leave a couple things at my bungalow.”
He went still for half a beat, then the smile warmed from the inside. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He leaned in and kissed me—clean, certain—and when he pulled back he looked like a man who’d just been handed a key.
“Yes, Dr. Allard,” he said, and this time, it sounded like a promise.
Inside, the facility lifted its head to the idea of a plan. Outside, the wind ran its fingers over the river like it had been waiting for us to ask the right question.
I put my hand to the Kogia’s flank and counted two breaths for luck.
Then I went to explain things in more detail to my crew, because the only way to carry the weight of a day like this is together.
And because sometimes, the mercy you get is a ride over the water with a man who wants to stand next to you while you look hard at the thing that’s been breaking your heart.