In the Likely Event

by Rebecca Yarros

“You didn’t fail,” Nate said quietly

“Why would you say that?” At least this seat belt didn’t stick as I got out of the car. “Because I know you, and I know how you think.”

“I’m done hearing you don’t want to talk.” He reached for my arm and got a good grip on the upper part. “I just flew all the way—” he started, abruptly halting when Nate ripped him away. Jeremy’s body slammed

was stuck in a perpetual cycle of trying to please the men in my life, only to have them abandon me at their convenience.

Only the complete package of Izzy seemed to do it for me. No one else.

“Don’t you have something better to do?” I asked Torres, picking up the highlighter from my nightstand and marking a line, pausing halfway through.

“Izzy, I’m going to need you to step back,” Nate warned, in a low, lethal tone I’d never heard before. “Nate?” There had to be a way to postpone whatever confrontation was looming until they buried his mother, wasn’t there? “Please.” He didn’t take his eyes off his father. I did as he asked, retreating a handful of steps for that very reason. If Nate wouldn’t look away from his father, it meant he’d been given grounds not to in the past.

“You’re all I want.” He cupped the back of my neck. “It doesn’t matter how far I go or how long I’m away. I dream about you. Even when I know you’re with someone else—”

He’d always been vigilant whenever we’d been together in the past, always looking, always watching everyone else, and now I understood why. Those reactions I worried about for all those years were the ones that kept him alive over here.

“This is Navarre,” he said so quietly that I barely heard

“Navarre?” I whispered, watching Nate’s shoulders straighten as he nodded at whatever was being said, but his reply was lost in the hum of voices around me. “His call sign,”

“The color thing is so you don’t know who we are. Our call signs are so we know who’s actually on the other end of the call.” Navarre. Gravity shifted beneath my feet. Isabeau’s lover, cursed to only see her at dawn and dusk. Doomed to love her but never touch her. Never hold her. Never make a real life together.

SWOONNNNNNING

“If it’s between me or one of the girls—” Nate pivoted toward me, took my chin between thumb and forefinger, and tilted my face toward his. “I’m not that guy.” He said it so softly that I barely heard him, so I knew the family behind us couldn’t.

“The guy who does the honorable thing,” Nate said, his eyes searching mine. “Not when it comes to you.”

Ugh

There was nothing quite as beautiful as watching the reflection of the moon ripple on the water

“I’ll get her on the first plane.” “Senator Lauren received her request to remain and be of use to the ambassador.” He cocked an eyebrow. “I’m going to kill her.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose.

You have no idea the lengths I will go to in order to keep you safe.” “Because I’m your assignment.” The statement was an accusation. “Because that’s all I’ve done since I met you, Isabeau.”

The way his gaze heated made my breath catch. “And if you weren’t enough for him, then he’s going to spend his life totally and completely miserable, because there’s no one in this world who measures up to you. If he cheated, then my guess would be that it wasn’t because you weren’t enough—it was because he wasn’t.”

“This is how I can say that.” A click sounded as he set something on the counter between us. He shoved the remains of the tag beneath his shirt and withdrew his hand from the counter. Revealing a diamond ring. The diamond ring.

“I’m the one who carried you with me every goddamned day.”

She was the meaning in all this. The sun that would warm me or incinerate me. She was everything. She always had been.

“Don’t you see? It’s the only way we can be together. I’ve fought it for so many years, thinking this life wouldn’t be fair to you, that you deserved so much better—and you still do, but I love you, Isabeau. I’ve only loved you. I’ll only ever love you. And I was supposed to do this in the water, or maybe even the plane—kind of circle back to how we met, you know?”

“But you love me, and I just need you to choose, Iz. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll let you all the way in. I’ll tell you what I can, and we’ll go back to North Carolina together. Or I’ll get out if that’s what you want.” “What?” Her eyebrows hit the ceiling. “You don’t want to get out. You’ve never wanted that.” “But I would if it meant keeping you. I’m in, Iz. I made it. And I know you don’t really know what that means, but say the word and I’ll walk away. We’ll walk away. Just tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it,” I begged. The choice was hers. I was hers.

“Please,” I said softly. “Please choose me, Izzy. Choose us. Choose us over whatever life your parents want you to lead. Choose us despite the fact that I’m asking when we haven’t had time to build a life. Choose to give us that time. Choose our future. I’ll do whatever you want. Just marry me.” Every muscle in my body tensed, hanging on her answer.

“You’re saying no,” I said, enunciating every word just so we were clear, and I slowly rose to my feet. “I’m saying this isn’t right.” She shook her head. But she was the only thing right in my entire life.

“Nate,” Izzy whispered, staring at the ring I’d carried with me for nearly three years.

“You said, I can’t,” I reminded her. “And I might not have a Georgetown Law education, but I’m pretty sure I can’t and no are pretty fucking synonymous.” “But they don’t mean the same thing!”

“All I could think was that this was everything I’d ever wanted, and yet, if I’d said yes, I would have been taking advantage of you at your worst moment. You would have woken up and regretted asking.”

“If you knew the world had twenty-four hours before some calamity struck, where would you go?” “I would go wherever you are. I knew it that night in Tybee. Hell, I probably knew it the second you reached for my hand in that plane. There is no force on earth that would keep me from you.”

“I know what she is to you.” Everything. She was everything.

“I’ve been talking to my best friend as a coping mechanism for the stress, the deployments, the . . . everything.” He nodded, leaning back in his chair. “That sounds pretty normal.” “Yeah, except he’s been dead for four years. Think you can help me?” I gripped my knees and waited for his answer. “Yes,” he said. “I think I can help you.”