Chapter 1
Birdie
“He still owes me fifty bucks.”
Crosby doesn’t look up from the grill, his voice dry and seemingly uninterested. “You’ll have to be more specific, Roberta.”
“Roberta? Really?” I snarl. I’ve known since I was six that Roberta is definitely not my style.
My brother shoots me a sly grin. “Sorry… but a lot of people owe you money, so please tell me who you’re talking about.” Another grin, this one more devious. “Birdie.”
Pacified by his use of my preferred nickname, I snap at him, “Your idiot best friend.” I swear, the man can be so dense sometimes. “Remember… Beezo’s birthday. Winnipeg, four years ago. Arch bet me he could hold his breath longer than I could.”
I let that hang in the December air, which would ordinarily be too chilly for us to sit out here, but Crosby’s got the deck heaters going, and it’s quite toasty.
“I breathe professionally for a living,” I remind him. “I’ve breathed at a thousand feet below the surface with a helmet bolted to my head, and your best friend looked me in the eye and wagered actual currency that his lungs were better than mine.”
Idiot move and a sucker bet to boot.
Crosby snickers but doesn’t reply. He never takes the bait when I go after his buddy.
“How’d that go for Arch?” Juno asks from the patio chair opposite mine, wearing an oversized flannel that’s unmistakably my brother’s.
Juno is Crosby’s better half, and I love her to death. She’s an award-winning documentary filmmaker embedded with the Portland Wildfire for their first hockey season and now firmly embedded in my brother’s heart.
It’s a love story that overcame all the obstacles, as my little brother’s a man who guards his privacy like the US government guards its nuclear codes. I watched as he went and fell for the one woman whose actual job was to disrupt said privacy, and I couldn’t be happier. It was a mess for a while as there’s no moral way to sleep with the subject of your own documentary, but they sorted it out and my brother came out the other side happy and in love.
Best of all, Juno engages with me when I try to throw Arch under the bus, even though he’s not here to defend himself.
“The fool lasted forty seconds,” I say to her smugly. “Turned the color of an eggplant and then tried to tell the entire party he’d won on a technicality.”
“The technicality was the fact that Arch can never pass up taking a bet with you,” Crosby says, pointing his tongs at me.
I roll my eyes. “Hockey players can be such dumb jocks.”
Which isn’t true at all.
My brother’s the star goalie for the Portland Wildfire and one of the smartest men I know.
And begrudgingly, I’ll admit… Arch is no dummy either.
Except when he accepts a bet or dare from me, which he always seems to do, and he always seems to lose.
A fire pops merrily in the outdoor fireplace. It’s the kind of Portland night that can’t decide if it wants to downpour or sprinkle, but right now a fine mist hangs in the air, making the up-lit backyard look mystical. Crosby’s got the grill going under the eave with a rack of ribs he’s been fussing over for two hours due to his patented “low and slow” method and Juno and I are relaxing while he cooks.
It makes me all warm and fuzzy because this is what my brother does now. He grills. He owns a home with a covered deck and a fireplace he can turn on from an app. He’s got a woman in his flannel who looks at him like he invented the sport of hockey.
Two months ago, I’d have told you Crosby Hale would die alone in a house full of unopened moving boxes and now look at him.
I couldn’t be happier.
“You want a real drink?” he asks Juno, wiping his hands on a towel tossed over his shoulder. “I’m making the good ones.”
“The ones with the smoked ice?”
Crosby moves to Juno, bends to kiss her on the head. “For you, any drink you want.”
I can’t help but smile. “Smoked ice?” I ask.
Juno’s attention slides to me as Crosby ducks inside. “There’s an actual torch involved.”
“Seems like magical mojo.”
“I think it’s just basic science.” She laughs.
My eyes stray to the patio door he disappeared through. “The man has layers.”
“So many layers,” she murmurs, her eyes locked on the same door as if longing for him to come back. But she seems to catch herself and turns her attention to me, pulling her legs up underneath. “So… you don’t have much longer until you journey to the bottom of the ocean.”
“I’m so excited. No offense to you and Crosby, but I’m itching to get going.”
Juno smiles in understanding. “Our adventurous Birdie. Always looking for the next thrill.”
My heart squeezes with pleasure at the way she says our.
Like I belong to her now too.
Normally, I’m a solitary creature by nature and my career makes it even more so. As a saturation diver, I live in a compression chamber for weeks at a time while I do incredibly dangerous work below the surface of the ocean. I don’t own a home, a car or a dog. I haul my two suitcases around and live with Crosby when I’m not working, but it’s only ever been a place to lay my head on a pillow until the next project.
“How does that even work?” Juno asks. “You get the call and you’ll just… leave? Poof?”
“Poof,” I agree. “But there’s a tentative departure date in nine days.”
In fact, there’s a flight already booked into Aberdeen, Scotland, a helicopter to fly me to the rig, a saturation chamber with my name on the manifest, and twenty-eight days of blessed, pressurized quiet where the only thing anyone wants from me is competence.
I love these people. I do.
Even my brother’s teammate and best friend, Arch, who’s like a second annoying brother I never knew I needed.
But I love them best with a return plane ticket in my back pocket. Everyone’s easier to hold close when you know exactly when you’re going to set them down.
“You’ll come back, though,” Juno says. “After.”
“I always come back.” I drain my beer. “And that’s the beauty of it because I’m very lovable in small doses.”
“Small, controlled doses,” Crosby says, reappearing with two glasses that are annoyingly gorgeous, smoke drifting from their mouths. “In fact, you’re like a vaccine.”
“Like a vaccine,” I agree with a chuckle. “You develop immunity and then I’m gone.”
Headlights swing across the front of the house and Crosby doesn’t even turn around. “Shocker… he’s late.”
I snort.
I’m not sure Arch Hewitt’s been on time for anything in his life. Well, he always seems to make the team plane for away trips, so there’s that.
A door slams, then from somewhere on the far side of the house, he calls out, “Hale! I’ve had the worst day of my entire life, and I need a beer and for you to whisper sweet nothings in my ear!”
“Back here!” Crosby yells, sliding the ribs off the grill. “And grab a beer from the fridge.”
Arch comes through the back patio doors, beer bottle in hand, and the first thing I notice is that he’s soaked.
Not damp from the misty rain but soaked. His hair’s sopping, his hoodie’s gone dark across the chest and shoulders, and he’s carrying a duffel bag that’s leaving a wet trail behind him.
He stops at the edge of the light… takes in the fire, the drinks, the ribs, the three of us dry and warm.
“Oh, this is nice,” he drawls, dropping the bag with a wet thwap. “This is really nice. I’m having a crisis and you people are having a cookout.”
“To which you were invited and are late,” Crosby mutters. “Are you hungry?”
“How can I be late when you haven’t eaten yet?” Arch replies, then takes a long pull from his beer. “And yes, I’m starved.” He sets his beer on the deck rail and peels the sopping hoodie over his head in one motion, and…
Okay.
There’s a thing that happens sometimes, and I want to be clear that it happens for only about three-quarters of a second before I put it into an imaginary box and drop the box into the deep imaginary ocean.
Arch is wearing a plain gray T-shirt that fits like a glove, and for that three-quarters of a second, my traitorous, sex-deprived brain registers the flat plane of his stomach, the cut of his arms and the way the cotton clings.
My brain whispers in awe, Oh… that’s nice. Very nice.
Then I remember, it’s Arch.
The same Arch who once ate a crayon on a dare in a hotel bar. The Arch who calls me Hale Junior, even though I’m older than Crosby, and I find it offensive. The annoying Arch who’s functionally my brother and has been circling my life for the last ten years as my brother’s best friend.
“Put your shirt back on. You’re offending the birds,” I quip, which is a stupid thing to say as he didn’t take his shirt off.
But I needed to say something with enough edge to push away the lewd thoughts flitting through my mind.
He looks down at himself, then at me, delighted. “You okay, Birdie? You look a little flushed.”
“It’s the fire.”
“It’s the beer,” Crosby says. “She’s on her third.”
“It’s neither,” I say with a wave of my hand. “Now tell us about your crisis so we can decide how much we care.”
Arch nabs his beer and flops into an empty chair directly under a toasty deck heater.
“So,” he says, lifting his bottle, “the apartment unit above me, occupied by some dude who travels for work and is never home… well, his water heater let go of life this afternoon. Just, gave up… all eighty gallons while he was in Denver.”
“Oh no,” Juno says, straightening.
“Oh yes. It came down through the ceiling of my bedroom, through the closet, into the living room. My mattress is a sponge and there’s a light fixture full of water hanging over my couch. The building guy, Marco, took one look and told me it’s a four-to-six-week job to fix. Apparently, they’ll have to rip out some walls, dry it all out, and bring in mold people.” Arch leans his head back and sighs. “Four to six weeks, and there’s no other unit open in the building I can move into.”
“Get a hotel,” I say.
“I will,” he says glumly. “The building manager offered to comp me for an extended-stay place. But extended hotel living? It’s gonna suck.”
I imagine it would suck for a man like him. Arch runs on ritual and comfort. His entire world is held together with hockey tape and superstition. He eats the same breakfast, drives the same route to the rink, and listens to the same three songs pregame. This is a man who needs stability and if he doesn’t have it, he unravels one thread at a time. It’s not pretty.
“A month in a hotel would end you,” I say with genuine empathy because as much as he annoys me at times, I care for the big dude.
Crosby flaps his tongs as he pulls more ribs off the grill. “Stay here.”
Arch shakes his head, immediate denial because he hates putting people out. “Nah.” He waves the beer again. “You’ve got…” He gestures vaguely at Juno, at the domestic little world she and my brother have built. “You two are just getting your thing going and Birdie’s here. You don’t need a fourth wheel rolling around. I’ll be fine in a hotel.”
“Dude… we’ve got five bedrooms, each with their own bathroom,” Crosby drawls. “Two of them have never had a human being sleep in them. You’ve stayed here before.”
“That was different. That was—”
“You have a toothbrush in one of the bathrooms right now,” Crosby cuts him off.
“That’s for emergencies.”
“You’ve got a gear bag that’s lived in my mudroom since October.”
“That’s for…” Arch stops and recalibrates. “Functionally, I don’t live here.”
“Functionally,” I say, “you have a toothbrush, a gear bag, and a favorite mug. Functionally is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, Hewitt.”
Juno laughs. “You really have a favorite mug? Which one?”
Arch lifts his chin with a devious grin. “The one that says WORLD’S OKAYEST GOALIE I bought for Crosby.”
“Smartass,” Crosby says affectionately, and we all laugh.
This is the thing about the three of us—four now, with Juno—that I forget when I’m in the water and someone asks if I get lonely living in such isolation. There’s a shorthand here… a rhythm you can only get from years of knowing and bonding with like-minded people. Crosby and Arch came up through Winnipeg together, two guys grinding the same brutal system, and then fortunately both were picked for Portland in the expansion draft.
Two besties—like brothers, really—starting a new adventure together.
They love each other, these two, in that aggressively macho male way men are allowed to, and frankly… it’s kinda beautiful. Arch’s the only person besides me who can get past my brother’s walls, and he does it by simply declining to acknowledge they exist.
Well, now Juno is part of that exclusive club, and I’d say she’s better at it than Arch and I could ever be.
The point is, Crosby’s going to make him stay here. It was decided the second Arch said the word mattress.
“Take the room at the end of the hall,” Crosby commands. “You’ll never see us.”
“You’ll see us constantly,” Juno counters with an impish smile. “But you’ll love it.”
“As if I expected different,” Arch drawls, and then, because he can’t help himself, turns to me. “What about you, Birdie? You get a vote. You want to live with all this?” He gestures down at himself, the wet shirt, the whole ridiculous package.
And here’s where I make my mistake. Though I don’t know it’s a mistake yet because right now it costs me nothing.
That’s because I’m leaving in nine days.
“Please,” I say, waving my empty bottle. “Stay. Do you know how boring these two are without a buffer? Last night they had a forty-minute conversation about a new mattress topper. I nearly walked into the fire.”
“So you’re pro-Arch,” he says.
“I’m pro-anything that stops me from being the only entertainment in this house.” I stand, stretch, feel my spine crack in three places. “Take the room. I’ll be gone before Marco even opens your walls, and you’ll have the entire upstairs to yourself.” I point the bottle at him. “But I’m collecting my fifty bucks before I go. With interest.”
Arch grins, wide and easy, that face that’s talked him out of penalties and into God knows how many women’s beds. “Okay, then,” he says to Crosby. “Hale Junior says it’s fine, so I’m in.”
My phone goes off in my back pocket and I pull it out, glancing down to see a name that stops me cold in the nicest possible way.
Ted Flaherty.
The ops superintendent of the company I work for.
“I have to take this,” I say, already moving to the darkened end of the deck for privacy. I connect the call. “Ted. Tell me something good.”
And Ted, four thousand miles away and sounding tired in a way that means he’s operating on little to no sleep, tells me it’s not good at all. “Birdie… hey… wanted you to hear it from me before the email hits.”
My entire body tenses.
“The job’s on regulatory hold. There was an incident on a sister platform and the whole field’s under review now. The authority’s frozen every non-critical dive spread in the sector until they sign off on new protocols.”
“How long?”
“Best case? Four weeks. Honest case?” He exhales. “Could be two, three months, kiddo. Nobody’s diving that field till the paperwork clears, and paperwork like this doesn’t clear fast.”
“Shit,” I grumble, pressing my fingertip to my temple.
“I’m sorry, Birdie. I know you were counting on it. I moved heaven and earth to get you that slot and now I can’t tell you when it starts.”
“Is there anything else available?”
“Nothing that would come through any faster, I’m afraid.”
I stand on my brother’s deck, the warm joy of hanging with the people I love best dissipating. Disappointment fills me.
No date. No flight. No manifest with my name on it. Just an open-ended stretch of Portland before me with no back-pocket ticket.
I’ve done six-hour decompressions. I’ve sat in a steel can breathing borrowed gas while my body slowly, carefully learned how to survive the surface again, because if you come up too fast it kills you.
I know how to wait.
Waiting is ninety percent of what I do.
But I always know how long and I hate this uncertainty.
“Birdie? You still there?”
“Yeah.” My voice comes out even and steady. It’s the voice I use at depth when issues arise and panicking would drown me. “Yeah, Ted, I’m here. It’s fine. These things happen. Keep me first on the list when it moves.”
“You’re always first on my list,” he promises.
“Flatterer. Go to bed and get some sleep. You sound like shit.”
I hang up and stand there another second, letting the emotion wash through me where no one can see it.
Then I fix it.
I put it away and walk back into the light.
“Everything okay?” Juno asks, ever the observant one.
“Fine. Just some work stuff.” I reclaim my chair. “Turns out I’m not as short term as advertised.”
Crosby looks up. “Meaning?”
“Meaning the job’s on hold. Regulatory freeze on the whole field.” I keep my tone light as if I’m reporting a canceled brunch. “Could be a month… could be three. Nobody knows.”
I watch my brother’s face open into a warm and pleased grin. “That’s great, Birdie. You’ll be here for the holidays.”
“I was already going to be here for Christmas,” I point out.
“Yeah, but you were leaving the day after and now you don’t have to rush out, and you’ll be here for New Year’s. You’re never here for the full holidays, at least, not enough to really enjoy them.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Imagine that.”
“Hey, you know what? This changes things,” Arch says, and my head whips his way.
“Changes things?” I ask.
“Now it’s crowded. You’re staying. Crosby and Juno need their space. I’ll take the extended-stay place. It’s fine. I’ll survive a month of bad drapes—”
“You will not,” Crosby says.
“You’ll die,” Juno says.
“Birdie.” Arch turns to me, and there’s a question on his face that’s bigger than the words. “It’s your call since we’re sharing upstairs space.”
“It’s a five-bedroom house, Hewitt,” I say breezily, the exact words I used when I thought I was untouchable and leaving. “I’m not going to run you off into a Marriott because I got a bad phone call. I promise… it’s fine.”
“It’s fine,” he echoes, studying me carefully to see if I’ll crack.
“It’s fine,” I say again, and I smile. It’s a good smile. I’ve had years of practice.
Crosby lifts his gorgeous smoked-ice drink in a little toast. “My two favorite idiots under one roof,” he says. “For the holidays. What could go wrong?”
Nothing, I think. Nothing can go wrong, because there’s nothing to go wrong. It’s Arch. It’s a house. It’s a month, or three, and it’s certainly not the scariest thing I’ve ever faced.
Arch stares at me and does something with his eyebrows that’s supposed to be annoying and mostly is.
I put that in the imaginary box and drop it into the imaginary ocean with my lustful thoughts.
Somewhere, four thousand miles away, a paperwork machine grinds slowly toward the day it’ll set me free. I just don’t know when.
And for the first time in my adult life, I’m somewhere with no idea when I’m leaving.
I tell myself that’s not the same thing as being trapped.
