Page 100 of All The Way Under
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.
