A D R I A N

My lungs come back like someone’s turned on a faucet, ragged, panicked, too loud in the hollow of the cave. Smoke, salt, and metal coat my throat. For a breath, I’m stupid with need, only knowing I have to keep her warm, keep her breathing. I cup her cheek and force her eyes open the way you force a stubborn lock.

Then light floods the cave mouth and the world tilts into motion: boots, ropes, clipped orders. Ethan’s voice is everywhere at once, taut, efficient. The rescue team moves like a machine. Hands smelling of diesel and rope grab our shoulders, lift, shove, strap us into a harness that jerks like a panicked animal.

I curl around her without thinking. My back becomes a shield, my chest the bunker she presses into. For one ridiculous, private second I forget the resort, the boardroom, the cameras. All I know is the weight and warmth of her against me.

A strobe pops with bright, cruel and something in the air snaps: lenses at the cliff mouth. One flash, then a dozen. Shutter clicks ricochet like pebbles. Even half-conscious, she flinches, and I clamp down, pulling her tighter into my ribs. Better me than the world, I think with the oldest certainty.

Paramedics move quickly, practiced. “Hypothermia, moderate. Keep them covered. Get wet clothes off. Warm packs now.” Their words rise above surf and phone recording. A photographer, greedy and close, snaps the silhouette: two bodies huddled in firelight, one broad back, one smaller, crumpled form. That frame alone will run ten headlines by sunrise.

“Move them over the rocks, slowly!” Ethan barks. “Keep your eyes on the cliff. Limit exposure.” For a second his cadence strips away the rank. Not the chief but something closer to a brother, raw and furious

They haul us up, ropes dragging us like flags into daylight. Wind strips at my shirt, salt at our skin.

When we breach the cliff rim and the sun slams into our faces, the world explodes in sound: a hundred phones, a hundred voices. For a heartbeat the press, the rescue crews, the staff all orbit us like planets. And I want nothing more than to bury her beneath me and keep the light from seeing what’s between us.

The headline won’t be about hypothermia protocol or the boy we saved. It’ll be the silhouette. The island “involved.” She was compromised. My family is twisting it until the truth looks staged.

They lay blankets on the cliff plateau. My hands shake, iron-hard. I peel off her soaked layers with the gentleness of someone who knows the boundary between help and harm. She’s half-gone, teeth chattering, pupils wide and glassed. Every second her eyes stay open is a victory.

Photographers angle up the path, lenses long and hungry. Marina materializes at the rim, sunhat shading a smile that’s a threat. Tablet already open, fingers flying. I know her face too well, it’s damage control. That smile says: frame this without losing the brand.

“Adrian,” she calls, too buoyant. “Statement?”

The reflex rises like in the boardroom voice, the half-apology that cleans up disasters and sells insurance. I clamp it down. This isn’t optics. This is life or death.

Ethan plants himself between us, broad as a wall. “Clear the path. No access beyond this point.” His jaw is iron. The photographers retreat, leashed by fear of litigation.

Elara blinks, lashes trembling. I speak like a man who’s only ever known how to love by giving orders. “Stay with me,” I murmur. “Don’t slip.” It’s not a command but a plea.

She tries for a word. Her jaw locks. And because I’m selfish, I need to believe it’s me she fights for. Her pupils find mine, and for a fraction of a second the cliff, the cameras, the world vanish. There’s only the heat of her fingers and the taste of salt on my lips.

A tech kneels with warm packs and a parka. Blankets drape. We’re lifted toward the waiting RIB. Everyone moves with clinical efficiency. My chest pounds, not from exertion but from the knowledge this is the moment consequences harden.

By dawn, the cave is a toothache memory. The resort looks like it’s been promised to the sun. Lanterns sag on their lines, but they hold no glow for me. Medics hand off paperwork: incident reports, patient tags, recommended observation. A nurse pushes thermoses of something hot and sweet. I sip like it’s contraband.

They rush us to shore, medics shouting vitals as stretchers clatter onto the dock. The world narrows to heat packs, IV lines, the blur of lights on the boardwalk. I don’t remember how long it takes—only that when I next look up, the sun is cresting and she’s already being wheeled into the clinic.

By dawn, the cave is a toothache memory. The resort looks like it’s been promised to the sun. Lanterns sag on their lines, but they hold no glow for me. Medics hand off paperwork: incident reports, patient tags, recommended observation. A nurse wheels in thermoses of something hot and sweet. I sip like it’s contraband.

Elara sleeps in the clinic, her mouth curved in the faintest smile, as if she’s dreaming of warmth. Her phone rests on my desk where she left it. I watch the rise and fall of her chest and admit I don’t understand the parts of myself that go tender around her. I am heir, operator, ledger-keeper. Not a man meant to learn softness. And yet I do.

Marina appears as if conjured, ledger half-open, eyes calculating. “We’ll need a statement,” she says briskly. “Reassurance. Quick release. Heroine doctor saves the day, Valcrosse safety audit.”

“No.” My voice lands with the finality I use in boardrooms. She blinks, algorithm misfiring.

Instead I take the purchase order she thrusts at me. I sign. Then another. AEDs. Backups. EpiPens in stacks. Antivenom vials, spare oxygen cylinders, thermal blankets smelling of plastic and first aid. I sign until my hand cramps.

“Supply chain says deliveries can’t be overnighted—”

“We make them overnight,” I cut in. “Charge the account. No arguments.”

It isn’t strategy. It’s obsession, the only way I know how to keep her safe.

Ethan arrives with the post-rescue report. “Skiff got pinned. Deckhand injured, treated. No permanent damage. You and the doctor—” He hesitates.

“Yes?”

“You went in. Together.”

The words land like a verdict. Not for cameras, not for PR. Proof written in bone: we were in the dark together. He expects me to shrug. Instead I curl my fingers tight. “Good. We’ll make sure it never happens again.”

Her phone buzzes on my desk. At first, just an annoyance. I pick it up to silence it and the screen blooms with private things: unread messages, a photo of Elara and Mara in a hospital break room, Mara’s contact labeled SISTER. I don’t mean to read. Just to set it on do-not-disturb.

But the preview flashes before I can swipe: Don’t let him make you small.

The words land like a knife. I feel them differently than any outsider would. Someone else knows her the way I don’t. Someone not afraid to say what must be said to keep her whole.

I turn the phone over slowly, like it might bite.

There it is—the thread I’ve avoided. The way I clamp down when fear prowls close. Do I make her small by trying to protect? By taking charge? By turning instinct into dictate? The cameras warned me how the photograph would read. Mara’s text warns me how my protection might feel to the woman beneath my jacket.

I stand very still in the clinic’s quiet while the island wakes and morning leaks gold across the boardwalk. Orders filed, deliveries scheduled, drills arranged. Everything done.

And yet the text is a fresh wound. Don’t let him make you small.

I read it again. I don’t know if it’s a warning about me, or about the men who came before me. I don’t know if it’s accusation. I only know the heat in my chest when I imagine myself through her sister’s eyes: a man who shields too hard, decides too much, for a woman who has fought her whole life to be seen.

I slide the phone to the desk’s center so it faces her. When she wakes, it will be the first thing she sees. Not my voice telling her how to feel, but one line from someone who loves her enough to say the hard thing.

I sit on the stool across from her cot and watch her sleep, like a man learning how to be still. Learning the difference between protection and possession.

Dawn is patient. I have a long day of orders ahead. But Mara’s line sits like a stubborn promise I can’t ignore.