Below Zero (The STEMinist Novellas, #3)

by Ali Hazelwood

The left corner of his mouth curves upward, a small hint of amusement that’s not quite fully there yet. I have an odd stray thought: I bet his smile is lopsided. Beautiful, too.

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.

“No, it’s not that . . .” He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. His cheekbones look rosier than before. His lips move, trying to form words for a few seconds, until he settles on: “It’s just . . . unexpected.” Oh. I tilt my head. “Why?” I thought I’d been laying it on pretty thick. “Because.” His large hand gestures in my direction. He swallows, and I watch his throat work. “Just . . . look at you.”

BC JUST LOOK AT YOU HOLY SHIT THIS LINE IS EVERYTHING TO ME

Instead he looks up at me like I’m wondrous and beautiful and awe-inspiring, like I’m a gift, like he’s a bit dumbstruck.

“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.”

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.

He smiles, and the thought that I could have died—I could have died—without being smiled at like this, by this man, has my lips trembling.

He still doesn’t meet my eyes. Instead he tightens the brace and pulls a thick woolen sock over my foot. I think I feel the ghosts of fingertips trailing briefly across my toe, but maybe it’s my impression. It must be.

When I lie down next to him, he blinks, groggy and mildly startled. And yet his first reaction is not to throw me in the sea but to push toward the bulkhead to make room for me. He’s a way better person than I’ll ever be.

He opens his arms and pulls me to his chest, and . . . I fit inside them so perfectly, it’s as though there was a spot ready for me all along. A five-year-old spot, familiar and cozy.

“Ian.” It feels so intimate, to say his name so close to him. To press it into his chest as my fingers curve into his shirt.

“How did you know that I was going to need you?” “I didn’t, Hannah.” His chest rises and falls in a deep sigh. Another man would be gloating by now. Ian . . . I think he just wishes he could have spared me this. “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.

HOLY SHIT THIS IS PERFECTION :')

So I push a leg between his, and he lets me. Like his body is a thing of mine.

“I am sorry. About what I said to you back in Houston.” “Shh.” “And that I’ve put you in danger—” “Shh, it’s okay.” He kisses my temple. It’s wet from the slide of my tears. “It’s okay.” “It’s not. You could be working with your team, or asleep in your own bed, but you’re here because of me, and—” “Hannah, there is nowhere else I’d rather be.”

NOWHERE ELSE ID RATHER BE MY GOD !!!

“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.”

sQUAWKING !!

I turn around to Ian. He slept on and off for the past four hours and still looks groggy, his face soft and relaxed. Cute, I think. And immediately after: Delicious. Handsome. Want.

“I mean . . . last night he carried you upstairs for seven floors because the elevator was broken. It’s obvious that he has a thing for you.”

i die !!!!!

“Is that a yes on dinner?” He laughs, low and beautiful and a little rueful. And after looking at me like no one else ever has before, what he says is, “Yes, Hannah. It is a yes on dinner.”

“Wrong door!” I say when he tries to enter the bathroom, then the closet where I keep the vacuum cleaner I never use and the one pair of spare sheets I own, and by the time we’re on my bed we’re both laughing. Our teeth clack together when we try and fail to keep kissing as we undress each other, and I don’t think that anything has ever been like this before, intimate and sweet and so much fun at the same time.

This should be familiar ground to me: bodies against bodies, flesh against flesh. Just seeing what feels good and then doing more of it. It should be familiar, but I’m not sure it is. Being here with Ian is more like hearing a song I’ve listened to millions of times, this time with a new arrangement.

I band my arms around Ian’s neck and pull his huge shoulders into myself, like he’s the sun of my very own star system.

“Hannah. I didn’t think I could want you more, but last year, when I saw you at NASA, I . . .” He is slurring his words. Ian Floyd, always calm, levelheaded, articulate. “I thought I’d die if I couldn’t fuck you.”

I reach out to brush my fingers against his under the table. It’s meant to be just a fleeting, reassuring touch, but his hand closes around mine, and I decide to stay. With Ian, I always decide to stay.