Page 4 of Better than Yesterday
Wasn’t it?
The marina on the west side of Dove Key was thecomplete opposite of my beige townhouse. It was a chaotic slice of life and work. The air smelled of diesel, salt, and the faint, briny scent of low tide. Gulls wheeled and screamed overhead, their cries mingling with the groan of ropes against pilings and the slap of water against a hundred hulls. This was an authentic mess. I loved it.
I smiled at a restaurant sign as I passed. The Salty Pelican—only a ramshackle tavern in the Keys could get away with a name like that. My research vessel,Seahorse, was a sturdy, no-frills twenty-eight-footer, more workhorse than show pony. She wasn’t pretty, but she was stable, and her deck had been refitted to accommodate our gear. My two research assistants, Kaia Marsden and Zane Peterson, were already on board, their chatter a welcome sound. Kaia, a frighteningly ambitious doctoral candidate with long brown hair, was securing a series of specimen containers. Zane, a post-doc with laser-focused intensity and a penchant for grimly quoting statistics about coral bleaching, was double-checking the dive gear.
“Morning, boss,” Kaia chirped, flashing me a grin.
“Dr. Donovan,” Zane said with a curt, respectful nod. HisLife is GoodT-shirt and board shorts belied his serious demeanor.
“Morning,” I replied, swinging my gear bag onto the deck with a practiced motion. “Let’s calibrate the multi-parameter sonde. I want to get our baseline readings at the first transect point before the tide turns.”
This was my sanctuary. Here, I wasn’t Lucinda and Richard Donovan’s daughter, the promising academic on a path to greatness. I was just a scientist. My hands were sure and steady as I moved over the sensitive equipment. I connected waterproof cables and ran diagnostic tests on the laptop, the lines of code and data fields a language I understood better than my mother’s coded praise. This wasreal. There were no mixed signals here, no parental expectations. Just data. Just the truth of the water.
I made a final adjustment in the software, my mind already ten steps ahead, planning our dive pattern for the day. I squinted at the laptop, a frown tightening my mouth. The diagnostic for the sensor array was still showing a connection error.
“Zane, are you sure the sensor array is seated correctly?” I called out, my focus locked on the blinking red icon. “We’re not getting a handshake.”
“I’m trying,” he said from the dock. “This thing is always finicky. Give me a second.”
With a sigh of frustration, I pushed back from the console. “It just needs a little finesse. I got it.”
I swung my legs over the side ofSeahorseand landed lightly on the dock, kneeling by the power conduit where Zane was struggling with a thick, insulated cable. Dimly, I heard the low rumble of something rolling on the dock behind me. I gently nudged his hands aside. “You have to angle it just so, then listen for the click.”
My fingers found the familiar grooves of the connector, and with a practiced twist, it slid home with a satisfyingthunk. The light on the port flickered from red to a steady green.
“Nice!” he said, already hopping back on board.
I stood up, already thinking about the next task, and made eye contact with Kaia on the boat. “Okay, now we can start the data stream?—”
I took a step backward without looking, and my heel collided with something solid and unyielding that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“Hey! Look out!” a deep voice shouted, immediately followed by a deafening metallic crash that echoed across the entire marina. The percussive, rolling thunder of aheavy cylinder bounced across the wooden dock. The cheerful noise of busy people turned to marked silence.
In a moment of perfect clarity, I registered three facts. One: I was the cause of this disaster. Two: Everyone around me had stopped to watch the spectacle. And three: This was not how I wanted to start my morning.
Turning around, I prepared to face the music. A man was frozen mid-stride behind a hand truck that was now one keg lighter. The escaped silver cylinder of stainless steel had finally come to rest inches from the dock’s edge, a monument to my carelessness. A hot, sickening wave of mortification flooded my body. I was supposed to be the serious, lead scientist from Scripps, not the clumsy fool who caused a public disturbance before 9:00 a.m. I faced the man, my mouth forming an apology, but the words died in my throat.
Time warped, thickened like the humid air. The background noise of the marina faded to a dull, distant roar.
Braden Coleridge stood in front of me.
My brain struggled to reconcile the image in front of me with the one I held in my memory. The boy I left behind had been a lanky, sun-streaked teenager with a rebellious grin and an easy, almost lazy charm. The man before me was solid. Broad-shouldered in a dark blue T-shirt that stretched across his chest. His arms were defined, roped with muscle that spoke of hard work. His light brown hair was cut shorter, neater, but his eyes were the same—a startling, brilliant blue that now held the same utter stupefaction that had to be in mine.
Twelve years of academic achievements and professional distance crumbled to dust. Braden stared at me, his shock evident in the slight parting of his lips, in the way his gaze swept over my face as if he were trying to solve a complex puzzle.
It was too much.
The horrifying astonishment.
The gut-wrenching awareness of years of unspoken history hanging in the air between us. My body reacted before my mind could. I took a huge, involuntary step backward, anything to put distance between us.
My foot found nothing but air.
For a split second, I felt weightless surprise, and then the world tilted violently. The murky, green-brown water of the marina rushed up to surround me in a shocking, full-body slap that stole my breath. I flailed, my head breaking the surface as I sputtered, my hair plastered to my face. The salt and bilge-filled water filled my ears. I could hear muffled, startled shouts from the dock above as I treaded water.
A large, strong hand clamped around my forearm.
“Gotcha,” Braden said from somewhere above me.
