13. Nate
Nate
Several hours later, I found myself in the ship’s lounge with one of my favorite novels, a blanket over my legs, dressed in my PJs, and a mug of warm tea.
The lounge had deep chairs arranged around low tables and built-in bookshelves covering most of one wall.
There were thrillers, old histories, field guides, biographies, and several shelves of novels with cracked spines.
Evening sunlight flooded through the rows of windows.
My favorite part was the massive fireplace in the middle.
It was electric, but it still made the space feel cozy.
A handful of people were scattered around the room. Two crew members were playing cards in low voices near the far wall.
I shifted, and my ribs immediately protested. Keith had confirmed there were no fractures, only bruising, and I was cleared to return to work the next day. Landry had been released shortly before me. He had left the medical bay without a word to anyone.
That had been several hours ago, and I had not seen him since. I had taken a long nap, eaten lunch, and overall felt remarkably good. The barb in my heart had gone away.
I didn’t know why Landry had jumped after me, but he had. And even while almost drowning, his first concern had been me.
That was not a man who made empty declarations.
He and I may not ever get on the same page, but I couldn’t find it in myself to dislike him anymore.
I still couldn’t understand why he had called me a cheater, but except for that one time, if I was honest, he didn’t treat me like a pretty face.
It had been days of us working together.
At no point had he acted like one of my exes.
The fact that he actually took a swing at me was, in a twisted way, reassuring.
You didn’t punch someone you thought was fragile. You punched your equal.
I lifted my tea and took a sip. I would just maintain a cordial distance and… just forget about him after he left. My stupid heart could pine all it wanted.
The lounge door opened, and the younger Landry burst inside. He looked deeply unsettled. His mouth was drawn into a tight line, and both hands were clasped together in front of him. I had taken a liking to the youngster. His enthusiasm and unfiltered energy were infectious.
Dexter scanned the room, spotted me, and came directly over.
Uh-oh. I set down my mug.
He stopped in front of my chair. “Can I please talk to you in private?”
“Of course.”
I pushed the blanket aside and stood, trying not to wince when my ribs protested.
“That corner okay?” I pointed.
He nodded. We moved toward the bookshelves and into the farthest corner of the lounge, partially screened from the rest of the room by a tall cabinet containing old expedition journals.
Dexter turned to face me. “I’m about to commit a crime.”
My eyebrows rose. “And you have chosen to confess it to me,” I said. “Why?”
“Because you are the reason I have to commit this crime.”
Christ almighty. I studied him more carefully. Despite the absurdity of the declaration, he looked genuinely distressed.
“All right,” I said slowly. “I suppose I have to listen to this, then.”
“You broke my brother, and you have to fix him.”
My jaw dropped. Oh, boy. Then a small, helpless smile pulled at my mouth.
“I don’t think your brother would agree with that assessment.”
Dexter shook his head so vehemently that his hair shifted across his forehead.
“My brother used to be absolutely stable and perfect until you came into his life.”
“I am—”
“I thought for the last year that his obsession was only because he was stuck on what happened between you two.” Dexter’s words began coming faster now, his tightly controlled distress breaking through.
“He talked about you all the time, but he was angry, and anger is something I understand with Garrett. He gets angry, he explodes, then he cools down and goes back to being normal.”
I pressed my lips together.
“But since we came aboard, he has…” Dexter waved his hand. “He is… I don’t even know. And now, after the accident, he won’t even talk to me.”
“I’m sorry, Dexter. It was probably traumatic for him. I can get help—”
“No. It’s not that. It’s you.” Dexter looked at me with big, pleading eyes. “He is really struggling, and I know you are the reason. And I don’t think I’m the one he needs to talk to this time. You are.”
I inhaled carefully against the soreness in my ribs.
“You may be giving me more influence than I deserve.”
“I am not…” Dexter straightened his shoulders with sudden determination. “You are going to come with me to his room.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I am going to knock on the door and say it is me. He will open the door because he always opens it for me. But then you are going inside.”
I stared at him.
“That,” Dexter said gravely, “is the crime I am committing.”
“You’re going to use your voice to get me access to him.”
“Yes.”
“Without telling him.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think either of us will survive, Dexter. Have you seen the muscles on your brother?”
Dexter laughed unexpectedly. “I sure have, but you might know them way better than I do at this point.”
My face went up in flames.
“You stare at him like he’s a new specimen you’re studying—”
“Hey… we don’t need to drag me through the flames here.”
He smiled. “Will you help me?”
I nodded. “I was planning on talking with him anyhow.”
* * *
Dexter stopped outside his brother’s cabin and looked at me with a solemn expression. Before I could reconsider this criminal operation, he lifted one hand and knocked loudly.
“Garrett!”
“Dex?”
“Yes,” Dexter called.
The door opened. His eyes went first to me, and shock registered. Then he looked at his brother.
Dexter moved with startling speed. He stepped aside, gave me a firm push between the shoulder blades, and the door slammed behind me.
I stumbled into the cabin.
“What the hell?” Landry demanded.
For one stunned moment, neither of us moved. Then Landry lunged for the handle. He yanked the door open, but Dexter was already halfway down the corridor, speeding away like his tail was on fire.
“DEXTER!”
His brother lifted one hand without turning around and disappeared through the next doorway. Landry stood gripping the doorframe, staring after him.
I managed to swallow my laugh and cleared my throat instead. “Efficient fellow.”
His jaw tightened. Landry closed his eyes. He stood there, breathing slowly through his nose, as though trying to keep every emotion he possessed from escaping at once.
“I’m going to kill him,” he muttered.
“Oh, you brothers are all about committing crimes today.” I didn’t know why I was feeling so cheerful. He looked ready to bulldoze me, but being in his presence was oddly energizing.
It had only been a few hours since I had seen him, and… oh, I had missed him. My belly swooped at the realization.
He closed the door and walked farther into his cabin, turning his back to me.
His cabin was similar to mine, though he might be a tidier man than I was.
A heavy jacket hung from the back of the chair.
A pair of work boots sat neatly beneath the desk.
My eyes went to the huge sheets of paper spread across its surface, covered with measurements and numbers.
I shifted closer to have a look. I recognized some of the diagrams. It looked like he had been working on the skeleton recovery project.
“Why are you here?” he asked while still facing away from me. His throat still sounded rough, but not as bad as it had before.
“I wanted to talk to you,” I said in an even tone. I didn’t want to fight him.
He gave a humorless laugh. Landry still would not look at me.
He moved around the cabin, fixing the bed, which looked pretty neat to me already.
I studied the rigid lines of his back. He was avoiding me.
It was not avoidance performed for effect.
He seemed genuinely unable to face me. In his fitted black undershirt and soft lounge trousers, his hair still damp from a recent shower, there was something almost disarming about the sight of him, though nothing about the breadth of his shoulders could ever truly be described as soft.
My attention drifted to his desk. I was not poor at mathematics, but as I studied his work, I realized that he was operating at a level far beyond anything I could comprehend.
There was no computer terminal in his cabin, nor did I see a laptop.
He had entire relationships between weight, dimensions, force, and movement worked out using only his mind.
I was still studying the open notebook when Landry spoke again. “If you want to file a complaint with the captain, go ahead.”
My head snapped up. “What?”
“Just so you know, I already calculated the likely effect of the displacement wave. I didn’t finish making the adjustments because I was ordered out of the data suite and told I wasn’t allowed to work until I was medically cleared.”
For a moment, I had no idea what he meant. Then I looked back at the notebook.
The skeleton.
The wave that had struck the ship had originated from the iceberg. It had likely disturbed the seafloor, perhaps shifted sediment around the whale fall or altered the position of the overhang. Landry had been calculating what that meant.
Embarrassment made my face feel warm, even though he was facing away. The thing was, I had not thought about the skeleton even once since we had gone overboard.
Not once. I had thought only about him.
With the embarrassment came a strange feeling. I couldn’t remember the last time something had clouded my mind to this extent. Then the rest of what he had said caught up with me.
“You were ordered out of the data suite?”
“Your ship medic’s orders.”
“When were you in the data suite? We were dismissed together with instructions to rest.”
He shrugged without looking at me.
I couldn’t believe it. Had Landry gone straight to work? Had he not taken a nap and eaten like I had?
I was suddenly mad at him. Walking around him, I stood directly in front of him. He tried to turn away again, but I grabbed his bare shoulders and didn’t let him escape.
Only then did I properly see him. Dark shadows sat beneath his eyes.
His jaw was covered in rough stubble, and exhaustion had settled into every line of his face.
His damp hair suggested he had showered, but nothing else about him looked rested.
He looked as though he had spent the hours since leaving the medical bay forcing himself upright through will alone.
He stiffened beneath my hands. “What?” he demanded. “What are you staring at?”
I said nothing. I was having a hard time getting my thoughts in order.
“Like I said, if you want to complain to the captain, go ahead.” He lifted a hand to my chest, attempting to shove me. “You don’t have to stand there and—”
I caught his hand. Before I could think better of it, I lifted his right hand, the one covered in ink from the work he had been killing himself over, to my mouth and pressed a kiss to his knuckles.
“Do shut up for one moment, will you?” I said.
His entire body went still, and I heard him inhale sharply.
“No, dumbass. I’m not here to lodge some complaint.”
Landry looked frozen. I held his hand between us.
“I wasn’t even thinking about the skeleton,” I continued.
“Do you understand that? Because of one stubborn, hot, completely insufferable, and inexplicably brave cowboy, I forgot about my own damn skeleton.” A laugh escaped me, soft and disbelieving.
“I completely forgot about it. I’m here because I was worried about you. ”
His eyes searched my face with something close to shocked disbelief.
“You were worried about me?”
“Yes.” I smiled, though my chest had tightened painfully around the words.
His brow furrowed.
“And I’m not the only one,” I added gently. “Your brother is worried about you too.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you are not.”
He opened his mouth.
“And I also want to know why you jumped after me.”
That stopped him.
“I want to know why you refused to let Keith amend the log so the captain and everyone else would know what you did.”
His expression closed almost immediately. “There’s no need for anybody to know.”
“It was a heroic act.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
The denial came so quickly and with such harshness that I rocked back on my heels. The harshness wasn’t directed at me, though.
I studied him for a moment, and he immediately broke eye contact. “It was heroic to me,” I said slowly. “But I can see now that you genuinely don’t think of it that way. And I’m trying to understand why.”
His jaw worked.
“I’ve watched you work for the past several days. You don’t strike me as a man who has any difficulty receiving compliments. Quite the contrary, actually. I would say you’re a confident man. And, to be honest, I admire that about you.”
His head snapped up.
I smiled at his surprise. Didn’t he know that his confidence was hot?
“So… your refusal even to acknowledge that you jumped into the water after me isn’t making sense. Why?”
He looked slightly panicked. His muscular chest rose and fell. Still, he didn’t pull his hand away. I stepped closer. I lifted my other hand and placed it against his face, my palm resting against the rough warmth of his stubble.
“Why?” I asked again.
His eyes held mine. For several seconds, he said nothing. Then the answer came out in a low, ragged voice.