Below Zero (The STEMinist Novellas #3) by Ali Hazelwood

            I’m still confused, scared, hungry, and guilty. But when I glance up at Ian, maybe I feel a little less cold.



* * *



            • • •

            It’s just a sprain, I’m pretty sure. But as far as sprains go, this is a bad one.

            Ian is true to his promises and manages to get me out of the crevasse in barely a couple of minutes, but the instant I’m on the surface, I try to limp around, and . . . it’s not looking good. My foot touches the ground and pain spears through my entire body like lightning.

            “Fu—” I press a hand against my lips, trying to hide my gasp in the fabric of my gloves, struggling to keep upright. I’m pretty sure that the loud swishing of the wind swallows my whimper, but there isn’t much I can do to help the tears flooding my eyes.

            Thankfully, Ian is too busy collecting the rope to notice. “I’ll just need a second,” he says, and I welcome the reprieve. He might have just rescued me from becoming a polar bear’s dessert, but for some reason I hate the idea of him seeing me all weepy and weak. Okay, fine: I needed saving, and maybe I don’t look like much at the moment. But my pain threshold is usually pretty high, and I’ve never been a whiner. I don’t want to give Ian any reason to believe otherwise.

            Except.

            Except that those two lonely tears have opened the floodgates. Behind me, Ian loads his climbing gear into his backpack, his movements practiced and economical, and I . . . I cannot bring myself to offer any help. I just stand awkwardly, trying to spare my throbbing ankle, on one foot, like a flamingo. My cheeks are hot and wet in the falling snow, and I look down at my stupid crevasse thinking that until a minute ago—until Ian Fucking Floyd—it was going to be the last place I saw. The last slice of sky.

            And just like that, a rushing terror punches through me. It knocks out the fabricated quiet of my Martian ocean, and the sheer magnitude of what nearly happened, of all the things I love that I would have missed out on if Ian hadn’t come for me, sweeps through my brain like a rake.

            Dogs. Three a.m. in the summer. Sadie and Mara being absolute idiots, and me laughing at them. Hiking trips, kiwi iced tea, that Greek restaurant I never got around to trying, elegant code, the next season of Stranger Things, really good sex, a Nature publication, seeing humans on Mars, the ending of A Song of Ice and Fire—

            “We need to be on our way before the storm gets worse,” Ian says. “Are you—”

            Ian looks at me, and I don’t even try to hide my face. I’m well past that. When he comes closer, a dark frown on his face, I let him hold my eyes, lift my chin with his fingers, inspect my cheeks. His expression shifts from urgent, to worried, to understanding. I draw in a breath that turns into a gulp. The gulp, to my horror, morphs into a sob. Two. Three. Five. And then . . .

            Then I’m just a fucking mess. Blubbering pitifully, like a child, and when a warm, heavy body wraps around me and grips me tightly, I offer no resistance.

            “I’m sorry,” I murmur into the nylon of Ian’s jacket. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I— I have no clue what’s wrong with me, I—” It’s just that I hadn’t known. Down in the crevasse, I was able to pretend it wasn’t happening. But now that I’m out, and I don’t feel numb anymore, it’s all flooding back, and I cannot stop seeing them, all the things, all the things that I almost—

            “Shh.” Ian’s hands feel impossibly large as they move up and down my back, cupping my head, stroking my snow-damp hair where it spills from under the hat. We are in the icy middle of a storm, but this close to him, I feel almost peaceful. “Shh. It’s okay.”

            I cling to him. He lets me sob for long moments we cannot afford, pressing me against him with no air between us, until I can feel his heartbeat through the thick layers of our clothes. Then he mumbles “Fucking Merel” with barely restrained fury, and I think that it would be so easy to blame things on Merel, but the truth is, it’s all my fault.

            When I lean back to tell him, he cups my face. “We really need to go. I’ll carry you to the coast. I have a light brace for your ankle, just to avoid messing it up even more.”

            “The coast?”

            “My boat is less than an hour away.”

            “Your boat?”

            “Come on. We have to get going before more snow falls.”