Page 89 of Teach Me Your Ways

35

GRADY

Our breakfast was light. All of us were anxious and none of us were dumb enough to eat much. We were all sticking to oatmeal and drinking plenty of water.

I had to keep my eyes off Cece. She was wearing a one-piece swimsuit with shorts covering her lower half. Lina was in a tiny bikini as expected. I barely looked at her. Felix wasn’t interested either. He had the same rules I did about messing around with students.

I pushed the oatmeal around in my bowl, more focused on the conversation than eating. Felix was regaling us with stories from his first dive, which had apparently been a disaster of epic proportions.

“I’m telling you, I panicked so hard I forgot how to breathe through the regulator,” he said, gesturing wildly with his spoon. “Just started holding my breath like I was in a swimming pool. My instructor had to literally grab me and force the regulator back in my mouth.”

Lina laughed, shaking her head. “That’s nothing. On my certification dive, I got so excited when I saw a sea turtle that I forgot about buoyancy control and shot straight to the surface. Nearly gave my instructor a heart attack.”

“Decompression sickness is no joke,” I said. “You’re lucky you didn’t hurt yourself.”

“Trust me, I learned my lesson,” Lina replied. “Now I’m obsessed with proper ascent rates.”

I glanced at Cece, who had been unusually quiet. “What about you? Any diving disasters you want to share?”

She looked up from her oatmeal, a small smile on her face. “My first night dive was interesting. I was maybe sixteen, diving with my dad off the coast near Virginia Beach. Everything looked completely different in the dark, and I got disoriented. Spent twenty minutes following what I thought was the dive light, only to realize I’d been chasing a bioluminescent jellyfish.”

Felix burst out laughing. “You followed a jellyfish?”

“For twenty minutes,” Cece said, grinning now. “My dad finally caught up to me and tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and he was making the ‘what the hell are you doing’ gesture. When we surfaced, he couldn’t stop laughing.”

“Did you get stung?” Lina asked, wincing at the thought.

“Just my pride.” Cece pushed her oatmeal away, barely touched. “But it taught me to always stay aware of my surroundings, no matter how beautiful the distraction.”

Her eyes met mine across the table, and I felt that familiar jolt of electricity. Everything she said seemed to carry a double meaning lately, and I was probably reading too much into it, but the way she looked at me when she said “beautiful distraction” made my pulse quicken.

“Alright,” I said, standing up and clearing my throat. “Time to gear up, kids. We want to be in the water by nine.”

We carried our gear down to the dock. The dive boat was a thirty-foot research vessel with all the equipment we’d need. I was all nerves. My heart rattled in my chest, throat dry, even though I’d done enough wreck dives with Felix to map them in my sleep. Still, this wasn’t a controlled pool or that weekend fun dive off a cruise ship. It was the very first descent inside a newly found pirate wreck thirty feet down. The kind of dive we’d spent months prepping for. Thirty feet wasn’t all that dangerous, but it held plenty of risks. No dive was guaranteed to be safe.

The captain of the boat steered us out to sea. The four of us pulled out our gear. Lina was chattering about some club she went to the other night. I liked her better when she was talking about s’mores. It wasn’t that she was dumb, but she didn’t seem all that invested in history. She wasn’t the typical archeology student.

“Ready, partner?” Felix glanced back.

I squared my shoulders. “As I’ll ever be.”

He’d already checked our gear twice over. I followed suit. Mask strapped, tanks sealed, fins ready. Behind us, Cece and Lina sat on the stern, dipping their toes in with cautious confidence.

We had a ship captain that would be monitoring things, allowing all four of us to go under. Cece had put on her wet suit and tank.

“Ready?” I asked her.

“Yep.”

I adjusted my mask one final time and looked at my team. “Alright, listen up. Felix and I will be going inside the wreck. Cece, Lina—you stay outside the structure. Explore the perimeter, look for any artifacts that might have been scattered, but do not attempt to enter the ship itself.”

Lina nodded, but I caught the flash of disappointment in her eyes. Cece’s expression was harder to read behind her mask, though I could see her jaw tighten slightly.

“The interior is unstable and unexplored,” I continued. “We don’t know what’s in there yet, and that’s what Felix and I will be checking before anyone else goes in. Too many ways to get disoriented or trapped. So stick to the plan.”

“Got it,” Cece said, her voice muffled by her regulator as she tested it one more time.

Felix gave me a thumbs-up. “Ready when you are, boss.”