"Wow... Look at that!" Carefully brushing loose dirt from the exposed portion of the fossilized skull, I trace the inner circle of the eye socket with my fingertip. "The scleral ring is almost perfectly intact."

"The what?" Tamisha, one of the two interns helping me excavate, leans in for a closer look.

"The scleral ring. It's a ring of bony plates inside the eye. Lots of fish, reptiles, and birds have them," I explain. "The non-avian dinosaurs had them, too, but they're super delicate, so they rarely preserve."

"Will that make this find important?" Peter, the other intern, asks timidly. He's pale, skinny, extremely introverted, possibly on the spectrum, and half in the closet. He reminds me of myself a few years ago.

"It will make it more valuable, for sure," I say, validating his question. "But the gut contents are what really make this specimen so spectacular."

I shift a few feet to the right on the slanted slab of red-brown stone and indicate the rib cage, flattened and slightly distorted by the fossilization process, but still recognizable as such. Pointing to a small, round, unusually smooth formation, I say, "this is a gastrolith—a pebble swallowed to help grind up food. If we have gastroliths, then these surrounding fragments could very well be the animal's last meal. Gut contents can tell us more about behavior and environment than the skeleton can, sometimes."

My walkie-talkie beeps and crackles with static before Professor MacDowell's voice comes through.

"Charlie. Pick up."

I unclip the radio from my belt and depress the button to speak. "I'm here, Professor."

"Storm's on the way. I'm recalling everyone to camp."

Frowning, I get to my feet and turn in a slow circle, studying the sky. There are some high clouds and a few cumulonimbus thunderheads off to the south, but nothing imminently threatening.

"Right now?"

"Yes—now. B team isn't answering their radio. Cassie might have it turned off. Hazel's taking the ATV out to get them."

"Alright. On our way."

I clip the radio back on my belt and stand with my hands on my hips, contemplating the site and my surroundings. We're about a mile from camp—twelve to fifteen minutes if we scramble—but at the moment, there appears to be no rush.

"I don't see no storm," Tamisha says, surveying the sky with a skeptical expression.

"The weather can change fast out here," I reply. "Better be safe than sorry. You two head back; I'll secure the site and follow soon."

As Peter and Tamisha gather their gear and head down the ridge towards the camp, I collect four heavy stones and place them near the folded tarp at the ready. Then I get out the digital camera we use for documentation and begin snapping shots of the site.

When professor MacDowell invited me back to the summer internship program—as one of his graduate assistants, this time—I'd been thrilled to accept. To my surprise, Hazel had volunteered to come as well, reprising his role as the camp workhorse.

In the two years since I was last here, not much has changed. The Utah desert landscape is still as beautiful and barren as ever, and even the tents are the same. The main difference is the people. Professor MacDowell, Hazel, and myself are the only returnees this year.

There are four interns, and I'm in charge of half of them. The other graduate assistant, Cassie, is in charge of the other team.

We've been taking turns between two primary sites: the Utahraptor and a sauropod bone bed. A bone bed is where many individuals fossilized together, either because they died together, or because something like a river caused their bodies to accumulate in the same place over a relatively short period. The Utahraptor is the closer site, though more of a hike to reach, being near the top of a ridge and accessible only by foot. The bone bed is at the base of a hill, fairly close to the road, which is why Hazel can retrieve the other team with the camp ATV.

The slightly overcast sky gives the perfect lighting for photographing rocks–not so bright that the shadows are black, and not so dim that everything appears flat. Switching lenses, I move in for some macro shots of the eye socket with the scleral rings. Then, as a nerd in a nerd's favorite environment tends to do, I lose track of time.

I want to record as much detail as possible, should a worst-case-scenario come to pass. Summer thunderstorms can dump several inches of rain in an hour. Despite being made of stone, fossils can be surprisingly delicate, and quickly deteriorate once exposed to the elements. Water can seep into tiny cracks, causing them to expand and the fossil to crumble, while a flash flood or landslide might destroy an entire site. Covering the bones with a tarp and digging some channels to divert water will help up to a point, but there's always a chance it won't be enough.

I'm so engrossed with my task, I don't notice when the sky darkens until a surprisingly loud rumble of thunder startles me. I look up, and a fat drop of ice-cold rain hits me square between the eyes.

"Fuck."

I hold out my hand as a few more drops spatter the dusty ground, testing the temperature. It's definitely cold, and if it's cold enough, the rain will turn to hail, and hail would be even worse for an exposed site. Scrambling into action, I grab a shovel and dash to the top of the rock slab, where I scrape a ditch in the shallow dirt, hoping to divert water away from the bones. As I work, thunder rumbles again, closer this time, and the rain suddenly increases from a few spare drops to a downpour, falling in a gray, blinding veil. It's loud, too, drowning out anything quieter than the thunder.

Almost instantly soaked through, I snatch up the tarp and try to spread it over the site, but it's difficult with everything wet. I fumble with the stones, struggling to get them in place. A flash and almost simultaneous BOOM startles me, but being grabbed from behind nearly gives me a heart attack.

I spin, lose my balance, almost fall, get grabbed again and hauled upright. By now I know what has me, though, and my fear dissipates.

"Charlie! What the fuck are you doing out here!?" Hazel shouts, yelling in my face and shaking me by the arms.

"I have to cover the dig site!" I shout back, wrenching free of his grip and returning to the tarp. "Help me hold this down while I get the rock!"

"Forget the site!" Hazel bellows, the veins in his neck standing out as he tries to raise his voice above the noise of the storm. "You're gonna get yourself killed!"

"Just help me cover it!"

The next flash of lightning is blindingly bright and alarmingly close. It strikes an outcrop of rocks on the opposite ridge, just a little above the elevation at which we stand. Hazel grabs my arm again and hauls me up.

"They're bones, Charlie!" he screams. "They're not worth dying for!"

The fear in his blue eyes, wide and crystal clear in the eerie storm-light, finally gets through to me. He's terrified, and I should be. We're in real danger right now, and he's only here because of me.

"Okay." I whisper the word, but he reads it on my lips and the relief in his face is so real it hits me like a punch.

"Come on! Grab your things!" He releases me and helps me gather my gear, slinging my pack over his shoulder. I snatch up the camera (luckily in a weatherproof bag) and then—unable to help myself—maneuver the last rock into place on the tarp, scratching up my hands and forearms in the process.

Then we're off, dashing helter-skelter down the ridge, slipping and sliding among the rocks as thunder and lightning continue to rumble and crack overhead.

We reach the camp in a little under ten minutes. I haven't run a ten-minute mile (or any mile) since high school, and I'm gasping for breath. My lungs feel like they're on fire despite the cool air, and my heart is beating so fast it makes my limbs shake.

Hazel drags me into our tent (things just happened to work out so we had one to ourselves) and proceeds to strip out of his wet clothes, which cling to him like a second skin, and dries himself off with a towel. I stand there, dripping and dumbly watching the show, until he rounds on me and flings the damp towel at my head.

"Get those clothes off already, will you? You'll catch pneumonia or something."

"I don't think you can actually catch pneumonia from–"

"Charlie, I swear to God..."

Shaking his head, he unbuttons the long-sleeve shirt I wear for sun protection and strips it off me, followed by my undershirt.

"You're mad," I state, as he kneels and helps me out of my work boots.

"Yeah, I'm mad," he mutters, yanking my pants down and steadying me as I extract my legs from the wet, clinging fabric. "My dad said he'd radioed you, and when I got back with the others, I saw Peter and Tamisha and assumed you were in the tent, or taking care of the equipment, or something else that a sane, rational person would be doing. Then I couldn't find you and realized you hadn't come back."

"I was documenting the site and lost track of time."

He gets to his feet and pulls me into a hug, skin to skin. "You could have died," he whispers. "I want to spend the rest of our lives together, and I'd prefer that to be a long time. Please promise me you will stop putting dead things before your own safety."

"I'll do my best," I say, knowing myself too well to make a promise I probably won't keep.

He sighs and lets me go. "I guess that means I just can't ever let you out of my sight, huh?"

"I guess not." I smile and pull him into a kiss.

He guides us towards the bed—a large inflatable mattress he bought with his own money and brought along 'just in case' we ended up alone in a tent together. It certainly makes for a more comfortable sleeping arrangement, but sleep on it is all we've done.

A tent isn't that private, especially when surrounded by other tents full of undergrads and Hazel's father.

But with the pelting rain still drowning out the world with its roar of white noise, and adrenaline in our veins, we take shelter in each other's arms.

Our brief bout of passion abates with the rain, and as the storm moves on, we catch our breath. I sit up and reach for a dry set of clothes, but Hazel pulls me back down.

"Hey, what's the rush?"

I laugh. "I'm not in any, but your dad's gonna barge in on us any minute."

"Nah. Storm's not over yet."

I cock my head and listen. "Sounds like it is."

"Trust me. It's not done."

"Alright."

Giving in, I let him pull me down again and rest my head on his chest.

"I meant what I said, you know," he murmurs, running his fingers through my hair. "I wanna spend my life with you."

I press my lips to his shoulder and kiss his warm skin. "I know."

"Do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Want to spend the rest of your life with me."

I raise myself on my elbows so I can meet his eyes. "Are you asking me...?"

He shrugs, an uncharacteristically shy smile on his lips. "I don't got a ring on me, but yeah. I guess I am."

I laugh, a feeling like champagne bubbles spreading through my chest. "Then I guess... yes, I do."

A clap of thunder shakes the heavens, and as Hazel predicted, a second downpour drowns the world in a roaring hiss of falling rain. But in the bubble of our tent, we're safe and warm; happy in each other's arms and in a promise we seal with a kiss.

THE END