Page 27 of Austen

“The bends.”

“Yeah.We needed financing for our search, so Margo hooked us up with a guy named Alvaro Cortez.He was a rabid collector of wreck artifacts and financed a trip to the Silver Bank to search for the statue.Even gave us DPVs—diver propulsion vehicles.”

“I’ve seen those.”

She finished her cocoa, sat cross-legged on the sofa, the bathrobe tucked over her.“We shouldn’t have dived that day.The current was too strong.But we had the DPVs, so we thought we’d be fine...”

A moment passed, and another as she tried to shake out of the grip of watching?—

“Our DPV batteries died.Dead in the water, a hundred feet down.And the current had really carried us out.We had to ditch the DPVs and swim back, and that’s when Margo realized that she’d drained too much of her air—more than I had.The seal on her tank had malfunctioned, and we had to buddy breathe.Except, with all the exertion of swimming, I’d drained more air than usual too.”She met his eyes, fierce, rapt, horrified.“By the time we got to our deco stop, my air had nearly drained out.”

She ran a finger under her eye, caught a tear.

He swallowed, then uncrossed his legs and leaned toward her.“You don’t have to?—”

“I do.I’ve never really...Even Margo’s brother Mo doesn’t know the details.Doesn’t know that she looked at my low O2, dropped her emergency octo, and quick ascended to the surface.”

“She did that to save your air.”

Austen nodded.“Worst seven minutes of my life—the deco stop at sixty feet and the safety stop at fifteen.By the time I got aboard the boat, they had her on the deck, and she’d gone into a sort of paralytic state, her brain fighting the air pocket.Cortez called in a chopper evac from Key West, but they...by the time they got her into a deco chamber, she was brain dead.”

She’d said it without curling into a ball, and that was an improvement.Still, her eyes, already chapped by the salty ocean, throbbed, raw.

And that’s when Declan got up and came over to sit by her.

Oh no.

Butyes,because he sat next to her, then put his arms around her and pulled her to himself, and just like before when he’d yanked her from the water, she let herself lean in.

A beautiful, transitory moment when the grief couldn’t wash her out to sea.

“You dive to honor her,” he said quietly.“I get that.”

She pushed away then, looked at him.He wore a softness in his gaze.“You do?”

“I did mention that my boat was sort of named after my mother, right?”He smiled.

See?A guy who talked about his mother in such a way couldn’t be an underworld criminal.

“Did Cortez take any responsibility for his faulty equipment?”

“No.He said it was an accident, but I would have never gone down in that current if he hadn’t guaranteed that the DPVs were safe.”

Declan smelled good, the scent of the sea on his skin, and kept his arm on the sofa behind her.Close.Protective.

“I never trusted him.He seemed too driven by the treasure.”She didn’t meet Declan’s eyes when she said it, in case it felt too pointed.

But Declan wasn’t like that.Really.He would never put his agenda over someone’s safety.

“When did she die?”

“Four years ago.And yes, I know that terrible accidents while diving happen, but?—”

“But she died to save you.”

She looked at him then and gave a tight nod, her throat thick.

“There’s no time limit on grief, Austen.”A strand of her hair had come loose in the wind, and he caught it and tucked it behind her ear.

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