“I’ve got you.”
I believed that meant more than just keeping me safe.
Twenty Three
Callan
The next morning I’d already done my rounds through the building, checking the generator levels, making sure the pumps still ran where we needed them, confirming the doors we’d chained hadn’t been touched. The power grid went down two days ago. The moment the city lights vanished across the horizon, the entire aquarium ran on generators.
I’d worked out a rotation system the night before—shutting down the main tanks for a few hours each night to conserve fuel while the fish could tolerate the temporary drop in filtration. Not ideal, but it bought us time, and time had become everything now.
Sloan was making coffee on the stove when I entered the cafeteria. The smell hit me immediately, and I felt a blip of joy at the simple pleasure of it.
“Hey,” I said.
The word came easily now, comfortable in a way it never had before. The tension that had always lived between us—the old workplace friction, the constant clashing, the years of pretending we didn’t get under each other’s skin for reasons neither of us wanted to examine—had burned away over the past few days.
We still had that strange routine, though, and nights turned into something else entirely.
But mornings? Mornings we slipped right back into what looked a lot like coworkers again, only this time we were nice and could get along.
Neither of us ever mentioned it: the way the dark changed things between us, or the way her body fit against mine as if it had always belonged there, or the sounds she made when I… I pulled myself from my thoughts. We seemed to be pretending none of it happened, and honestly, that worked for right now.
Sloane turned and held out a cup of coffee toward me.
I stepped forward to take it.
“Thanks.”
I was surprised when she closed the distance between us and leaned in, pressing a quick, soft kiss against my lips—a light peck. Nothing dramatic, nothing like that night.
Still—
My brain short-circuited.
Every nerve in my body fired at once, and I stood there holding a cup of coffee like a man who’d forgotten how his own hands worked.
Shit.
I cleared my throat and took a sip, as if that might somehow reset whatever had just happened inside my chest.
Sloane didn’t seem embarrassed, though. If anything, she looked thoughtful, as if she’d made the decision deliberately and intended to see how it went.
I forced myself to focus.
“Uh… I wanted to talk to you about something.”
She leaned back against the counter, crossing her arms.
“Sounds serious.”
“Long-term serious.”
That caught her attention. Her eyebrows lifted.
“Okay?”
I pulled out one of the folded marina maps we’d been studying and spread it across the cafeteria table, smoothing the creases flat with my palm.