The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 282

Garrison retreated to his bedroom, shut the door, and plugged the flash drive into his laptop.

As his finger hovered over the power button, he realized his hand was shaking—a visible, uncontrollable tremor, as if his very flesh was rejecting what he was about to witness.

The screen flickered to life. He double-clicked the video file. Forty-seven minutes long. Created four years ago.

Four years ago.

Sloane had just given birth to Archie and was still on maternity leave. He couldn't even remember what he was doing that day. He forced himself to think, recalling only a blurry silhouette: The Vitas Strain cultivation was at a critical stage. He practically lived at the lab, spending night after night there, only dropping by the house to grab a clean shirt. Archie would be wailing in the crib while Sloane paced the floor with him. Garrison had just grabbed his clothes and left, entirely tuning out whatever she had been saying.

He clicked play.

The second the video loaded, her voice filled the room.

"—Is it recording? Rosemary, can you check the angle for me?"

The frame shook before focusing on her face. Sloane was looking down, adjusting the camera by her headlamp. She was so close to the lens that Garrison could see the microscopic beads of sweat on her nose and the tiny mole hidden in her eyebrow.

She wore no makeup. Her cheeks still carried the soft fullness of her recent pregnancy, her fair skin flushed with a healthy, radiant glow. Her lips were naturally full and red, pressed together in concentration before the dive.

Her eyes were bright—not a manicured, superficial sparkle, but a fierce, burning vitality radiating from the deepest part of her soul.

Those slightly upturned, feline eyes were intently focused on her gear, her eyelashes casting delicate shadows in the sunlight. She wore a black wetsuit, the zipper still half-open, revealing a glimpse of her collarbone.

Garrison's heart seized. Before he realized it, he reached out, his fingertips hovering a millimeter above the screen, tracing her cheek.

The underwater light was briefly bright before dimming as she descended. The reservoir was murky, filled with suspended particles. Her headlamp cut a singular beam through the gloom, illuminating slow-drifting debris.

Rosemary's voice crackled through the static, sounding thin and distant: "Sloane, can you hear me? Swim about thirty feet to your left. You should see an iron rack."

Sloane flashed an 'OK' sign, adjusted her course, and swam left. Her movements were fluid and powerful, her kicks precise as she glided like a fish. The headlamp swept over the barren lakebed—sand, gravel, a rotting tree trunk, and a school of startled silver fish darting through the light.

"Too far, back up a bit—yes, right there!" Rosemary directed.

Sloane paused, hovering in the water as her light illuminated the darkness ahead. A massive, rusted metal rack loomed in the beam, coated in thick algae and sediment. It had multiple tiers, like industrial shelving, cluttered with unrecognizable debris—half-corroded iron boxes, shattered glass, a tangled mess of cables.

"Third shelf, on the right. There should be an iron box," Rosemary said, her pace quickening with urgency. "Open it. The pen is inside."