18. Chapter 18
Rafe
There’s a control room a quarter mile behind me full of champagne and colleagues, and in about an hour the dome slit will open for the first time. This is the moment I’ve been walking toward for ten years, and I’m not in the room.
I’m out on the peninsula, at the island’s south end, where the granite runs down dark into the water and the spruce give up and the sky comes all the way to the ground. There are no exterior lights out here. I made sure of that when we planned the site. Tonight, I’m alone under the sky.
The stars are magnificent tonight. The Milky Way runs clear toward the horizon, Saturn burns yellow in the southeast, and the air is so steady the stars barely seem to tremble. Perfect first-light conditions.
I should be happy. I spent six hours smiling, shaking hands and letting people congratulate me. Apparently I’m still very good at looking happy when I’m not.
Congratulations, Dr. Vasquez.
That’s the part of tonight I can’t stop hearing.
Neri stood in front of me after five weeks of silence and called me by my title.
Not Rafe, not even Rafael. Dr. Vasquez. I thanked her for coming.
Turned to the next person in line. Then I came out here before I had to spend another minute pretending my entire ribcage doesn’t feel like it’s being rummaged by hot pokers. It hurts this bad.
Five weeks of passing her in hallways. Five weeks of keeping my distance. Tonight I finally got the thing I’ve wanted for a decade, and the one person I wanted beside me stood three feet away and spoke to me like we barely knew each other.
Turns out even I can run out of cheerful. So I stand on the granite, hands in my pockets, and let myself be sad for once.
I stand there for so long, looking at the sky and the infinite possibility of it all, I almost forget where I am when I hear footsteps.
Running footsteps. I turn around, and there she is.
Neri comes out of the treeline at a dead run and stops ten feet away from me.
She’s barefoot on the cold granite, shoes clutched in one hand, her blazer soaked through and sticking to her arms. Her hair is loose, wet and wild around her face, teal curling through the dark strands.
Seawater drips from the hems of her clothes.
She looks nothing like the woman who stood in the reception line and called me Dr. Vasquez.
She looks terrified.
And there’s a tiny, stubborn poker of hope that rips through my chest like a fishing hook, tugging at my heart. I wish I could stop myself, but I can’t. Just seeing her like this, beautiful, messy and perfect is enough to steal the breath from me.
“You’re wet,” I say. Brilliantly. The last man in astronomy.
“I was in the ocean.”
She’s still trying to catch her breath.
“I shifted.”
For a second, I forget everything else. “You did?”
“By myself. Down by the dock.” Her eyes fill. “I needed to know I could do it, and I can. I went in, and when I came out again, all I wanted was you.”
I stare at her. That tiny poker of hope fills up my ribcage until I can barely breathe.
Something in my chest pulls painfully tight.
“Please,” she says. She scrubs wet hair off her cheek with the back of her hand. “I need to say this before I lose my nerve.”
I stand there and let her. I couldn’t speak even if I wanted to. There’s not enough air in my lungs for a single word.
She takes a breath.
“I was wrong.” Her voice shakes, but she doesn’t look away. “I was scared. I’m still scared. But being stranded with you on that island was the happiest I’ve been in my entire life. And I don’t think anything else really matters.”
I stay very still. Her mouth trembles.
“I hurt you. I know I did. I’m sorry.”
The sea moves against the rocks below us.
“And I love you.”
There it is. Plain and shaking between us.
“I love you, Rafe.” She repeats, but this time her voice is just a thread, like she, too, is running out of oxygen.
A laugh almost gets out of me. Almost.
She steps closer.
“I don’t know how we handle the department. I don’t know what people will say or what we’ll have to change. But I want to figure it out. With you.”
Her voice drops.
“If you still want me.”
She stops there, barefoot and dripping on the granite, watching me.
For five weeks, I stayed away. I let her have every inch of distance she wanted, even when it hurt like hell.
I never stopped wanting her. Not once. I open my arms.
For one second she just stares at me.
Then she moves.
She hits me hard enough to knock me back half a step. Her arms lock around my neck and I lift her without thinking, hauling her against me until her bare feet leave the ground. She’s freezing and soaked and shaking, and I hold her tighter.
“I love you, Nerissa Marsh,” I say into her hair. “Completely. Stupidly. Irreversibly.”
She makes a wet, broken sound against my neck that turns into a laugh. I set her down and take her face in both hands. Her cheeks are cold beneath my palms. Her lashes are wet.
Then I kiss her.
Slowly. Deeply. With all the feelings I kept bottled up inside me all this time I spent away from her. When I pull back, she keeps her forehead against mine.
“Hi,” I whisper.
She laughs again. “Hi.”
Below us, out on the black water, a horn sounds. One long note.
We turn together. The last boat to the mainland is pulling past the headland, its lights bright against the dark water.
“There goes my boat,” she says, against my shoulder, zero regret anywhere in it.
“Mm. Stranded on an island with you again. This is becoming a bad habit.”
“Terrible habit.” She slips her arm around my waist. “Except this time we’re stranded on purpose.”
I look down at her.
“That does improve it.”
She settles against my side, damp and shivering, and I tuck my arm around her.
Up the hill behind us, a deep mechanical rumble rolls through the dark.
The AETHER dome begins to turn.
I look toward it. Ten years of work, thousands of hours, hundreds of people, all of it finally reaching this moment. In a few minutes, the telescope will open to the sky for the first time.
Neri’s hand slips into mine.
I squeeze it.
I want this. The telescope. The work. Her. Whatever comes after tonight, whatever we have to untangle when we go home, I want all of it.
First light, everywhere I look.