She started pulling off her dress, all the while saying, ‘I love you and only you, Spencer. It was always supposed to be that way and it always will be. I promise you that.’ And then she pulled the shirt over her head and smoothed it down around her torso. ‘I promise,’ she whispered again.
Chapter Fifty-Five
BRODY STARTLED AWAKE. He was lying fully dressed, face down on top of the duvet on the hotel bed. He rolled over and ran a hand through his hair. He must have fallen asleep waiting for Anna to respond last night.
Since his room had no curtains, only wall-to-wall glass, it was easy to see it was still dark outside. Something buzzed beneath him on the bed. His phone. It must be what had woken him. He grunted and shifted, extracting it from under his left hip, and checked the phone screen. It was—
In an instant, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, his brain suddenly cleared of sleep.Anna!With clumsy fingers, he swiped at his screen and held the phone up to his ear.
‘Brody?’
‘Anna! Where have you been? I’ve been trying to get in contact all night. Are you okay? What happened?’Stop, he told himself.She can’t answer your questions if you won’t stop asking them.He closed his mouth and let her get a word in edgewise.
‘Brody… About last night… I’m so sorry. I just…’ She let out a heavy breath.
‘Are you okay?’ Brody asked again. ‘You’re not ill or hurt?’
He heard her swallow. ‘No.’
Was it his imagination, or did he hear a hint of guilt in her tone? ‘Then what happened?’
‘That’s just it… I don’t really know. I just kind of… freaked. I don’t know why, and I can’t even explain it.’ She paused and let out a nervous laugh. ‘I mean, you and I both know I can get a little bit… weird… about New Year’s Eve.’
Brody didn’t say anything. The way she was talking… Something wasn’t sitting right with him.
‘I… I would have phoned earlier, but I got a little drunk, and I must have fallen asleep and…’ She trailed off forlornly and then added quietly, ‘I just found your messages. I’m so sorry.’
‘You got drunk?’ Brody echoed. ‘Where? At a bar?’
‘Yes, and… yes,’ Anna said, and he could picture her covering her eyes in shame. He wasn’t unsympathetic – he knew all about freaking out, after all – but something wasn’t adding up here.
‘After seeing me? After running away?’
‘Yes… I don’t know what to say, how to explain it…’ There was a tremble in her voice when she spoke again. ‘Please, Brody. I know what I did was awful but… but can we put it behind us?’
Brody frowned and walked over to the vast windows of his suite’s bedroom. She was out there somewhere, and he didn’t know where. Why? Why didn’t he know that? What was going on with her?
‘In my experience,’ he said calmly, ‘it doesn’t work to just sweep everything under the carpet. There was a reason you left last night, Anna. You need to work out what that is and, to be honest, I’d like to know what the reason is too.’
Silence.
While he waited for her to answer, his mind went back to that moment when he’d first seen her the night before. The expression on her face – both at that moment and in the lift – haunted him. When he’d finally drifted off to sleep somewhere before dawn, it was all he’d been able to dream about. And now it was etched on his memory like the ghost of an image left on an old photographic plate.
That expression told him all he needed to know, he realized. Because he recognized it. He knew the emotion that lay beneath it intimately.
Fear.
But what was she afraid of? He began pacing along the glass panels that made up one wall of the bedroom, eyes fixed on the city lights outside. Not heights or crowded spaces, otherwise she’d never have suggested this as a location. The only other possible answer he could think of was that she’d been afraid ofhim.Logically, that fit, but it didn’t mean it made any sense. Did he look like an axe-murdering psychopath after all? He didn’t think so. He’d actuallyshaved,for God’s sake. It was the most presentable he’d been in years. But then an idea began to creep up on him…
‘What can I do, Brody?’ Anna finally said. ‘To make things better. I want to make things better. I want things to go back to the way they were.’
It didn’t escape him that she hadn’t answered his question, but maybe it was his turn to lead the way. Over the last year, she’d inspired him to be brave, to work through his fears; maybe he could do the same for her – and there was only one way he could think of. He was going to have to be courageous enough to be honest,like she usually was, right here, in this moment. He stopped pacing, planted his feet and tried to imagine her standing there in the room with him. ‘I’m not sure I want things to go back to the way they were before, Anna.’
She gave a little shocked sob. ‘Why not? Did I… Did I ruin it? Please don’t say I did. Brody, you’ve got to forgive me!’
Of course he was going to forgive her for being afraid; it would be highly hypocritical of him if he didn’t, but there was something more here. He stuck his other hand in his pocket and walked from the bedroom into the living area, needing more space. He’d told her the truth. After last night, they couldn’t stuff their relationship back into the same shape it had been before. It had outgrown that. It had shed that skin. They both had to face that if they were going to go forward.
‘I don’t want to be just your friend anymore, Anna.’ He paused, gathering the words he knew he had to say inside his head before he let them out, making sure they were all lined up in the right order, ready to make sense. He was only going to say this once. ‘I want more than that.’
