The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 237

"Hold on."

Sloane hauled herself onto the slick ice, quickly turning back to grab his wrists and drag him up.

Garrison slid out of the frozen water like a beached fish, collapsing onto the ice and coughing violently. Water poured from his mouth as he curled into a miserable, shaking ball.

Sloane knelt beside him, rhythmically pounding his back.

"Spit it out. Get the water out."

Garrison heaved, throwing up lake water mixed with clear stomach bile and thin streaks of blood.

His entire body was racked with violent shivers. Sloane guided his head onto her lap, turning him onto his side to keep him from choking on his own fluids.

She threaded her fingers through his soaking wet hair, pressing her palm reassuringly against his cold forehead.

"It's over, Garrison..." she murmured, her voice endlessly gentle. "It's over. You're safe now."

Garrison slowly opened his eyes, staring up at her.

His focus was blurry at first, but clarity gradually returned. After a moment, he reached up, his freezing fingertips tracing the damp slope of her cheekbone.

"How did you... find me?"

Sloane pressed her lips together and shook her head with a bittersweet smile.

"Even if you fell into a three-thousand-foot ice crevasse, I'd still find you. I need you alive, Garrison. You promised to save my life, remember?"

*

On the other side of the chaos, Professor Harrison had plummeted straight down when the ice gave way.

The freezing current swallowed him instantly. He didn't even have time to hold his breath. The shock stung his nose, and his lungs seized as if gripped by an iron fist.

Panic crashed over him.

He snapped his eyes open and immediately spotted the incubator. It had slipped from his grasp in the fall and flipped upside down, the safety seal pointing straight toward the crushing, pitch-black depths.

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