Page 38 of The Captain
“Someone accused you of—” The word wouldn’t come. I am a woman who says pulmonary hemorrhage at breakfast and writes perimortem in ink. Yet, I couldn’t make that one move through my teeth.
“I know what she said,” he answered, softer. “It’s a lie.”
Wind battered the zipper of his duffel and made it clack. Atlas’s detail sat up on the access road, silhouettes behind glass. I had a ridiculous thought—Did they see? Would this go in some report that put my name next to Jacob’s under a heading that got people fired?
“They’re waiting for you at the facility,” he said when I didn’t speak, as if he knew I needed a reason to flee that wasn’t him. “Go. I’ll—figure this out.”
It would have been easier if he’d blustered or begged. He did neither. He stood there with the ocean panting behind him and let me decide.
“Camille.” He said my name the way he had in the tent—ka-MEE, vowels careful, reverent. “Just don’t runfrom me.”
My throat clenched. “I’m not running,” I lied.
Damn this.
Miami had been easy. Heat and straight lines. Water that told you what it was going to do and then did it. Charleston always seemed to find the burr under my skin.
For half a breath I pictured the airport—throwing wet clothes in a duffel, texting Becca that she had incident command, Tamika taking comms, Miguel minding the logs. They would keep the animals alive. The Navy could talk to its own reflection. I could go back to the place where I felt comfortable.
Except, I had started to like Jacob. Not just the heat. The steadiness. I’d let my guard slip. Given him my number. Let myself want more than a couple of nights.
Tiny daydreams crept in. Coffee on my porch swing. His quiet at my shoulder after a hard day. His name on my phone with flirty texts and sappy voicemails.
It was premature. I knew that.
But the wanting had already taken root, and ripping it out hurt.
Within the span of a minute, the impulse to leave Charleston flared and died.Coward, something in me said. Or maybe justnot you.
That didn’t mean I was staying on this beach.
I turned and climbed the dune like a woman walking out of a rip—sideways, stubborn, refusing to let the water pull me. Each step felt like it should leave more of a mark than sand could hold. At the top, I almost looked back. If I did, I knew what I’d see—him in the bright, unforgiving light, something like disbelief and something like understanding both on his face.
I didn’t look.
In the SUV, my hands shook hard enough that I had to sit on them. The radio on the dash blinked the quiet channel Ryker had given me, patient as a dog. I stared at my phone until my eyes blurred, then focused on the words I understood.
Night crew:Resp 22. Lactate steady. Kogia quiet. All’s well.
All’s well. I latched on to the lie and drove.
The road back to the facility cut through marsh that glittered like a thousand small, mean truths. The world smelled like hot grass and tide and something burning on a far pier. I breathed like he told me to because breath is a habit, not a promise.
Don’t jump to conclusions. Don’t make an enemy because it feels righteous. Don’t bring a mess into a room that is supposed to be clean.
He could be anyone. A Marine. A liar. A man who saved a child and got slapped for it. A man with a history he hadn’tshared. A man I had let inside my body and into the parts of my brain I keep iron-gated. All true and not enough.
The facility gates yawned. The air inside was different, curated—iodine, bleach, wet rubber, the particular breath of water that has decided to be helpful today. It calmed a layer of me I hadn’t known was screaming.
“Doc?” Miguel clocked my face and didn’t ask anything stupid. “We’re good. Bottlenose held his line. Kogia blink response is cleaner. Becca swapped slings. Tamika’s on donors.”
“Where’s the log?” I said, voice too steady.
He handed me the clipboard. Becca slid out of the pen aisle, eyes soft. “Hey.”
“Don’t,” I said before I could help it, and winced at what I heard in me—fear that came out as sharp.
She nodded once, took three steps back, and turned to busy herself with the cooler labels. The kindness of it almost knocked me over.
