Page 39 of All The Way Under

I haven’t spoken to them about my time in Madagascar in depth. I’m afraid of how they’ll react.

“Not a nightmare?” Mom asks, nose wrinkled in disgust.

“How can it be?” I throw up my hands and let them fall on my bed. “I met him.”

“I get that,” Bronwyn says. “You really are okay after enduring…that?”

“I promise I am.”

“You’re just like your father,” Mom says, and I think this may be the nicest thing she’s said yet.

“You do what you need to do and keep on moving. Did I tell you we eliminated the threat? Well, your father did, himself. The man who kept trying to break in to get my sweet Roger…it was Jennings’s twenty-year-old son from his mistress!

The scandal runs deep. His name was Ryan Smith, and he got a stipend every month from Jennings’s account as hush money.

Jennings got locked up, and the payments stopped.

Ryan said there was a price on your father’s head, and he needed it to survive once the payments stopped. ”

“Eliminated?” Bronwyn asks, voice cracking. “Like Dad killed him?”

Mom groans. “Don’t be so crass, darling. Your father took care of the problem before the problem took care of him.”

She’s an ace at attorney speak.

“So did you get rid of the security team?” I ask, hopeful.

She shakes her head. “Not until the world is less interested in you.”

“I’ll meet Archie for dinner. I’ll go. I’ll smile.

I’ll tell the bastard I never want to see him again.

We’ll let the paparazzi take the photos.

They’ll post them. The world will know Brody and I are finished.

Then I’ll go see Brody and try to talk to him.

I want to help fix what I can, and this will make them less interested in me.

I’ll do it for the family. If I’m marrying Archie, someone everyone expects me to be with, then that can be the end of the interest.”

“Only if you want to,” Mom says. “The photos will disperse quickly.”

My legs are shaky from rotting in bed, but I walk into my bathroom and crank on the hot water.

“I got this,” I toss over my shoulder.

Bronwyn comes in to talk to me when I’m in the shower. The glass is fogged, and she tells me the plan. She tells me how to look and what to say, so the pictures look authentic. When she tells me I have to kiss him, I tell her there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell I’ll agree to that.

I wear the sundress. I put on the Givenchy perfume. I strap on red-bottom sandals and the Van Cleef bracelet stack. I play dress up one last time before I can be myself. Before none of this matters.

I’m shaking when I step out of my car, still reeling from sitting with Archie.

I saw the camera flashes from the corner of my eye. Archie didn’t because he’s not observant, and he’s stupid. He actually thought I’d changed my mind and wanted to accept his great, great, grandma’s fourteen-carat diamond and live a life of misery next to him.

I told him I wanted to see him for closure, and that’s all it was. For him. I’d closed that book the second I realized Brody existed.

I rub the hood of my car and feel relieved. It’s the first time I’ve been allowed to drive anywhere. Sure, I was followed, but I also have security. They’re parked along the street, watching me like a hawk.

It doesn’t look like Brody is home. The lights are off, and Grimace isn’t standing on the back of the couch, barking his head off.

Where are you?

Every time I call him, it goes to voicemail. Every time I text, it bounces back as undeliverable. I sit on the front step and decide to wait.

I call him a few more times before I give up. If I lose him like this after what we’ve been through, it will not only be embarrassing, but it will also haunt me.

My stupid life that I don’t identify with anymore ruins my chances for happiness. That’s the headline, I decide.

I fold my arms over my knees and put my head down.

The thoughts run so quickly they blur together.

The first time I saw him. Our first conversation.

The waterfall. The projects we collaborated on so effortlessly.

The escape. The elevator. The lake house.

It’s a dream that’s interrupted by the roar of a loud engine.

I stand. His black truck pulls into the driveway.

He steps out, Grimace in his hands.

“What are you doing here?” he says, cold, emotionless.

“I wanted to see you,” I say.

My body buzzes from seeing him and hearing one sentence from his perfect lips. He’s in his cami uniform. The normal one, not the formal one he wore to the charity event.

“Brody, please, I need to talk to you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He looks behind him to where three black cars line the street in front of his house. He turns his tired gaze back to me.

“Just go, Saylor. Go home, back to the palace with your guards and the people who know you best.”

He doesn’t make a move to come closer.

“Hey, don’t you say that. Don’t you stand there and lie to me. You know that you know me best. You know my heart.”

Brody shakes his head, looking down at the sleeping dog hanging limp over his arm. “I have to get him to bed.”

He brushes past me and unlocks his door.

“That’s it?” I say, tears forming in the corner of my eyes.

He puts Grimace down on the couch, but doesn’t invite me in. He leans against the doorframe, tall and looming.

“What we had was nice, but we can’t pretend this had staying power.

I was blinded by obsession. I didn’t see all the glaring signs telling me that this was never long term.

We went through something traumatic together.

You bonded with me, and I think it clouded your judgment too.

I took this time away to really think about what a life together would look like, and it’s not something sustainable, Saylor.

You’re a Wyndham. I need anonymity. Fuck, not just need, it’s required from me to do my job . ”

My worst fear is coming true. Bronwyn is right.

“You’re brilliant and beautiful. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know you’ll do okay without me.”

“You’re breaking up with me?” I say the words like a string of curse words.

“Your ex and that whole fucking display of fuck knows what did give me clarity. You may want to get married for love and live a happily ever after, but that’s not what you need. We both know that. You need someone who blends in.”

Tears fall over the rims of my eyes, hot traitors slipping down my cheeks. Brody looks at my jewelry and dress and shakes his head.

“I’m just a dirty ole SEAL. I’m not good enough to be next to you, anyway.”

I hold up my arm and peel off the bracelets, tossing them to the ground.

“This shit doesn’t mean anything to me. I want you. I want you to want me enough to figure it out. My mom was the one who sent me here. She said it didn’t matter. That if you wanted me, you’d figure out a way to make it work.”

That shocks him, but I can tell his mind is made up. His eyes tell me all I need to know. They’re lifeless. Nothing is there. Like when I first met him.

“I can’t figure this out. I can’t. I’ve tried. Do you know how maddening it is to admit there’s a problem I can’t fix, and this is the cost?” He holds an arm out to me.

“Then keep it. Keep me. I’m yours.”

He smiles sadly. “You were never mine to keep, Saylor.”

“You’re mistaken. I was always yours to keep. You toss me away so easily? That might hurt more than being cheated on. At least I know what I’m getting with a man like Archie. It’s not love. It’s not even loyalty. It’s an agreement. You can’t make up your own mind to save your life.”

He grins. It doesn’t meet his eyes. “Now you’re getting it.”

“Don’t patronize me, Brody McCoy. Don’t do that.

” I swallow down a lump. “Say you don’t love me and don’t hold back.

Tell me you didn’t love me at the waterfall.

Or the lake house. Say you didn’t love me at all, at any time we’ve been together, because I won’t believe you ever did, because love doesn’t just stop. ”

“It does.”

“What, like a switch?” I retort. “If that’s true, then maybe who you were when we met truly is who you are. Mean, corrosive, and condescending. Maybe I was wrong about you all along. This is who you are. Someone who can toss a person aside so easily because of circumstances out of her control.”

“Saylor,” he says, and it’s condescending.

“My profession dictates things. It dictates I can’t be in the press.

It tells me who I can date and who I can’t.

I was so numb to the reality of it because I wanted you more than I cared about everything else.

The rest of my life cannot look like this.

” He points to the street with the guards.

“My neighbors don’t even know what I do, for Christ’s sake. You are too much.”

The last sentence causes physical pain.

“I’m too much for you, is what you mean to say. Rephrase it, Brody. Tell me the truth.”

I sniffle. Brody looks away, like seeing me in pain is too much for him.

“Tell me you don’t care.”

He leans into the doorway, further away from me.

“Then you’ll leave? If I tell you I don’t care?”

My stomach turns to lead. He’s serious.

“Better make me believe it, McCoy,” I sling back, jamming a finger into the name patch on his chest.

He hangs his head. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be. I’ve had a long day. I’ve had several long days.”

“I didn’t hear you say you didn’t care.”

“ I don’t care, ” he says. “Sort your life. Get back into sailing. Invent. Discover. Make the world better, Saylor. You don’t need a man to do the things you love.

You changed the world with All The Way Under .

The military forced you to create it. We blocked the signal of the original system you were using.

It was us. We are the reason you got kidnapped in the first place. ”

“I can’t believe this,” I say.

He won’t meet my gaze. They blocked my signal. I knew it didn’t fail, and this is confirmation. I try to suppress my anger at this information so I can have a conversation with the man I love.

Brody presses his lips together. “It wasn’t personal.

It could have been anyone. We just needed a reason to go to the island.

If we knew the brothers were already there, they would have been enough.

” He lets out another sigh. “You don’t realize it now, but I am doing the right thing. Not just for myself, but for you too.”

Another longing look that ends too quickly.

“I did learn something important, though. Sometimes love isn’t enough.”

“What if it’s always enough?” I retort. “That’s just your opinion. My opinion is that it is enough.”

“Nah, it’s been proven a couple of times now. I won’t test the theory again, that you can be sure of.”

“So you and Grimace are just going to live in this house by yourself, and you’re going to do the same job forever? Lonely and mean?”

“He won’t live forever,” he replies sadly. “But yeah. That’s the plan.”

“That’s sad,” I say.

“Not as sad as it could be, though.”

I remain silent. Studying his face. He does the same. It breaks my heart.

“Goodbye, Saylor. Fair winds and following seas.”

He closes the door. Then locks it.

I sit on his cement steps for longer than I care to admit, processing everything that just happened.

My GPS signal was jammed by the United States military, and he knew it. All this time, he knew it.

Brody couldn’t handle the very thing I warned him about in my life—people do what they want, and they manipulate to better position themselves. I offered to give it all up for him, and he rejected me.

I pick my bracelets up off of the ground and drop them into the mailbox attached to the side of his house. I meant it when I said I would give everything up for him.

My GPS was jammed, he knew it, and waited until now to tell me.