Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
I took the service elevator to her floor then headed down the hallway that I’d walked before. I wasn’t sure if she was still there, if Bolton had dragged her back home, or if she’d moved in to an apartment once she had a second to breathe.
I knocked, unsure if she or a stranger would answer.
Footsteps made the floor creak slightly, and then the light over the peephole vanished as a shadow passed across.
Then the door opened, and Astrid was behind it.
Her eyes were hollow. Her fair skin was free of makeup. She wore a baggy shirt and pajama shorts, clearly not expecting visitors. Her reaction to me was subdued, that spark in her eyes stomped out by my boot. She pulled the door open wider so I could pass through but didn’t actually say anything to me.
I entered the suite I’d visited before, and it looked exactly the same, as if time had been passing for her with the same painful slowness it’d been passing for me. Her suitcase was still in the corner, and a room service table was pushed against the wall, the plates mostly full of food she hadn’t touched.
The depression filled the room like smoke.
I looked at her once again, seeing her arms crossed over her chest, completely cut off from me after I’d crushed her. “I’m sorry for the way I was before.”
Her eyes were on the floor, her hands gripping the insides of her arms, her long hair beautifully placed around her shoulders. Even on her darkest night, she had a light so alluring.
“Not my best day.”
She continued to avoid my stare like that apology wasn’t good enough.
“Have you spoken to Bolton?”
After a pause, her eyes lifted to look at me. “He came by yesterday. We talked for hours and hours…and then he finally left.”
Then she hadn’t changed her mind.
“I can’t go back to him, not when I feel this way.”
“When you feel what way?”
“When I don’t see him the same way anymore…when I have feelings for someone else. He could sleep with other people and keep it purely physical, but I’m not that way. I’m an emotional person. I connect emotionally, not just physically.”
I watched the emotions move over her face as she spoke, watched her battle the tide that wanted to sweep her away.
“If he hadn’t asked me to end the arrangement, I’m not sure how long I would have stayed. But I don’t think I would have stayed forever. It’d been gnawing at me for a while, day and night, forming ulcers in my stomach. With every passing day, my lungs started to heave as I began to suffocate.”
“Do you feel better now?” Because she looked worse than she ever had.
There was a long pause, a heavy one, full of so many things she never said. “I-I didn’t expect to get divorced. I thought we would be together forever. Just a few months ago, I wanted to start a family…and now, I want to start a new life. It’s hard because I really did love him. When he told me he wanted to be with other people, I still loved him. But over the last few months, that love changed. It stopped being enough.” She swallowed and paused, forcing her eyes to remain dry. “He told me every man wants to fuck someone else besides his wife, but he was honest enough to tell me, and that somehow makes him better than all the rest. That he could have just cheated on me behind my back, but—”
“But he decided to cheat on you to your face,” I said coldly. “Yes, very honorable.” I hated Bolton for my own reasons, but the more I listened to her, the more I realized he was just an insufferable human being.
Her eyes latched on to mine.
“Some men want to fuck around. Men like him, who want a wife to fulfill a role, to hold her end of a business deal she didn’t know she was making. She signed her name on the dotted line but didn’t read the terms and conditions because she assumed she didn’t need to. And other men…” Memories flashed across my mind, brief and sudden, bright colors and then rain clouds of gray. “Other men commit to one woman for the rest of their life because that’s the only woman they want until they die. Men like Axel…and others like him.”
Her eyes were locked on mine as she listened to me speak. She stopped blinking, regarding my stare intently. “And…what about you?”
I knew what she wanted from me, what she would never ask. “I’m a one-woman kind of man…when the time is right.”
Her eyes flicked back and forth between mine, wanting to know more.
“I’m possessive. I’m jealous as fuck. Protective. Borderline psychotic. If someone tried to touch my woman, it would be the last thing they’d ever do. I’m too busy being into her to be interested in anyone else. I’m nothing like Bolton—but I’m sure you already figured that out.”