A D R I A N

The storm burns itself out, leaving only the hiss of retreating waves and the ragged rhythm of her breathing.

We made it inside one of the sea caverns near the east cliffs. Salt smoke and damp air cling to us; driftwood pops in the small fire I forced to life. Every flicker reveals her, knees drawn tight to her chest, hair plastered to her cheek like seaweed threads. Alive.

For a long time, I just watched her breathe.

“Easy,” I say finally, voice low enough not to wake the echoes. “You’re safe.”

Her eyes open, gray-green, too bright in the dim. “Barely,” she murmurs.

“Barely counts.” I kneel beside her, checking the pulse at her wrist. Strong. Warm. A goddamn miracle. “You scared me.”

A faint, rasping laugh. “Occupational hazard.”

“Seems we share one.”

Color still hasn’t returned to her face. I shrug out of my jacket and wrap it around her shoulders. She doesn’t argue this time. The small surrender hits harder than the storm.

“Deckhand’s stable,” I say to fill the silence. “Ethan’s watching him near the entrance.”

She nods, gaze fixed on the fire like it’s another patient that needs her hands.

I should leave her to rest. Instead, I sit beside her, shoulder brushing hers. Heat seeps through the jacket, a reminder of how close I came to losing everything. Losing her.

“You always do that,” I say before I can stop myself.

Her eyes lift, wary. “Do what?”

“Command chaos like it owes you respect.” My voice comes out rougher than I mean. “Even drowning, you gave orders. Everyone listened.”

She exhales, bitter. “It’s called doing my job.”

“No,” I murmur. “It’s called bleeding quietly.”

That startles her. Her eyes flick toward mine, unguarded, raw. For a heartbeat, her armor falters. I see the tremor in her hands, the swallow she can’t hide. She turns back to the fire, but I know the signs of a crack.

“You can drop it, Quinn,” I say softly. “The competence act. No one’s watching.”

“I don’t act,” she snaps, but her voice breaks halfway through.

“You do.” My tone is gentle. “I recognize the sound. I’ve been doing it all my life.”

The flames gutter and surge, painting her face in fractured gold, wet lashes, salt-crusted lips, the faint tremor of exhaustion she tries to hide.

She looks ready to tell me to go to hell. Instead, she whispers, “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“Then tell me.”

Her silence stretches. Outside, the surf breathes in the dark, slow and cruel.

When she finally speaks, her voice is glass breaking.
“I killed someone. Or I let him die. I still can’t tell which.”

The words drop between us like a live wire.

“What happened?” I ask quietly.

“Code blue. New York Presbyterian. Trauma bay three.” Her tone is clipped, clinical. “The resident ignored protocol, ignored me. I told him the airway was collapsing. He said I was panicking. Patient coded. We lost him.”

Her fingers drag through her hair, leaving streaks of salt on her temple. “They called it inevitable. I called it arrogance. The attending backed him. I wrote the report anyway.”

I can hear the fight she’s still losing years later.

“After that,” she continues, voice breaking softer now, “every time I tried to save someone, I heard that monitor. That flat tone.” She glances at me then, eyes rimmed red. “So yeah, Valcrosse. I bleed quietly.”

The storm outside feels smaller than the one inside her.

I reach for her hand. She doesn’t pull away. Her fingers are cold but alive beneath mine. “You didn’t kill him,” I say. “Negligence did.”

She shakes her head. “I was there. That’s enough.”

“Being there isn’t guilt,” I say. “It’s proof you fought for him.”

Her laugh is brittle. “You make it sound noble.”

“It was.”

Silence hums between us, alive, heavy, unspoken things burning through the air. The fire cracks, sparks dying before they reach the stone. Her eyes shimmer in the glow, and the space between us closes by degrees, not with words, but gravity.

I lift her hand and press it against my chest. “You hear that?”

She nods faintly.

“That’s what you saved tonight. The deckhand. The rest of us. Me.”

Her breath catches. “You would’ve found another doctor.”

“No.” It comes out rough. “There’s no other you.”

The air thickens again, charged, not with fear this time, but the same pulse that nearly destroyed us in the last cave.

Her gaze drifts to my mouth. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I might believe you.”

I shift closer until her knees brush my thigh. The movement earns me a shiver, a sharp inhale. I stop there, close enough to feel her breath, far enough to let her decide.

“Then believe me,” I say.

Her eyes flutter shut. For a heartbeat, she leans in, then stops, trembling with the effort not to. “Adrian…”

I answer by touching her cheek, tracing the salt along her jaw. The contact is feather-light, but it burns through me. She turns into it, finally exhaling the breath she’s held since the storm.

Every instinct I own wants to close the distance. Instead, I let the tension live, alive and unbearable. Her pulse beats under my thumb.

When she speaks again, it’s a whisper against my mouth. “You always want control.”

“Maybe,” I admit. “But not from you.”

That opens her eyes, wide, startled. The sound she makes is somewhere between a laugh and a sob. She presses her forehead to mine, and for one impossible second, the whole world narrows to that single touch.

Her breath warms my lips. “You make it hard to hate you.”

“That’s progress.”

She huffs a small laugh and pulls back just enough to look at me. The firelight dances in her pupils, painting them molten. “Don’t let this make you soft, Valcrosse.”

“Too late.”

We sit there, close enough to feel each other’s shivers, saying nothing more. Outside, the ocean murmurs against the cliffs, gentle at last.

She starts to speak again, but stops, eyes caught on something beyond me. “Adrian… what is that?”

I turn. At first, I thought it’s lightning, but lightning doesn’t linger. A red bloom cuts through the horizon, too steady, too deliberate.

A flare.

It arcs once above the sea, then falls. Another follows, closer, painting the rock face in crimson flashes.

Ethan’s voice echoes from deeper in the cave. “Signal?”

“No,” I say, already rising. My pulse spikes. “That’s not from us.”

The next flash throws a shadow across the water, wide, unfamiliar. A boat? A lure?

Elara stands, jacket slipping from her shoulders. “Someone’s out there.”

“Or something,” I answer.

The third flare bursts higher, near the cliffs we crossed before dawn. Red light cuts across her face, turning her into a ghost carved in fire.

She swallows. “What do we do?”

“Find out who’s calling for help.” I grab the half-fried radio. Static hisses back, but beneath it, a faint pulse, like a heartbeat trying to be heard.

Elara’s eyes reflect the crimson sky. “That’s near the outer caves.”

I meet her gaze. “Then we’re not done surviving yet.”

The flare hangs in the sky one last heartbeat before dying, smoke trailing like a wound across the dark.

Elara’s hand brushes mine, steady, but shaking. “Whoever sent that,” she says, “they’re close.”

The wind shifts, carrying a sound, metal scraping rock. A single echo that doesn’t belong to the sea.

I tighten my grip on the useless radio, eyes on the horizon.
“Then neither are we.”