CHAPTER EIGHT THE TRUTH BENEATH THE WATERFALL
The confessional tablet waited on the beach the next morning.
Unfiltered Wild required separate interviews. Grant sat before a fixed lens while Cody remained out of hearing range in the jungle.
The first questions concerned food, weather, and the cyclone model forming east of the island. The fourth question appeared in white letters against the screen.
DID CODY MERCER SLEEP WITH YOU THREE YEARS AGO TO MANUFACTURE A FUTURE TELEVISION ROMANCE?
Grant read it twice.
Anger arrived with humiliating familiarity. It carried the smell of hotel sheets, the silence of an empty room, and the email that had appeared two days later from a production company proposing a series built around their “private chemistry.”
The question was engineered perfectly. It did not accuse Cody outright. It invited Grant to do the accusing and promised an audience for the wound.
He imagined answering as the man he had been when he boarded the ship: controlled, contemptuous, certain. The editors could place that answer beside Cody naked under the tarp and turn their reconciliation into manipulation.
Grant leaned toward the lens.
“If you want to ask whether I trust him, ask that. If you want me to accuse him for your ratings, find another story.”
He switched off the tablet before production could respond.
Cody returned carrying wild limes. One look at Grant's face stopped him.
“What did they ask?”
Grant handed him the screen.
Cody read the question. The limes dropped from his fingers.
“We are doing this now,” he said.
“You said you had a reason.”
“I had evidence. I spent three years making sure no one else ever saw it.”
Cody walked toward the grotto. Grant followed through the jungle and across the gorge without speaking. Inside, Cody retrieved his microphone, stared at its dead light, and set it deliberately on the stone.
For a long moment, Cody faced the waterfall.
“I almost woke you,” he said. “You were asleep on your stomach. One hand was reaching across the bed for me, even then. I stood beside you with my phone in my hand and thought I could explain in ten words.”
Grant closed his eyes.
“Then my lawyer sent one of the preview images,” Cody continued. “Your face was visible in the window reflection. Mine too. We looked happy. That was the worst part. They had taken something happy and made it evidence against us.”
“Cody—”
“I was afraid if you woke, you would come with me. You would confront them. There would be more photographs, more people, a bigger story. So I left you a note and put it under your watch.”
Grant remembered finding the watch on the floor after he threw the bedside lamp. He had never looked beneath it.
The missed note was such a small thing. It changed the architecture of three years.
“What did it say?”
Cody swallowed. “Please believe I am coming back.”
“My old management hired a photographer,” he said. “The hotel across the street gave him a clean angle through our window. He photographed us from the moment we entered the room.”
Grant stopped breathing.
“They wanted to change my image. Their language was edgier, adult, authentic. What they meant was profitable and violated.” Cody wrapped his arms around himself, an unconscious gesture that struck Grant harder than a blow.
“My assistant learned about the release plan before dawn. I left because the lawyers said every minute mattered.”
The bright hotel room returned in pieces: curtains Cody had opened because the city lights were beautiful; Cody asleep with one hand over Grant's heart; the cold space beside Grant at sunrise.
“Why didn't you wake me?”
“Because the photographs showed you too. Your face. Your body. Everything.” Cody's voice roughened. “You had rescue contracts, a department, a life that was private because you needed it to be. I thought if I told you, I would make the violation real before I knew whether I could stop it.”
“The reality-show proposal.”
“My management sent it before I fired them. They thought scandal would make us sellable.”
Grant pressed both hands to the back of his neck. “I thought you sent it.”
“I know what you thought.”
“You could have told me after.”
“I tried.” Cody laughed once, without humor. “You blocked my number. I used another. You blocked that. I wrote to your station, your home, the rescue foundation. You returned one envelope unopened and had your lawyer threaten a restraining order.”
Grant remembered signing the letter. At the time, it had felt like strength.
“The files?” he asked.
“I bought every copy. I emptied my savings, borrowed against the next season, and paid a forensic firm to witness the deletion. Then I terminated my contract and spent two years paying the settlement.”
“You protected me.”
“I protected us.”
Grant took a step forward.
Cody stepped back. “Do not touch me because you feel guilty.”
The command stopped him.
“What do you want?” Grant asked.
“I want you to understand why you believed the worst so easily.”
“Because the timing—”
“No.” Cody's eyes shone. “Because wanting me frightened you. Because if I was using you, then leaving first made you smart instead of scared.”
Grant's denial rose and died.
He had spent his life entering danger where instructions were clear: locate, stabilize, extract. Cody offered no map. Loving him meant standing still without armor and trusting that he would remain.
“You're right,” Grant said.
Cody looked away.
“I made you guilty because anger was easier than admitting you mattered after one night. Then I protected that anger for three years because it asked nothing of me.” Grant's voice shook. “I punished you for saving me from something I never knew existed.”
Cody walked into the pool beneath the waterfall. Water struck his shoulders and flattened his hair. He stood there like a man enduring weather.
Grant joined him but did not reach out.
“May I?”
After a long moment, Cody nodded.
Grant began at his shoulders. He washed away dried mineral clay, salt, and the last faint marks from production's examination. His hands moved without demand over Cody's arms, back, hips, and thighs. Every touch said what apology alone could not: I see what you carried. I see what it cost.
Cody turned.
“Say it,” he demanded.
“I was afraid you could hurt me.”
“And now?”
“Now I know you can. I know I can hurt you. I want you anyway.”
“That isn't all.”
Grant sank to his knees in the falling water. Not in defeat. In choice.
“I am sorry,” he said. “Not because I misunderstood. Because I made misunderstanding into a weapon. I will spend as long as you need proving I know the difference.”
Cody's fingers entered his hair.
“Look at me.”
Grant did.
“I am not forgiving you because you knelt,” Cody said. “And I am not forgiving you because we have been good together here.”
“I know.”
“I need you to ask questions before you build a case. I need you to let uncertainty exist without punishing me for it.”
“I will.”
“You will fail sometimes.”
Grant almost objected. Cody tightened his grip lightly.
“Say it.”
“I will fail sometimes.”
“And then?”
“I will come back. I will listen. I will repair what I can.”
Cody's eyes closed. Water ran over both their faces. “That I can forgive.”
Desire was there, but grief was closer. Cody drew him upright and kissed him with painful gentleness.
Their intimacy unfolded at Cody's pace. He chose every first touch and made Grant receive without taking over. Grant learned the discipline of staying open when instinct urged him to direct, to fix, to earn forgiveness through effort.
When Cody finally pressed Grant against the stone and claimed the lead, Grant gave it freely. The vulnerability of being guided struck deeper than force ever had. Then, at the moment Grant's surrender became complete, Cody placed Grant's hands on his hips and returned the choice.
“Equal,” Cody whispered.
“Always.”
They came together beneath the waterfall, not fighting for dominance but passing trust between them. Water erased tears neither acknowledged. When the intensity broke them open, Grant held Cody's gaze through all of it.
Sunset warmed the grotto entrance by the time they climbed onto the rocks.
Cody lay on his back. Grant rested his head on Cody's stomach and kissed the skin beneath his ribs.
“I have loved you since that hotel room,” Grant said.
Cody's fingers stilled in his hair.
“You don't have to say it back.”
“Good, because I'm considering making you suffer.”
Grant looked up.
Cody's smile trembled. “I love you too.”
They slept there until dawn.
When Grant woke, the birds had stopped calling. The air pressed close and heavy. Beyond the reef, a wall of black cloud had erased half the horizon.