Page 81 of All The Way Under
Bronwyn holds out her hands, extending them to Archie on his knee, presenting Saylor with a box.
“This. We were trying to tell you this was about to happen.”
“What the fuck?”
My heart sinks, slips, slides, and I think it stops for a beat or two. Saylor looks around the room, but I’m in the back. I can see Bitsy, and she’s glaring at me, a half smirk playing on her lips.
“We’re here together,” I stammer. “Bitsy talked to me all afternoon.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Bronwyn says, echoing what Saylor tried to tell me.
It doesn’t matter. I don’t matter. I’ll always be a lowly military employee. A man not sufficient for a Wyndham.
Nolan and Catherine slide up to where Bronwyn is explaining the semantics of this fucked-up world. But all I hear is how I’ll never truly be able to fit in here. How I’ll never be good enough for Saylor.
Love doesn’t mean anything here.
Saylor grabs Archie’s wrist and drags him out the side door without responding to his proposal.
“I have to get the fuck out of here right now,” I say, and I don’t recognize my voice.
Mark is there in a flash, covering for us as we leave. The hallways are colder than they were mere hours before. Bronwyn tries to get me to stay, but I can’t. Not right now. The betrayal wasn’t by Saylor, but it might as well have been. The chandeliers burn low in the hallway as we exit the mansion of lies and cheats.
When I’m in my truck, and Mark is next to me, I scream.
I scream so loud that the guards jump from outside the closed windows.
Nolan and Catherine get into the back seat.
“It’s not fine. It’s not okay. But this needed to happen,” Nolan says, voice low.
I meet his eyes in the rearview, and it’s a small salve in this moment.
“I know,” I say, voice breaking.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
saylor
“I hate everyone,”I wail, covering my eyes with my forearm when Bronwyn presses the button to open my bedroom drapes.
I’m staying at my parents’ house until the new wave of publicity dies down. While I also have a home nearby, I like to stay with them, and now, it’s just safer.
“I don’t understand why I can’t call him and tell him why I’m not calling him.”
My face is red and puffy from crying.
She sits next to me in the bed, rubbing my back.
“Keeping him in the dark is the only way this works, Saylor. Why don’t you go work on the boat Dad got you? Get your mind off him?”
“The boat? The boat reminds me of him now. Everything reminds me of Brody.”
I cry again, a little less jagged this time, because I’m fresh out of tears. I said fuck no to Archie, but after Brody left the party in a rage, our PR said we need to run with this new story. It would be beneficial to Brody and his family and friends if the world thinks I said yes to Archie Beaumont.
“I miss him. I miss his voice. I miss his angry little tirades when I get snippy. I miss everything. How much longer do I have to pretend, Bronwyn?”
“One outing with Archie. Today. We’ve hired paps to take some photos so they can run with it, and then you can go to Brody and explain everything.”
