Chapter 10
I blinked my eyes open. Somehow, I had fallen asleep, but as soon as consciousness came, the crushing realization instantly returned.
Something had woken me. I lay there, listening for any new pinging sounds.
But the cabin was silent. Just the faint sounds of ice breaking in the distance and the low sounds of wind blowing.
I turned my head, and only then realized that not only was I not in Grant’s arms—which was a first since the day we had started sleeping in this bed together—but that he was not there. My outstretched hands met cold sheets.
The feeling of dread only deepened. My instinct was screaming that something was wrong.
Surely if there was some kind of danger, he would’ve woken me up?
He wouldn’t just leave for no reason. There were strict protocols in place.
Everywhere we went, we were supposed to take somebody with us.
Nobody left the station without at least one partner.
That was the whole reason Grant had Sam and Viktor with him when he went diving.
And Grant was a stickler for protocol. I knew that by now.
On some strange instinct, I went to the front door and flung it open.
Cold wind blasted inside. My eyes scanned the dimly lit Antarctic horizon.
There was no one around. The personnel on the station followed the human awake-sleep cycle even if it was still lit outside.
I almost missed it as I prepared to close the door, but the movement caught my eye.
A tall, dark figure was pulling one of the Zodiac boats out of the dark toward the edge of the ocean.
I would know that body from anywhere. From any distance.
It was Grant. I had no doubt. Where was he going in the middle of the night? Alone? It would be suicidal.
And then it hit me. Yesterday—was it just a few hours ago?
—when I was in the middle of my despair, I remembered him mumbling something about the backup hydrophones, but I had dismissed it because no way could we do another deep dive like the one Viktor and Grant went through the other day.
Was he going alone, out on his own, to replace those lost hydrophones?
No, it couldn’t be. Nobody would be that foolish, right?
I glanced back, shivering from head to toe in the cold wind coming from outside. I was dressed in just my thermals. My eyes went to the backup kit on the floor of the cabin. It was open and missing the backup hydrophone packages.
That confirmation cleared my mind. The Antarctic cold couldn’t match the dread that seeped into my blood at the thought of what Grant was planning to do.
“Grant!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.
His head whipped around and he looked straight back at me.
“Come back this very second!”
I saw him hesitating, and my anger mounted. My voice was steel when it came out, nothing like I had ever sounded.
“I am not going to repeat it. Put the Zodiac back and come right back this very minute.”
I saw him slowly put the Zodiac back and then approach me step-by-step. The closer he got to me, and the colder I was standing in the howling wind, the angrier I became. By the time he was standing at the bottom of the cabin steps, I was trembling with anger.
“Where the hell do you think you were going?”
He was dressed in the all-black diving suit.
He had all of the diving gear attached. This man truly was going to go out there, plunge into the ice-cold waters, try to place the new hydrophones all by himself, alone in the dark water surrounded by predators like leopard seals and a million things that could go wrong in these conditions.
I couldn’t believe it. I grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him inside and banged the cabin door shut.
Little chunks of ice stuck to his hair and his eyebrows, his eyelids. I hadn’t realized, but it had been snowing a bit.
“Answer me,” I gritted out.
He looked away from me, unable to meet my glare. He mumbled, “I was going to deploy the backup hydrophones.”
“All by yourself?”
He simply nodded.
“And what if something had happened to you? Where is your backup diver? Who knew that you were going to go out? Where has it been logged?” I fired question after question.
He kept silent. Still refusing to meet my gaze.
“Nobody knew, right?” I answered for him.
“Yeah, my plan was to be back before you woke.”
I lost my cool and punched him in the shoulder with all my strength. He looked at me, surprised.
Fresh tears blinded me. “Are you absolutely INSANE? Do you not understand what you were going to do? Do you not care at all about me? What if something had happened to you out there? Huh?”
His face creased in confusion. “But Adrien, your study…”
“I do not care about my fucking study! I care about YOU! You dumb, pea-brained idiot!”
His eyes went huge and round.
“More than your study?”
“Of course, more than my study!” I yelled at him.
“But… but I thought that… I didn’t want your experiment to fail. Then you would never come back here. You would never want to work with me. You would never want to look at me again, and I would lose you before I even had—”
“Shut the fuck up.” And then I just launched myself at him. I covered his idiot mouth with mine and kissed him within an inch of his life.
“I’m going to kill you. Promise me you’ll never again do something like that.” I pulled back and looked into his eyes.
He still looked confused.
“You are the thing that I care most about. I was stupid back in high school. In denial. Assuming things about you because I liked you too much. I didn’t know I was attracted to you.
Somewhere very deep in my heart, I knew it.
But to protect myself, I’d made up all these false ideas about you being arrogant and you looking down at me, when that was never true.
You didn’t ever do anything like that. And now, after meeting you, after getting to know you, after being in your arms and being loved by you, how can you even think that I don’t care about you? ”
I was breathing hard by the time I finished my rambling monologue. And feeling slightly stupid. The words came pouring out before I could stop them.
Grant blinked a few more times, and then suddenly a jubilant smile spread on his face.
“What the heck are you smiling about?” I grumbled. “I’m yelling at you for being stupid.”
“You like me, Doc?”
“Of course, I like you. What’s there not to like? You’re annoyingly handsome, tall, strong, you remember what I drink, you understand my experiment, you… you’re a freaking dream come true for any gay man.”
His eyebrows rose.
I laughed. “And yeah, that’s me. I’m gay. Happy?”
He raised his hand and made a fist and pumped it in the air like a lunatic. “Yes!” He yelled into the silence of our cabin. Then, with a huge grin, he picked me up and spun me around.
“Yes, I am very happy, Adrien Cole. You have made me the happiest man.”