Below Zero (The STEMinist Novellas, #3)

by Ali Hazelwood

All around me there is nothing but stark, cerulean beauty, and if this is the place where I die, alone and shivering and bruised and pretty damn hungry . . . well, I have no reason to bitch. After all, blue was always my favorite color.

I wanted to stop feeling as though I were rotting in my own aimlessness,

At the beginning it’s simple stuff: What’s it made of? Where does it end? Why do the stars not fall and crash onto our heads? Then, once we’ve read enough, the big topics come in: Dark matter. Multiverse. Black holes. That’s when we realize how little we understand about this giant thing we’re part of. When we start thinking about whether we can help produce some new knowledge.

I was studying a bunch of really basic science stuff, to be able to graduate to more advanced science stuff, so that one day I’d actually know all the science stuff about Mars and . . . and what then? Go on Jeopardy! and pick Space for 500? Didn’t really seem worth it.

I did not come here to make friends, but hurt my weird Cheez-It friend or my other weird soccer friend and I will beat you up with a lead pipe till you piss blood for the rest of your life.

He is fully smiling now. He has a heart-stopping dimple on his left cheek, and . . . Okay, fine: he’s aggressively hot.

He is, very simply, a never-before-experienced mix of cute and overwhelmingly masculine. With a complex, layered air about him. It spells simultaneously Do not piss me off because I don’t fuck around and Ma’am, let me carry those groceries for you.

Wow. A male engineer who’s not an asshole. The bar is pretty low, but I’m nevertheless impressed.

“Beautiful. You are very, very beautiful. Probably the most . . . And you’re obviously smart and funny, so . . .”

“Hannah.” The shock of hearing my name—in Ian’s voice, cocooned by the whistle of the wind, and through the metallic line of my satphone, no less—has me instantly shutting up. Until he continues. “Just relax and think of Mars, okay? I’ll be there soon.”

That would be, honestly, pretty idiotic. Too idiotic even for me: a well-known occasional idiot.

He’s still staring at me. Like he’s found his long-missing house keys and is afraid he’ll lose them again if he looks away.

“Ian,” I interrupt softly. He pauses, and we both seem simultaneously taken aback at my tone. It’s just . . . pleading. Tired. I’m usually not one for displays of vulnerability, but . . . Ian has come for me, in a small rocking boat, across the fjords.

“We used to sail a lot when I was a kid.” “We?” “My dad and I.” He stands and turns away from me, starting to rummage in the little compartments in the hull. “He’d bring me along when he had to work.” “Oh. Was he a fisherman?” I hear a fond snort. “He smuggled drugs.” “He what?”

“I was just afraid that something might happen to you. And I don’t trust Merel. Not with you.” He says it—you—like I am a remarkable and important thing. The most precious data point; his favorite town; the loveliest, starkest Martian landscape.

Even though I pushed him away, over and over, he still came in a rocking boat in the middle of the coldest ocean on planet Earth, just to get me warm.

“Is that why you came to rescue me?” I tease. “Because you were thinking about it? Because you have been secretly pining for years?” He meets my eyes squarely. “I don’t know that there was anything secret about that.”

my heart is so full, I’m afraid it’ll overflow. Apparently this is what I am now, a unicorn rainbow marshmallow kitten creature.

“Hannah, if that changes. If you ever find yourself able to believe that someone could care about you that much. And if you wanted to actually . . . have dinner with that someone.” He lets out a laugh. “Well . . . Please, consider me. You know where to find me.”