Page 119 of The Best Shot

He pulled two glasses down from the cabinet, poured the last of an open bottle of red, and set one in front of me.

“Tell me.”

I wrapped my hand around it and didn’t drink.

“Antarctica,” I said.

His eyebrows lifted. “Home to five species of penguins and six kinds of seal.”

I stared at him. “Why do you know that?”

He shrugged. “Had a Happy Feet stage as a kid. What about it?”

“I got a job there with the National Science Foundation, photographing emperor penguins.” The words were tripping over each other already. “Full creative control for the entire six months. I’d be with the research team, on the ice the whole time. Diana just sent it over.”

He grinned. “Yaz.”

“I know.”

“That’s—”

“I know.”

I put the glass down. Picked it up again. Put it down.

He stayed where he was, watching me over the counter, waiting me out the way he did when he wanted me to slow down on my own.

“Tell me the whole thing,” he said.

So I did.

I told him what it meant in practical terms first because that was easier. Six months. Clearance. Research access. Then I tried to explain what it meant in the only language that mattered to me—the light down there, and the shot I’d been waiting years to take.

He listened without interrupting, nodding every so often, the tiny lines at his eyes deepening the longer I talked.

When I ran out of words, he was still smiling.

“You earned that,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Look at you.”

My throat went tight. “Come with me.” It came out before I’d decided to say it.

His smile held for half a beat, then changed. Dimmed, just a little bit.

“I know it’s a lot.” I was already trying to sell it and take it back at the same time. “But there’s a companion slot, Hale. It’s already in the paperwork, I don’t have to fight anybody for it. And you said once you wanted to see more than Whitlock Hills. Carter and Grant could handle the shop for a while. Maybe not forever, but for a while. It’s six months. The bottom of the world. It’s⁠—”

I stopped. Swallowed. “I don’t want to see it without you.”

He looked at me for a long moment, then away. His thumb dragged once along the edge. When his eyes came back to mine, something in them had gone careful.

“Let me think on it,” he said.

I blinked. “Think on it?”

“A couple days.”