‘Brody—’
He cut her off before she could interrupt him further. ‘I love you.’ He could hear her breathing, but she didn’t say anything. He understood that. He understood how the fear could freeze your thoughts, paralyse your mouth. ‘And I think the reason you ran away from me last night is that you have feelings for me too.’
There. He’d said it. Put it all on the line. Now it was out there.I jump, you jump. Come on, Anna. Show me how brave you can be…
He could sense her struggling, fighting what he’d said. He sat down on one of the dining chairs and put his phone on the glass-topped table,switching it to speaker, and silently willed her to make the leap with him.
‘I can’t tell you what you want to hear, Brody. I just can’t.’
‘Why?’
‘I can’t feel about you the way you want me to.’
She was lying. The knowledge made him irritated and elated in equal measures. ‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re not Spencer.’
He almost laughed out loud. ‘Bullshit!’ She’d always said he never pulled his punches. Seemed he couldn’t stop himself even if he wanted to. ‘You’re scared. I get that.’
She made a non-committal huff.
‘And do you want to knowwhyI get that?’
He told Anna anyway, whether she wanted to know or not. He began with his first panic attack, how his world had shrunk smaller and smaller until she’d come into his life, how fear had ruled him for years, but also how she’d inspired him to challenge it. Not just that, but to conquer it. He told her about his journey to London to meet her, how he’d had to battle fear a hundred times, how he’d stood on that viewing platform, clenching that damn railing for two hours waiting for her to turn up. How he’d had his worst panic attack yet the moment she’d sped downwards in the lift.
‘That’s everything,’ he finally said. ‘Everything I’ve never told anyone else because I was too ashamed of how weak and broken I felt. Because I was tooscared.’
There was an uncomfortable shuffling on the other end of the line. He might have heard her stifle a sob or wipe her nose, too. He really wasn’t sure.
‘Oh, Brody…’ she said, and her voice was thick with tears. ‘I… I didn’t know…’
Brody nodded to himself. ‘I wouldn’t have expected you to. I’ve done a good job of hiding it from everyone for years. Even myself. But I’m not hiding anymore, Anna, and that’s because of you. I don’t want to be scared anymore.’
The sound at the other end of the phone line didn’t change, but he had the oddest feeling she was holding her breath.
‘You don’t have to be scared, either. We can try again… Come to the hotel and we’ll find somewhere to go out for breakfast, somewhere small and quiet, and we can talk?’
‘I can’t, Brody. I can’t! You know why.’
Yes, he did know why. But it wasn’t the reason she was giving him; it was the one she refused to admit to herself.
‘Please…’ she whispered, and the tremor in her voice tore his heart. ‘Please, don’t push this. Let’s just go back to talking… Being friends?’
Brody pushed back in the chair and stood up, leaving the phone on the table. ‘But I can’t do what you want, either,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to lie to you anymore, Anna, and that’s what you’re asking me to do.’
‘Then, I can’t… We can’t…’ She trailed off and he felt the silence turn from jagged and uneven to smooth and grey and flat, like concrete. Before she spoke again, he knew what choice she’d made. ‘I think you’re right,’ she said finally, and this time her voice didn’t waver or tremble. ‘We can’t go back.’
‘Anna—’
‘I think we need to take a break, you and I.’ The aloofness in her tone cut through him like an icy gust of air.
Brody turned to the window and lay his forehead on its cool surface and closed his eyes.It was no good. He’d hit a brick wall. One he couldn’t smash down; one he couldn’t climb over or dig under. He’d built an identical wall once upon a time, and it had ruined his marriage, ostracized his family. His wall had stood hard and proud for years, until Anna Barry had come along and dismantled it brick by brick, damn her.
Unfortunately, he also knew there was nothing he could say or do to make her take her wall down. Just as Katri had begged him to bulldoze his, to support each other in their grief over Lena, yet he’d stubbornly refused. He hadn’t been ready then, just as Anna wasn’t ready now. She might never be.
And to prove her point, Anna said the words he’d never thought he’d hear her say to him.
‘Goodbye, Brody.’
