Page 46 of All The Way Under

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SEVEN YEARS LATER

The sun’s coming up over the sound, and there’s something about mornings like this—warm breeze, hint of salt in the air, toddler laughter rolling through the screen door—that makes me pause. Savor. Reflect.

I didn’t know I had it in me to build a quiet life. Not back then. Not when I was all calloused edges and bite. But here I am, watching my daughter amble across the deck in her little sailor-print dress, dragging her stuffed narwhal like it’s an anchor she refuses to cut loose from.

Saylor swears she gets her grip from me. I say it’s all her. She held on to me when anyone else would have cut their losses.

She giggles when she sees me, and I crouch low, catching her just as she careens forward on chubby legs.

“I got you, squirt,” I murmur against her fine, honey-blonde curls. She smells like lavender lotion and jelly toast. “Where’s your brother?”

As if on cue, a blur of sandy curls sprints past us, our five-year-old son, Caspian, shirtless and barefoot, wielding a wooden sword like he’s storming a pirate ship.

“Mom said I could be captain today!” he announces, breathless. “You’re the deckhand!”

I glance over my shoulder at the woman leaning on the doorway, mug in hand, hair messy and pulled into a knot that somehow still makes her look like a goddess.

My goddess. My forever.

“You gave him rank?” I ask Saylor, smirking.

“He bribed me with a strawberry he didn’t eat,” she says, shrugging like she’s not proud of her weakness. “Besides, you were a Navy SEAL. You’re used to taking orders.”

I snort. “That’s mutiny.”

“Consider it training,” she says, stepping forward to ruffle Caspian’s hair and steal a kiss from my cheek before her lips slide to mine, slow, sweet, like morning sun on cold skin. She brings me to life.

This life…I never could’ve imagined it. Not seven years ago, when everything felt like it might slip through my fingers if I breathed too hard. The way it came together feels something like a fairy tale.

There are always villains in fairy tales, but the only ones in my life come in the form of Bianca’s friends who love me in their own weird way. I learned how to deal with them and shut them down quickly, though.

After I left the Teams, it took time, years, for the restlessness to settle.

The only thing that kept me grounded was Saylor and the mission we created together.

MacSay Technologies started as a whisper of an idea on a boat deck in Madagascar, back when we were more scars than hope.

It’s turned into something real now. Something big and far-reaching.

We design satellite-integrated navigation systems for civilian sailing vessels and long-range maritime security networks.

Our goal? Make the seas safer. Give adventurers like Saylor better tools.

And maybe, if I’m being honest, it’s also my way of ensuring no one ever goes through what she did.

The fear, the isolation, the fight for survival.

No one should have to do that alone. Sure, I endured the same, but I was trained for misery.

No one deserves that without warning. We’re fixing it.

I’m the COO, but Saylor’s the heart. She’s the visionary, the dreamer who knows when to take the helm and when to let me calculate the tides.

She’s still wild at her core, still Saylor Wyndham, daughter of a dynasty and breaker of rules.

But now, she’s also a mom, a founder, and the woman I get to call my wife every damn day. Reality turned out better than fiction.

I never imagined love could stretch like this.

That it could hold us through boardroom battles and three a.m. diaper changes, through funding rounds and sleepless nights nursing fevers, through fights about school schedules and decisions over where to dock the boat for the summer.

But here we are. Building. Choosing each other again and again.

It wasn’t all easy. I remember the day I officially turned in my trident and stepped into civilian life full-time.

Saylor met me outside the command with our son on her hip and tears in her eyes.

There was something final about it, like I was shedding a skin I’d worn for too long.

I was proud. But I was terrified too. What comes next?

Who am I if I’m not the SEAL? It turns out I didn’t need to worry.

The world has a way of giving you exactly what you need.

We celebrated quietly that night. No party. Just the three of us on the deck of our first family house, wine in hand, and our baby asleep between us in a portable crib.

She looked over and said, “So what now, sailor?”

I laughed, and the words came out before I could stop them.

“Whatever you want, baby. Wherever you lead, I’ll follow.”

Saylor took those words seriously. First, a trip to Madagascar.

Six months later, we were knee-deep in the formation of MacSay Technologies.

The name still makes her laugh. A mash-up of our names, born from a joke Nolan made over beers at the lake house.

I wanted to call it Neptune Navigation. She vetoed it.

That first year was rough. Investors weren’t sure what to make of a military guy and a former society yacht racer with a reputation for vanishing off the grid.

I was adamant we do things the traditional way and not use family money or connections through Wyndham Technology.

We did pony up some of our cash, but the big investors came because Saylor had ATWU as her proof of success.

We worked out of the sunroom with a few employees.

Took meetings while passing the baby back and forth.

But then came our first contract—a private expedition company outfitting their fleet for Arctic routes. And everything changed.

Now we have offices in three states and a research team in Norway. Just last month, we launched our first satellite. Caspian watched the live feed with wide eyes, holding his sister’s hand.

He turned to me and said, “That’s ours, Daddy? In space?”

“Ours,” I said. “Yours too.”

Nolan calls every day. Sometimes twice. His voice always fills the space like an old song. He’s the godfather to our daughter, Marina, and he takes that job more seriously than anything he’s ever done before.

Catherine’s pregnant with their third, and she still somehow manages to run half the pediatric wing at the hospital and keep Nolan in line with her whip-rich sarcasm.

She is my acerbic rival and cynicism nemesis.

She just learned when and where to rein it in.

We get along so well, it’s as if she were born to take my place next to my twin.

They visit often. Their boys are rougher and rowdier, but treat Caspian like a little prince.

Sunday dinners with them and our parents are sacred.

Barbecue on the back porch, kids tearing through the yard like pirates on shore leave, my mom screaming at my dad to put down the water gun before he accidentally squirts her.

There is laughter that rises with the smoke. I traded gunshots and flashbangs for giggles and scraped knees. Life is wild and wonderful.

One night, after the kids were down, Nolan and I sat out by the fire pit, passing a bottle of bourbon between us, stars above, the sea whispering nearby.

It felt like the old times, just him and me.

Black and white. Good and bad. Except the lines aren’t the same anymore.

We’re similar in ways I never dreamed of.

I got to be a little bit like Nolan, and that makes me choke up.

“You ever think we’d make it here?” he asked. “Us doing life like this together?”

“No,” I said honestly. “But I wanted to be here. Even back then. Even when it felt impossible.”

He nodded slowly. “It still scares me sometimes. The quiet. The stillness inside of you.”

“Same. But I earned it, brother. I survived the fire,” I said, winking. “Now we both learn how to live in the warmth.”

The moment was poignant. It was a full-circle moment. I finally got to be the person I always idolized. Myself, but better, so him.

Saylor travels now and then to give keynote talks. Just last spring, she stood onstage at the International Women in Navigation Conference, radiating grace and authority. I sat in the back, Marina asleep in my arms, and watched every man and woman in that room hang on her every word.

She spoke of resilience. Of knowing fear but choosing courage. Of refusing to be defined by what almost broke you.

When she said, “Sometimes, the best way to find your way home is to first let yourself get lost,” I had to blink fast and hard.

After the talk, she found me in the lobby, dropped her award on the floor, and wrapped her arms around me.

“You make me brave,” she whispered.

I didn’t say it then, but she’s the reason I breathe easy. The reason I’m alive and well.

Leaving the military, while it was an easy decision, needed to happen. She made the transition effortless. No nightmares. No regrets. No thoughts of my past at all unless I feel like dwelling. The right life and the right support system can sometimes be enough to combat a past filled with fight.

Support doesn’t always mean solving the problem. Sometimes it means sitting with you in the struggle, reminding you that you’re strong enough to keep going.

We took the kids to Greece last year, rented a catamaran, and lived on the water for a month.

Caspian learned how to cast a net. Marina danced on the bow in her floaties, arms wide like she could fly.

We made love beneath the stars, the old wood creaking with the rhythm of the tide. It was the freest I’d ever felt.

Then there was the vow renewal. Five years. On the beach near our home. Barefoot. Friends and family in a half-circle, Caspian as the ring bearer, Marina scattering petals like a giggling storm.

Bianca orchestrated the whole thing with the precision of a CEO and the flair of a Paris runway.

She flew in custom florals from Holland, and there was a string quartet that played our favorite songs, note for note.

There were fairy lights in the trees, champagne in seashell flutes, and a cake so tall it required internal engineering. It was perfect.

It was hers, and that was fine, because all I cared about was that she was still mine. Just like the first wedding.

Saylor wore a simple ivory dress, her hair down, curls catching the breeze. I wore linen and a smile I couldn’t hide despite my best efforts.

When I repeated the words, I added something new. “I promise to follow you, always. Even if it’s all the way under.” Or across the ocean. Into enemy territory. To heaven. Or to hell. I’d follow her everywhere and anywhere in between.

She cried. I did too. Much to Nolan’s delight, might I add.

Now, tonight, I sit on the deck with Marina in my lap, Caspian curled up on a pillow beside me, the sea murmuring its sweet, sweet lullaby. Saylor hums in the kitchen, barefoot, pouring wine and brewing my cup of tea.

The moon is full. The house is quiet. The tide rolls in steadily and surely, like it always has. Like it always will.

This is our forever.

I’d go all the way under to keep it.