1. Jasper
ONE
JASPER
Jax: Jas, please reply. We need to talk.
I stared at my phone, my foot tapping as I sat on my sofa; the French doors open, and the early morning Ecuadorian sun warming my face. Not even the familiar sounds of the waves crashing in with the rising tide could ease the anxiety that bubbled in my stomach from reading the text.
Jax: Come on. Your mum is miserable. She’s not spoken to you in weeks. We’re worried about you.
Leaning back, I stared up at the ceiling.
Jackson—Jax—Cartwright was my oldest friend. Despite disappearing from my life for sixteen years, he was still the closest friend I had.
Only now, he was married to my mum.
I was happy for them. They were sickeningly in love, even after five years together, but talking to him... in fact, talking to any of my family meant I needed to face facts and think about what was coming.
It was time to go home.
My five-year contract was coming to an end. The research project that brought me out here in the first place had gone global. As a result, I was about to give up my life exploring the ocean to be Head of Research Travis was an inch taller than my 6-foot frame, and both of us were long and lean from years in the water, swimming and diving all over the world.
My arms wrapped around his back, and he elongated his neck, so my nose pressed against his throat. I should have pulled back. I was sure this wasn’t a normal way to hug a friend, but my lack of any real friendships other than Travis meant I had nothing to compare it to, so I went with it. Every time he touched me, I went with it.
“You’re an idiot,” I mumbled, making no attempt to break our connection.
“But you’re feeling better already, aren’t you?” I loved how playful he sounded.
“If I say yes, can we stop?”
“No. Optimum hugging time for the maximum oxytocin release is at least five minutes.”
“I swear you make this shit up,” I grumbled, always the grumpy to his eternal sunshine.
“I’m a man of science, Jas. I don’t just make shit up. Now, shush and make the most of your hug before you up and leave me.” My body tensed. “Ah, Professor. Is that it? You’re going to miss me?”
I breathed him in. Everything about Travis was familiar. We’d worked together for years, and I was the reason he moved out here when the project started to get more global attention, and I needed his expertise as a deep-sea engineer.
Warmth spread through my body, my skin tingling and my cock stirring. I almost laughed, telling myself the oxytocin must be working its magic. Instead, I concentrated my thoughts on the paperwork waiting for me on my desk until it was back under control. All the while, trying not to think about why a hug was making me hard.
“I’ll miss you like a leak in the hull,” I said when I felt like I could talk again.
“Rude.” He tightened his hold for a second before letting me go completely, and my body pouted at the loss of contact.
Trav took hold of my chin again, looking me over for a second time, his smile telling me he liked whatever he saw. “Do you have your first stakeholder meeting today?” He went back to his stool and picked up the screwdriver.
I sighed. “Don’t remind me.”
He brandished his tool in front of him. “You know, you chose this new job, Jas. They offered to get someone else in to run the project now it’s gone worldwide. They said you could stay here and do what you’ve been doing, but you chose to move.” He said it so matter-of-factly. “The office job, the suit, managing the budget, and the admin. You said yes to all that when you didn’t have to.”
I hated how right he was.
I looked around our small office that was filled with monitors, bits of deep-sea machinery, and piles of papers with our ideas and plans scribbled on—all signs of the time we’d spent here together and the work we’d been doing. Travis followed my gaze.
“It’s not bad, is it? Did you really think, when you came out here five years ago, that this would be where you’d end up? Your idea about fish going up and down rather than back and forth, transforming what we know about global warming and creating the most detailed understanding of the ocean floor out there? Those photos we took...” He let out a contented sigh, and I couldn’t help the very uncharacteristic smile that curled my lips.
“I swear, you say you’re a deep-sea expert, but then you talk about diel migration like it’s a couple of fish getting in a lift to go to another floor in their aquatic hotel.”
He shrugged, letting a chuckle spill from his lips. I loved that sound.
“What? I like the fish-in-a-lift analogy. I imagine them having little fishy briefcases, chatting about their plans for the weekend.”
“I dread to know what goes on inside that head of yours,” I said, settling onto my stool.
Travis took off his glasses and put them on the desk, his midnight-blue eyes landing on mine as he blinked his long lashes, making me wonder if I’d ever noticed a man’s eyelashes before. “You wouldn’t want to know, Professor. Trust me.”
I tutted, leaning over and pulling my laptop from my bag. “What’s with the ‘professor’ today?”
“Well, you’re the big boss now, about to meet with heads of the Oceanic Centre and some oil and gas bigwigs. I didn’t think you’d want me calling you Jas anymore.”
I picked up a pen and threw it at him like a tiny javelin, but he caught it before it hit him. “I’ll always be just Jas to you.”
There was a flash of something across his expression that I couldn’t read. Like a shooting star, it lit up his eyes but instantly faded.
With my laptop now loaded, I clicked open my email and groaned when I saw the amount that had appeared since I checked them when I got up this morning. My new job hadn’t even officially started, yet I was being bombarded, and not for the first time, I wondered if accepting this new role was a good idea.
I took the elastic hair tie from my wrist and pulled my hair back, tying it up into a short ponytail.
“You’ve still not answered me. Why are you going? Really?” he asked. I kept my eyes low, locked on the screen in front of me, trying to hide the emotion from my face.
“It’s time.” I shrugged as if my answer was obvious when I knew it was anything but. He understood how much I loved this place and was struggling to understand my reasoning, although I’d not told him the whole truth. I couldn’t. Partly because I didn’t understand it myself.
“For?”
“To grow up. To go home. I can’t keep living out here, diving with you every day and messing about taking pictures of the seafloor.” This is what I’d convinced myself. I mean, work was meant to be hard and stressful, and my job was idyllic. Perfect. I’d spent months thinking this couldn’t be my future. I should be chasing more. That was what I was missing in my life. It had to be. Right?
His eyes widened and then narrowed. “Is that really how you see what we do?” He sounded hurt.
I scoffed. “Of course not, but it’s what everyone else sees.”
He let go of the screwdriver and it banged to the table and rolled a little. “That’s bullshit and you know it. This started as a project you dreamt up at uni, then you came here and worked your arse off. We worked our arses off. Now it’s a multimillion-pound research project that will be done across six countries, exploring all five oceans… plus all the seas we’re going to be mapping too. That’s huge, Jas. In fact, it’s fucking massive. How is that someone messing about?” His tone had changed, the hurt morphing into an anger I wasn’t used to seeing from Travis. “I mean, in the last couple of years, we’ve created a more detailed picture of deep-sea life than has ever been done before. The Diel Project is groundbreaking, and you started it. What the fuck about that isn’t grown up?”
He stood and stormed to the door, but he stopped and looked back over his shoulder, the light bouncing off his angled cheekbones, his day-old scruff dusting his jaw, adding to the dark, moody look he emanated, despite being the polar opposite.
“You know, we’ve been friends for years and I love you, Jas, but sometimes I don’t have a clue what you’re thinking.”
And with that, he stepped outside, letting the scorching heat leak into the air-conditioned space as I mumbled, “You and me both.”