A soft knock raps against my door. I open my puffy eyes, stinging with the tears that have burned them all day, and struggle to sit up in bed.
The sky is dark outside my window and my clock tells me it’s already after eight. My body aches from being contorted in bed, my head feels like I’ve drunk a fifth of whiskey. I’d probably be better off if I had drunk a bottle of something.
I try to get my bearings, to figure out if the knock was real or not, when it sounds again.
“Come in,” I say, rolling over and flipping on a light. The brightness makes me squint, shielding my vision from the assault.
The door squeaks open and I feel the air vibrate with his presence immediately. My body goes on alert, like it always does, when Fenton’s near. I shuffle against the headboard, knowing I must look ridiculous and not sure if I can take seeing him again. Not when the wounds are so fresh. Not when I still haven’t made any sense out of this disaster.
Fenton looks awful. His face is lined, his clothes wrinkled. His hair is a mussed-up mess and I wonder how many times he’s had his hands in it.
He closes the door behind him, but doesn’t move towards me. I’m glad for that.
“Presley let me in,” he says. “She made me promise to not make you cry or she’d blast me with pepper spray on my way out.”
I crack a smile, but barely. My face hurts too much.
“Brynne, I’m so sorry.” His voice cracks with each syllable, each sound pregnant with so much emotion that it nearly drips from the words.
I shake my head, not wanting to hear it. Yet, I do. I want to believe him. I want to wipe this entire thing away. I want Brady home and to have had no links with Fenton at all. I want to be at Fenton’s house, on the deck, with him wearing nothing but his smirk.
The thought rips my heart, tears a part of my soul I didn’t know was reachable for another person. Fenton affects me in ways I didn’t know was possible, made me feel happier, more complete, more wanted than any man ever had before.
And probably more than any man after him could.
But that’s a double-sided coin because for all of the amazing things he can make me feel, he can also destroy me. And I’m afraid he has.
He takes a couple of steps towards me, but the look on my face stops him.
“I swear to you, I was going to tell you,” he says, his voice broken. “I tried to tell you a couple of times, but . . .”
“But you didn’t, Fenton. You just kept me in the dark.”
“Can you imagine what it was like for me for just a minute? I’ve fallen in love with this girl . . .”
I gasp, a shaky intake of air that does nothing to balance me. I watch his face, hoping for a smirk, one of his little chuckles, something to tell me that this declaration was a part of our ongoing joke. But I get nothing but a solemn stare that deepens the laceration in my heart.
He can’t say this now. He can’t go there. He can’t mean it.
My bottom lip quivers and he zeroes in on it immediately. A sharp breath falls from his lips and I can’t fight it anymore. A lone tear trickles down my face. With every centimeter it trails, so does his frown.
“Fenton, I can’t do this,” I whisper. “Will you please go?”
“Don’t ask me to leave, rudo. Please, don’t ask me to go.”
“I can’t do this,” I sniffle. “I don’t understand any of this and I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“Ask me questions. You’re always asking me shit. Do it now. Please,” he begs. “Do it now.”
The pain on his face is like salt in my wound because even though I’m hurting like hell, I hate that he’s hurting too. I can’t give in and hold him, try to make him smile until I’m sure I can smile too. And I know, in the pit in my stomach, that I may never smile again.
“What can I do? Please, baby. Tell me.”
“Don’t, Fenton.”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. It wasn’t. I was supposed to explain it to you, break it down so you see what position I was in. That I fell madly in love with you way before I ever knew who you were or that you even had a brother. And by the time I realized it, I knew you’d want me to let you go and that felt . . . impossible.”
My tears dredge down my swollen cheeks and I watch him through blurred lenses.
“That’s the thing—I don’t know what it was or wasn’t supposed to be. I’m completely gobsmacked over here and I just feel . . .” I can barely see his face through the blinding tears. “I just feel so fucked over.”
“I didn’t fuck you over. I’d say circumstances fucked us over—both of us.”
“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”
“What would you have done, Brynne? What if I would’ve told you that night in Vegas after your mom called and I started figuring it out what I suspected? What if I would’ve said, ‘Hey, Brynne. I think your brother worked for me. I think he’s the reason I haven’t slept all night in fucking months. I think it’s your brother that I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on to get back to your family. I’m pretty certain it’s your brother’s disappearance that’s made me turn my company inside fucking out to see what went wrong, what details we’ve missed, so I can do what’s right. What then, Brynne?”
“I would’ve called a cab.”
“Which is exactly why I couldn’t do that!” He paces a circle before standing to face me again. “I tried to walk away. I brought you home and told myself I was going to let you go and I’d come find you once we got Brady back.” He looks me straight in the eye. “Because we will get him back.”
“You can’t say that! He’s been over there for months and you haven’t managed to do anything!” I glare. “Senator Hyland says you know more than you’re telling us. Is that true?” I snort. “Hell, I probably can’t even believe you.”
He takes a couple of large steps and squats in front of me. I can barely breathe as his hands rest on my knees. “Brynne, trust me when I tell you this—I’ve told them everything that can help them get him back.”
“So there is more? You fucking asshole!”
“Listen to me,” he says, shaking my legs. “I’m doing everything I can, working every angle I can to get Brady home. I have some contacts in Zimbabwe, people my mother knew, people we’re related to, to try to get information on a street level. That’s why the chatter went up. I’ve been applying pressure, pushing to get whatever scrap of information I can.
“If I gave that information to the government, they’d go in guns blazing preemptively and my sources would be quiet. They could be killed for relaying information. Zimbabwe is . . . it’s not America, Brynne. Things don’t work there like they do here.”
“You have to trust the authorities! You have to tell them things so they can get him back!”
He gives an irritated laugh. “I’d rather trust someone that can do something about it. Someone that gives a fuck.”
“Someone like who? You?” I laugh, scowling.
“Yes. Like me. The authorities don’t give a shit. Your Senator is just looking to look nice in the media, to get some votes. Do you think he’s going to go out on a limb to get Brady?” He watches the tears run down my cheeks again. “Fuck. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Tell me this then,” I say, another realization slamming into me. “Grant worked for you too, then. Did you know him?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“How’s that possible?” I demand. “You’re telling me you didn’t know him?”
“I didn’t. Think back to the conversation where I told you about my job. I told you I have many companies under an umbrella. Nzou is the umbrella company. I run that. I have people that run Mandla, Grini, the restaurant companies. I don’t know every employee, Brynne. There are thousands of them. It’s just . . . an odd twist of fate.”
I grab a tissue off the table beside my bed and dry my face. Deciding whether to believe him or not is too big of a decision right now. So I choose to keep asking questions.
“Tell me the truth,” I say, raising my eyebrows in a challenge, “did Grant have something to do with Brady’s disappearance? What do you know that you aren’t telling anyone?”
He sighs. “Honestly, I don’t know.”
I snort and roll my eyes, but he cuts off my reaction. “The records show their unit was supposed to be somewhere else that day. Grant and the guy with him that day both claim they were given orders to move locations. There is no proof of that anywhere. Those type of orders are detailed in writing and there’s no evidence whatsoever they were told to go into another area, especially an area where we aren’t authorized.”
“But if they weren’t ordered there, why would they have been there?”
“I wish I knew, Brynne. It would solve a lot of problems. There are many theories, but none of them have any proof.”
I watch his face darken. “So when I was meeting Grant, you already knew who he was.”
“Yes,” he admits, looking defeated. “But I had run a background check on him after he got back to the States. We’ve been watching him, trying to see if he does something that gives us some sort of idea what happened over there. But we’ve got nothing, other than he has a new car, a new apartment.” Fenton shrugs. “But I don’t trust the guy. I don’t like him. And I sure as hell don’t want you around him.”
Blowing out a breath, my shoulders sag with the weight of my world.
“You have to know that I’m doing everything I can to get your brother back. And I was doing that before I met you.”
He kneels in front of me, his hands on my lap. I want to brush him away, push him back, but I don’t. His closeness gives me strength, comforts me, even though I don’t want it to. I don’t reach out to him, I make no effort to make him think he should try anything more. But I let him stay like he is.
“Can you get him back?” I ask.
“I’m doing everything I can legally.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are things I can’t do. It’s against the law for me to negotiate with Nekuti because they’re technically terrorists. I can’t have an open dialogue with them on the record. Everything I do is supposed to be through the pre-approved channels.” He hesitates. “If I get caught even trying to reach them through my sources in Africa, I could be put in prison, Brynne. I’d definitely lose Mandla. There’s a lot on the line. I have to try to work the system on the ground to get him out, but with the laws we have to work under, both American and Zimbabwean, it’s . . . difficult.”
“So my brother just sits and rots then? Because no one can figure out how to get him back?”
He lifts up to a standing position, his face somber. “I’m doing everything I can.”
“Try fucking harder.”
“Do you hate me now?”
“Yes.”
His head falls forward and I feel bad for saying that. But I’m so damn angry, so hurt, so betrayed that I don’t care enough to take my words back.
“Can I ask you something?” he asks, his words floating on a bead of hope.
“Sure. I, unlike you, will answer.”
He starts to retort something cocky, but wisely refrains. Instead, he says, “If I hadn’t had a tie with Brady, if there was no connection at all, where would you be right now?”
A small, sad smile slides across my face. I wanted to be with him, in his bed, on the balcony—anywhere. Just with him.
“Come home with me, Brynne,” he breathes.
I look at the blankets, unable to see the grief on his face. I can’t trust him. I can’t betray Brady by being with him. I can’t. So I shake my head no.
“Will you see me tomorrow?” he asks.
“I won’t see you again, Fenton,” I say, summoning the courage to continue. To do what has to be done. “Ever.”
The words break me, destroy me, and I grab a pillow and sob into it. My world falls apart while he watches me.
He doesn’t make a move to comfort me and that’s just as well. It would only make feeling him pull away hurt even more.
“I can’t watch you cry,” he says, his voice breaking. “Not knowing I did this.”
“Then leave,” I hiccup.
“Come with me. Come home, let me take care of you. Please, rudo.”
Using the back of my hand, I wipe the tears and snot off my face. It’s not my most ladylike gesture, but I’m in survival mode. “You told me to trust you. You said that to me once. Do you remember?”
He nods, dragging in a deep breath.
“I did. I trusted you. Why I did, I’ll never know because you seemed too good to be true.” A little laugh rolls out, a laugh at my own stupidity. “You were like all these little checkboxes marked off in one man, and you, for whatever reason, liked me.”
“I—”
I hold up a hand, silencing him. “It was way too easy to trust you. To just see wherever this ended up. And now . . . I see this whole thing was built on the biggest lie—”
“I didn’t lie to you!”
“Omissions are lies!” I shout right back. “You just pulled me in, all the while knowing I hated you! I just didn’t know it was you!”
The sobs come heavy again and I hear Presley at the door. She pushes it open and watches me fall apart. Shooting a glare at Fenton, she sits next to me on my bed and holds my hand.
“You need to leave,” Pres fires at him. “Now.”
He gives me a sad smile and turns to go. Before he’s out of sight, he pivots on his heels and faces me one last time. “I will get your brother back. If it’s the last thing I do, your brother will come home. And when you start to question that, feel the necklace around your neck and remember what you know about me.” He holds my gaze for a long second, his eyes telling me a million words that I can’t process. He then looks at Presley. “If she needs anything at all, call me. Please. I’ll fix this. Somehow, I’ll fix this.” He takes a deep breath and tries to smile, but fails. “And Brynne?”
“Yeah?” I choke out.
“I wasn’t just pretending to fall in love with you. I really did.”
He disappears and I crumble in Presley’s arms.