Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 83772 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83772 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
She stayed in her desk chair for a moment, but once she realized there was no way out of this, she stood up and smoothed out her skirt at the same time. When she walked around me, her head was held high, working her heels like they were flats. Her ass was a peach in that tight skirt.
I tried not to stare.
She picked an armchair and crossed her legs. She found something else to look at, a painting across the room, and stared at it instead of me.
I sat opposite her and stared as hard as she tried to ignore me. “I was an asshole. I have no excuse for it, so I’ll give none.” I hoped she would look at me, but she didn’t. “I’m sorry.”
Her eyes remained directed elsewhere for a few seconds before she slowly turned to look at me. She was still upset but considerably less. A simple apology had cleared the smoke in the room and made it easier for both of us to breathe. “Why?”
“I won’t make excuses, sweetheart.”
“I’m not asking for excuses. I just want to understand you.” The rage in her voice had been replaced by a quiet sympathy. She somehow wrapped me in affection without touching me. She somehow healed me with the power of her tender stare.
I didn’t want to talk about Shayla. Before Astrid, I hadn’t said her name in a very long time. Now, it felt like it came up every other day. She didn’t come back from the grave, but all the suffering and pain sure did. “You’re right. I tried to sabotage this. I was different before, because we were a dead end. Didn’t have to put up a shield. Didn’t have to set any boundaries. I asked you to stay for days at a time because there was no pressure. But now, this road may not have a dead end.” It might be a highway that continued indefinitely, all across Europe, up to Russia, through China, and then India before it came back around through eastern Europe in a loop. “I thought I could try, but I can’t seem to allow myself to do so.”
“What are you afraid of, Theo?”
I stared into her eyes, hoping the answer was so obvious I wouldn’t have to say it.
But she stared back as if she needed me to spell it out like on an episode of Wheel of Fortune.
“I watched my first wife die. I don’t want to watch the same thing happen to my second.” I blamed our struggles on the choice she’d made, but I gave her no reason to trust me, no assurances. And I knew now it was just an excuse to keep her at a distance. I was a coward who was more afraid of commitment than a bullet in my temple.
Clouds of devotion moved across her eyes until they started to mist. She always looked at me like a dream come true, like sunshine in winter, an oasis in the desert. Even when we’d been across from each other at that god-awful dinner with Bolton, she’d still looked at me that way—and not him. No one had ever looked at me like that. Some women wanted to fuck my brains out. Some wanted to be my wife, though not for the man I was, but the life I could provide. And some wanted to have my children, just for the chance to have a son over six feet with unquestionable intelligence. But I’d never met a woman who wanted me for me, unconditionally, no strings attached.
She continued to look at me as she absorbed my confession. “I didn’t actually watch my mother die since she passed so quickly, but I watched my father die. Slowly fade away with every passing day, the despair flaying him alive like a flesh-eating bacteria. I didn’t watch him take his last breath, but I found his body. I know our circumstances aren’t the same, but I understand loss. I understand watching the person you love most slowly give in to an opponent they can’t even see. I know how it feels to…never want to feel again.”
People always said they understood, but no one I knew had lost their wife before they turned thirty. That was something I carried alone. But Astrid was the first person to seem to relate to it. Her life had been filled with the same profound loss. I was the last of my bloodline, and so was she.
“The feelings I have for you…they scare me. They scare me because I’m terrified to lose you when you aren’t even mine.” Her eyes were like paragraphs in a novel, leaping off the page with raw emotion. Her words were authentic, her feelings genuine. She didn’t play games like the others did. She was a shit poker player, but she still won the game. “Once I allowed myself to have you, I felt it. Felt something I’d never felt for anyone else. I should have just ended my marriage right then. It was dead anyway.” Her eyes flicked away as the anger momentarily flushed into her face. She possessed no sympathy or understanding. She used to make excuses for him, used to rationalize the betrayal, used to try to make sense of something that simply didn’t make sense, but those days were long over. “I wish I’d found those text messages in the beginning. I would have left him and come straight to your bed and never left.”