9. Garrett
Garrett
A column of water blasted upward off our right side. It erupted with such violence that I thought the ocean itself had broken open. Not where Braddock had told me to look. Closer, right near our boat.
Someone shouted. It might have been me.
An enormous dark shape drove out of the sea, rising almost vertically, water pouring from its skin in sheets. I stared slack-jawed. She was the size of a fucking bus, towering over us in the most awe-inspiring sight of my life.
Lady’s ridged throat broke free of the water, white pleats shining beneath the dark sweep of her head. Barnacles roughened parts of her skin. Long fins opened away from her body as she surged upward, and the sheer size of her destroyed every scale my mind tried to place around her.
I had seen cattle larger than men. Horses powerful enough to throw a rider twenty feet. Machinery so enormous I could stand inside it. None of that prepared me for a living body that size lifting itself out of the ocean.
She rose higher than seemed possible.
I craned my neck back, staring up at a humpback whale suspended against the brilliant blue Antarctic sky.
Then Lady twisted.
Her body rolled in the air with a grace that made no sense for something so immense. She fell.
The impact struck the ocean like another explosion.
A wall of white spray burst upward. Hands seized the front of my jacket, and Braddock hauled me upright.
I had no time to think. My hands caught his arms. Braddock pushed me behind him as water hammered down around us, drumming over my hood and shoulders and scattering across the Zodiac. The boat pitched hard beneath my boots.
Everybody was yelling and laughing. Across the water came distant shouts from the second Zodiac, thin with distance but unmistakable.
Braddock’s face was inches from mine. He turned his head and looked me in the eyes.
Water cascaded down his hair and dripped from his lashes. He was soaked from head to toe. He had taken the brunt of that splash, sheltering me behind him in an instinctive move, and my heart was having a really hard time remembering why I hated this man.
“Did you see that?” he shouted.
I was laughing. I hadn’t even realized it until I heard myself. “Holy shit!”
“She breached right beside us!”
His green eyes were wide and incandescent, his whole face transformed by something pure and unguarded.
He was grinning like a boy who had just watched the gates of heaven split open.
My eyes must have mirrored his joy because that was something a man got to witness once in his lifetime.
An animal so majestic, so fucking powerful, displaying that kind of sheer strength? Hell, I felt reborn.
Then he kissed me. One moment we were laughing into each other’s faces, and the next his mouth was on mine.
It was a quick, hard press of cold lips. My whole body jolted. And I kissed back before I could process it. It was impossible not to. It was like my mouth was made to kiss his.
I’d never experienced a kiss like it.
Then he pulled back. We stared at each other. He seemed as shocked as me.
Keith’s shout broke our strange connection. “She’s up! Three o’clock.”
Lady surfaced a short distance away, no longer exploding from the sea but gliding through it. Her back rose in a long black curve, slick and shining. A breath burst from the blowhole at the top of her head with a deep rushing sound, sending a pale column of mist into the air.
Braddock still had one hand locked around my forearm. I still had mine around his.
Neither of us let go.
Lady moved parallel to the Zodiac. Only a portion of her body showed above the water, yet even that seemed endless. Her back traveled past us like the rounded hull of a ship. The sea gathered and rolled away from her sides. She seemed to be circling us.
I understood in that moment why Braddock had brought me. I would never have understood what that size meant through computer screens or even from the deck of a ship.
From the Zodiac, we existed in the same plane.
She was right beside us. And even though I was a modern man, I felt in my bones a deep, primal respect for a creature whose species had survived millions of years.
She was so gigantic that there was nothing on land like her.
Only the oceans held the last remaining spaces on our planet vast enough for her size.
Lady dove beneath the surface, and I could see her dark shape pass right below us.
Holy shit.
She surfaced again on the other side of our boat.
I was no marine biologist, but I had the distinct feeling that she was being playful.
We had a dog when I was growing up, horses, chickens, and a bunch of barn cats.
I loved animals. I understood animals, and this beautiful humpback was having a fun time with us.
Something smaller broke the surface near Lady. It vanished almost immediately.
Then it appeared again—dark, quick, moving close alongside her.
I squinted. “Is that a dolphin?” I mumbled under my breath.
Braddock had lifted his binoculars and was tracking her. I watched him and Lady in turn, waiting for some explanation.
Then he lowered the binoculars slowly and turned to Keith. He seemed different. His face emptied of expression, but there was something powerful going on inside him. The men stared at each other in wordless communication. Jealousy flared bright and hot in my chest at their bond.
Jesus. What was wrong with me? I needed to go dunk myself in the cold water to get my head on straight.
“No.” The word came out barely above a whisper. Braddock turned his head to look at me. “Not a dolphin.”
And just like that, I was back being caught in his gaze like a fly stuck in honey. He had some serious hoodwink power over me.
The smaller back surfaced again beside Lady. “So what is it?” I asked.
“That’s her calf.”
What?
I turned to look at him. I thought he had stopped breathing. Keith took a long stride and enveloped Braddock in his arms. Braddock seemed to be in shock.
“Lady has a calf,” he repeated, still looking straight at me. “Lady’s a mum.”
His voice cracked.
The second Zodiac must have heard him through the earpiece. A roar of cheering burst faintly across the water. Then everyone was yelling like madmen.
Through it all, Braddock kept staring at me.
I turned to look. The calf surfaced beside Lady. It stayed close against Lady’s side, disappearing when Lady disappeared and rising again only a moment after her.
When I glanced back at Braddock, his eyes shone bright with unshed tears. Then a tear slipped over his lower lid and tracked down his cheek. He slapped a hand over his mouth, but the raw emotions pouring out of him had me reeling.
Keith stepped away and went to hug the driver, who was whooping with joy.
There was beauty all around us, but all I could see was him. The wind pushed strands of wet hair across his face. I had never seen a more beautiful sight.
I reached for him and pulled his hand away from his mouth. His lips trembled and his gaze burned into me.
This annoying gnat of a fucking man was crying. Because his whale had become a mother. And she had brought her calf to show us that.
So I lowered my head and kissed him. This one wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment action born of adrenaline.
I kissed him because some things cannot be said in words or even understood through words. Some things are beyond all that. Some things can only be shown.
I couldn’t have stopped myself even if I had tried to. His eyes were saying things to me that went straight to my heart. And my heart was singing back to his just like these creatures of the ocean who sang to each other underwater.
Maybe I had gone mad. Maybe I was a fool to forget how he had cheated. But I didn’t care in that moment.
His lips parted in surprise beneath mine.
For one heartbeat, he didn’t react, but then he grabbed me and pulled me impossibly close as his mouth crashed against me in a desperate hunger and need that swept me under.
Our lips were cold and frozen, our faces wet, and there were a million layers between us, but none of that mattered.
Behind us, Keith made a strangled sound. I pulled back. The kiss lasted only a few seconds. Braddock’s gaze flicked past my shoulder to his friend. His cheeks flushed a gorgeous pink color.
Lady surfaced again with her calf beside her.
“Wanna tag her?” Keith asked.
“Absolutely. She must be lactating.” Braddock untangled from me, and in a heartbeat, he was back to being a whale scientist. “I want to study her tissue.”
And fuck my stupid heart, I really liked that.