Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 67905 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 226(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67905 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 226(@300wpm)
He looked at the painting again, taking a moment to share the tale. She must have cheated, because I couldn’t see Theo being disloyal like that. I hardly knew him, but I knew his heart. “We didn’t get divorced.”
“Oh. Then…” It took me a second to realize…and the revelation was like a hard fist right against my heart. “Jesus…” All the jealousy I felt was immediately replaced by the deepest pity I’d ever known. “Theo, I’m so sorry.”
His eyes remained on the painting. He seemed to focus on inanimate objects to disassociate his feelings, to keep them locked in a cage so they wouldn’t fly free. His cheek rested against his closed knuckles, and to someone who watched the conversation without being able to hear it, they wouldn’t have a clue what Theo just told me.
I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to give him a hug, but he seemed closed off.
He continued to look at the painting.
I wanted to ask questions, but I didn’t want to ambush him on a road he didn’t want to walk down in the first place. “I guess I understand more.” He’d already been married and didn’t want to remarry. Because the woman he had been with was the one. It was a competition I would never win. I would always live in the shadow of his first love.
He finally looked at me again, his eyes hard like he hadn’t shared a tragedy. “Why did you call?” He paid for my secret with his, and now it was time to uphold my end of the bargain.
I hadn’t thought about the night since it happened. Wouldn’t allow myself to. Bolton had been home every day after that event, so I never felt unsafe. And then our problems had rained down from the sky like blocks of hail, and I was too distracted to think about it. “I was alone in my new apartment. There was a storm that battered the windows. I was upstairs, but I heard someone kick in the front door.” With every word I strung together, I saw the images flash across my mind, felt the same panic that I had in that moment. “I looked downstairs and saw these scary men come into my apartment. I ran back into my room, blocked the door with the dresser…and called you.” My eyes had trailed down as I spoke, losing contact with his stare, remembering the way the shadow stretched down the hallway, the way the storm continued to rage outside while a bigger storm had entered my apartment. “You didn’t answer, so I turned to Bolton next…and he got there in three minutes.”
Theo was quiet.
After a long stretch of silence, my chin lifted and I looked at him again.
His eyes were on his hands clasped in front of his knees. His thumb slid over the skin of the opposite hand. “What did they look like?”
That wasn’t what I expected him to say. “What?”
He lifted his head and looked at me. “Describe them to me.”
“Bolton already killed them—”
“Did you actually see them dead?”
I hesitated at the strange question.
“Did you actually see Bolton kill them?”
“I—I heard it behind the door.”
“Heard what?”
“Fighting.”
“When you left, did you see bodies in the hallway? See blood on the carpet? Hear a gunshot?”
“Uh…it all happened so fast, and I just wanted to get out of there. But no, definitely no gunshots.”
He gave a slight nod. “What did they look like?”
“I don’t understand why that matters.”
“Just answer the question, sweetheart.”
“I only saw one. He poked his head into my bedroom. Blond hair…face tattoos…a lot of face tattoos.”
He rubbed his hands together as he listened.
“I tell you this horrible story, and all you can think about is the details?”
“I just find it hard to believe burglars would target your apartment when you’d only been living there for a couple days. In the middle of the night. Petty thieves hit apartments when they know people are out of the house, like during the day when they leave for work.”
“You think I’m lying?”
“No,” he said quickly. “I think Bolton orchestrated the entire thing.”
I froze on the spot, disturbed by the insinuation. “Why—why would he do that?”
“What better way to get your wife to come home than scare her to death?” He cocked his head slightly and released a painful sigh. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there, sweetheart. It won’t happen again. I promise.”
I didn’t hear the last of what he said. “Bolton wouldn’t do that.”
He sank back into the chair and looked at me with a harder gaze.
“I know we have our problems, and I know he can be a little maniacal…but he wouldn’t do that.”
He continued to stare at me. “He would have shot them if it was real.”
“Maybe he didn’t want other people to hear—”
“Trust me, he doesn’t give a fuck who hears. He could shoot someone in the head at a stoplight, and the cops would just drive by. He didn’t shoot them because he didn’t kill them. Because it was a setup to make you terrified to ever leave him.”