“I want it all, Malin. I want you to lie on the floor, naked, and let me look at you. I want you to tell me where your mission took a wrong turn and what kind of trouble you’re really in. I want you to trust me enough to do both of those things, but so much more.”
“What more?”
“I don’t know, and that’s me being honest with you. I don’t know what else I’m asking, but I know there’s more I want from you than just your trust.”
“You wrecked me, Dutch. That’s me being honest. You totally, completely annihilated me.”
“Why did you tell me to go to her? Why didn’t you put up a fight?”
Malin leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. “To what end, Dutch? Did you want me to throw away what little pride I had and beg you to pick me over her, knowing full well you wouldn’t?”
He shook his head and looked away from her. “I don’t know.”
“My telling you to go let you off the hook for something you were going to do no matter what. You didn’t even wait for me to get dressed.”
Dutch cringed. Looking back on it, it had been a chicken-shit-asshole move. “Earlier, when you went up to the bedroom and closed the door, I sat out here not knowing what to do. Maybe it was more that I didn’t know what to say. I’ve apologized to you, I’ve told you that I wish I could go back and do it all over again. I even wish sometimes that I’d never met Alegria, but the more I say those words, the less authentic they sound to me. I mean them with all my heart, but I can’t keep saying them, because there will come a time when I don’t mean them anymore.”
He waited for her to speak, but she didn’t, so he went on. “Tell me what to do, Malin. Tell me how to make it better or how to make it up to you. Tell me, and I’ll do whatever you want. The only thing I can’t do is keep saying the same things over again, knowing that it isn’t making any difference.”
“I don’t know what I want you to do.”
He nodded. “Let me ask you this, then. Is it worth it to you to keep trying? Whatever the outcome ends up being, and that includes us just being able to be friends again.”
“I don’t know.”
“Fair enough.”
“It is?”
“I guess it’s going to have to be.”
“Are we leaving the island?”
Dutch rested his elbow on the table like she had and peered into her eyes. “Do you want to?”
“No.”
“Then, no. We aren’t leaving.”
“How long can we stay?”
Dutch thought about it a long time before he answered, wanting to be sure he meant the first words that came to his mind when she asked the question. If he said the words out loud, he had to be sure he was ready to do what it took to make it happen, because once he made her the promise, he would fulfill it, no matter what.
“We can stay here forever, Malin, and I’m not being flip or funny or anything like that. We never have to leave.”
She studied him. “How?”
Dutch nodded. “I’ll make it happen.”
Her eyes remained fixed on his, perhaps waiting for a sign that he was bullshitting her.
“What do I have to do?” she asked.
“Not a thing.”
“Tell you about the mission?”
“I hope you do, but it isn’t a condition of staying here.”