There’s no time to find out.
“Move, Hartwell. Suit up or we miss this.”
His fingers slip away, and he lunges into motion—only to wheel around. “What if the feed cuts out?”
I cross my arms, smirking. “Then I’ll fix it. Like I always do.”
Cole cuts across the deck as if his body wrote the plan and his brain’s playing catch-up. Layers fall away. Jacket gone. Shirt gone. Both discarded without a second thought.
He strides toward Sienna, shoulders rolling, muscles flexing, and my pulse stutters. His body moves like it was built for this. For action. For purpose.
He yanks up the neoprene of his wetsuit and—
Nuh-uh.
No time for the way my stomach drops. No room to remember what those hands did to me. And to the breath that just caught without my permission…Go away.
Focus up. The livestream is what matters. Everything else can wait.
I pivot on my heel, sliding into Blaze’s shot as though I own it. “I need the camera. I have an announcement to make.”
He clocks my tone, the urgency, and nods. “YO, YO! HOLD UP, SQUAD! Gonna bring in the brainiac who runs the whole Dare4Change show. This is Ivy.”
I take the rig and stare into the glass eye of the lens. My reflection gazes back, blurred by the wind as it hits me full force, salt stinging my lips. The ship sways under my feet, and I swear it’s trying to throw me off.
Good luck with that, ocean.
“Someone decided the Pacific was a landfill,” I tell the viewers. “They threw a washing machine into the water like it didn’t matter. And now, there’s a mother sea lion down there who might die.”
My throat tightens. I keep talking.
“People like Dr. Alvarez. Dr. Echols. The team you’re watching on screen? They don’t ignore it. They don’t scroll past it or pretend it’s not their problem. They risk their lives to clean up the reckless damage others have left behind.”
I adjust the camera slightly, capturing Sienna, Orson, and the entire Saltwater Saviors rescue crew in motion, working as a well-oiled machine.
“If you wonder where your money goes, this is it. This is what saving something looks like. In a second, the sound will cut out from this stream. The camera can follow Dr. Alvarez underwater. The microphone can’t.”
The pup lets out a jagged, lung-tearing cry that saws through my heart.
I turn and face the lens, making a silent plea to the thousands of faces I can’t see.
“Stay. Please,” I say. “And if we lose the feed, be ready. We’ll go live again. This team needs our support as they fight for one life in a very big ocean. Your donations are every ounce of this fight, every second of hope.”
Blaze rubs the base of his neck. “Yeah. What she said.”
I carry the rig to Cole. He’s fully suited up and ready. Sienna is masked beside him, unafraid, checking her regulator with cold efficiency.
I hold out the camera. Cole takes it.
He checks the housing seal twice and then presses his mask into place, the strap snug against his temples. He pins me with a look. No performance. No angle. Just Cole, the wetsuit moldingto his hard frame, the open sea stretching out behind him. Wild and waiting.
“Be careful,” I say.
“Hey, if I drown, you’ll get the promotion,” he quips.
I glare at him. “Still not funny.”
“Don’t worry, Stopwatch. I’m not done losing to you yet,” he says, his smirk cut short as he slots in his mouthpiece. Through his mask, his eyes hold mine for a suspended second.
