‘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.’

Chapter Fifty-Six

ANNA LAY ON her back, the covers pulled up over her head. She stared at the underside of her duvet. It was Sunday morning, and she’d got up three hours ago, but now she was back in here, at a loss for anything else to do. Would someone please tell her how to make it stop hurting, how to get that nice, calm, white bubble thing going again? That would be really helpful, thank you.

Oh, God, she was such a coward.

Especially after everything he’d told her.

He’d been wrong about her. Spencer had been wrong about her. She wasn’t strong. She was pitiful. She was a jellyfish.

And whoever had said ‘knowledge is power’ was also wrong. This knowledge of how she felt about Brody didn’t make her any stronger. It didn’t change anything. Because what she had told Brody was true. She didn’t have it in her to love that way again. Not because she didn’t want to but because she just… couldn’t. It would break her. Weren’t people always saying prevention was better than cure? This was the perfect example.