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)
I wasn’t sure how I would do it.
We watched TV on the couch together, enjoying a bottle of wine as we snuggled close. His arm was around my shoulders, and I placed my hand on my thigh. Whenever this happened, I would think about Theo and the way we used to do this very same thing on his couch.
Now, I wondered if he was doing it with Laura.
When I got tired and started to fall asleep against his shoulder, he turned off the TV and scooped me into his arms. The house in Madrid was a two-story palace on several acres of land. It was behind an iron gate with its own pond with swans that would stop by for a visit. He carried me upstairs and set me on my side of the bed before he moved to his. He dropped his sweatpants and got into bed beside me before he tucked me in.
He’d never tucked me in before.
He came close to me, our heads on the same pillow, his warm flesh against mine.
“I love you, baby.” He pressed a kiss to my forehead before he grew still.
I kept my eyes closed and pretended to be asleep just to avoid the situation. I hadn’t said it back to him and he hadn’t pressured me to say it, but I knew that was inevitable too. There were only two options for me.
Confirm…or take my life.
I woke up in the middle of the night for no reason at all. Maybe it was a bad dream that disappeared so quickly I couldn’t recall it. Or maybe my body was just on alert, even when I was dead asleep.
I left the bedroom and headed downstairs. We had a large terrace out there, a firepit surrounded by couches, underneath the tall trees that were sprinkled across the property. Bolton still had his security with him, even though he’d retired from his career.
I turned on the gas and started the fire before I opened a bottle of wine. Instead of drinking out of a glass like a lady, I drank straight from the bottle, because fuck it, who gave a shit at this point?
I sat in front of the fire and drank alone…and cried.
Cried because Theo had replaced me so quickly. Chose to move on rather than mourn what we had. He’d left me to my fate and got back to his reality like there’d never been a disturbance. From an outside point of view, it would be easy to believe that my life hadn’t changed at all, that I’d never met Theo, that our lives had never crossed.
A part of me wished I never had. I’d worshipped that man the moment he was mine, gave him my heart even though he never gave me his. And now, he was with someone else, forgetting about me with every thrust between her legs.
It was awkward to drink and cry at the same time, but I made it work.
Then I heard the sound of the door behind me. It was quiet, almost unnoticeable, but it was distinctive in the silence.
My back was to him, so I had the opportunity to suck in a deep breath and steady my tears, soothe my lungs, and quiet my heart. I quickly wiped away the tears with my forearms and prayed that the darkness would hide the evidence.
He came out in just his sweatpants and slippers. The fire cast shadows over the lines between his muscles. He was much leaner than Theo but had always been ripped like a soccer player. He was a handsome man in his own right, and before I’d met Theo, I’d thought he was the best-looking man I’d ever seen.
But things changed.
He sat in the center of the other couch, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He stared at the fire for a while.
I could tell something was amiss. He would have sat beside me if everything was okay between us. He would look at me. Talk to me. But he continued to stare at the fire like I wasn’t even there.
I drank from the bottle to swallow the tears.
“You still love him.” He spoke with resignation, with defeat.
“Love doesn’t just die, Bolton. I wouldn’t be here right now if that were the case.” I made that up on the spot, the booze giving me more courage than I would have had otherwise. “You should have seen how many times I cried over you, when I slept alone and wondered if you slept alone too.”
“But you said you would try.” He finally looked at me head on.
“I am trying, Bolton. When a building falls in an earthquake, it takes time to rebuild—”
“Or you were just bullshitting me. And now that you know he’s fucking around, you wish I’d just shot him.”
The adrenaline was like a haze over my eyes. I felt like I was running even when I was stuck in place. The panic was beneath my skin, but the paleness was probably visible in my cheeks. The blush from the wine wouldn’t be strong enough to hide it. “I wasn’t bullshitting you—”