3. Astrid
3
ASTRID
I went to work at the gallery and returned to my small apartment in the evenings. Boxes of my things were everywhere because I hadn’t unpacked anything. I slept in a cold bed alone and made a sandwich for dinner. My life had burned in Technicolor…and now it was muted in black and white.
Bolton came by to check on me more than once.
I told him I was fine and then asked him to leave.
I never heard from Theo, and I accepted the fact that I never would. Bolton had told me the truth, and once he’d given me that context, everything made so much more sense. Theo and Bolton were in the game, so lying off the cuff like that was no problem for the Skull King. The second I saw the ring on his left hand, I should have stayed the fuck away.
Bolton wanted to get back together, but it was hard to forgive everything he’d done. He was the only comfort I had right now after Theo had discarded me like a used pen that’d run out of ink. Theo used to be the one who carried the burden of my problems, but now he was the burden on my heart.
I’d never been so lost.
The only men I’d ever trusted had both betrayed me.
I wasn’t sure if there was such a thing as a good man. All they cared about was sex and ego. And I was stuck in the middle, a pawn in their fucking games.
I’d been on the couch for a couple of hours, still in the same clothes I’d worn to work, looking at the blank TV that I hadn’t turned on. Time passed so quickly for doing nothing, and every time I looked at my phone, another hour had flown by.
The silence was disturbed by a knock on the door.
The only person who knew I lived there was Bolton, so it had to be him.
I checked the peephole before I opened the door, seeing him standing there in his coat, holding a grocery bag in one hand.
I looked him over, unsure what he wanted or why he was there.
He did the same to me, but he probably had more to see because I was pale as snow and broken like an ornament that had fallen off the tree. “I made you dinner. It’s not as good as yours, but it’s not bad.”
I glanced down at the bag as if I could see the contents through the exterior. “Thank you, but I’m not hungry.”
“Astrid, come on.” He stepped forward, crowding me backward and inviting himself into my apartment. “If you get any thinner, you’ll disappear.” He shut the door behind him and carried the bag to the kitchen counter. He opened the containers, and the food was still warm, steam rising from the bowls. “Set the table.”
Like a zombie, I obeyed, grabbing the plates and utensils and putting them on the small table next to the kitchen. I sat down and waited, watching him plate the food before bringing it to me. “You never cooked before, and now you’re a chef.”
“It’s not as good as yours.” He brought his plate to the table and sat across from me. “I miss your cooking…among other things.”
I kept my eyes down and dismissed the compliment. My fork moved through the tender meat and the sauce before I placed it in my mouth. It had a delicious taste, but it only inspired a small spark in my appetite.
Bolton ate his food in silence, watching me across the table from time to time, not forcing conversation.
I had been low when my father died, but I wasn’t sure if I’d ever been this low.
“Astrid?”
My eyes shifted to him.
“I want you to come home.”
“I am home.” In this little apartment, all by myself, disappointed by every man I’d ever trusted.
“This isn’t a home,” he said. “Just a room with four walls.”
“It’s exactly how it felt when you would be gone—doing god knows what.”
He stopped eating altogether. “Ever since you’ve been gone, I’ve been home, thinking about you, desperate to repair what I destroyed. Despite how much I fucked up, you know how much I love you.”
I looked away.
“You do, Astrid. I wouldn’t fight for you if that weren’t true. I wouldn’t be heartbroken if that weren’t true.”
“But yet, you can fuck?—”
“Sex means something else to men than it does to women,” he said with forced calm. “I told you this. I never should have asked and I’ll never ask again, but you did agree to it. If you’d said no, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Yes, it’s my fault?—”
“I’m not blaming you. I just wish you’d been honest, is all I’m saying.”
I looked down at my food.
“Astrid, come on,” he said with a sigh. “You’re killing me.”
“Now you know how I felt when I saw that lipstick mark on your neck.”
He was quiet for a while, his anger palpable. “And how do you think I feel knowing one of my adversaries fucked my wife for sport?” He cocked his head. “That my wife was used and too blind to see it? That kills me, Astrid.”
The mention of Theo made me feel like shit all over again. I had been too stupid to see the deception right in front of me. Like an alchemist, I’d turned his lies into truth.
“Please come home…and give me a chance.”
“You mean another chance.”
He stared at me through the silence. “Please.”
His eyes were so blue I had to look away. They could be beautiful but sometimes deadly.
“Astrid, please.”
“I—I don’t think so.”
He gave a loud sigh as he sat back. “You act like I cheated on you.”
“That’s how it feels.”
“Then you cheated on me.”
“In retaliation,” I snapped. “It took a long time for me to be able to imagine someone else in my bed.”
“You were emotionally involved with Theo. I was never emotionally involved with anyone. If you really want to compare infidelities, yours is worse than mine. How do you think it makes me feel, knowing you actually felt something for him? I could never feel anything for anyone except you, Astrid.”
And just like that, he made me feel like shit.
“Come home. And let’s start over.” He pleaded with his eyes. “Please.”
I broke eye contact and stared at my food, his request hanging in the air between us. The silence was deafening. It seemed to last a lifetime. The desperation was like smoke in the room, burning in my lungs. “No.”
A storm hit that night.
The rain was loud against the windows. The trees bent in the wind, and the branches scratched the glass.
It was hard to sleep with all the noise. But it was even harder to sleep with the depression that acted as a noose around my neck. I’d thought Bolton was the man I could trust to take care of me after life had been unkind to me, but now I was alone…in a shitty apartment. And I would probably always be alone.
And after Theo…I would be forever scarred.
I lay there and stared at the ceiling, cycling the memories over and over in my head, drowning in the pool of depression, when I heard a noise.
The sound of something hitting the front door downstairs.
I sat upright in bed, my heart immediately pounding in a split second. It wasn’t a gust of wind against the door. It wasn’t a fallen tree.
It was something else.
I reached for my phone on the nightstand then stepped into the hallway at the top of the stairs.
The center of the door had been smashed in, and a tattooed arm reached through the wood to grab the door handle.
“Holy shit.” I unlocked my phone and returned to my bedroom. There was a dresser in there, and I had a sudden burst of strength that came out of nowhere and allowed me to move it against the door to act as a barricade.
Without thinking twice, I called Theo.
It rang and rang and rang…
I hung up before it got to voice mail and called Bolton.
He picked up before it even finished ringing once. “Astrid?” He didn’t sound asleep, like he was wide awake in his study with his phone next to his laptop.
“Someone just broke in to my apartment.” I spoke in a panic, my words slurred together and almost indistinguishable. “I put the dresser in front of the bedroom door. I—I don’t know what to do?—”
“I’m coming. They’re probably just burglars and will leave after they get the TV. Stay quiet.”
“Okay.”
“I’m in the car. I’ll be there in three minutes.”
I continued to pant into the phone. “Okay.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
He hung up.
I clutched the phone in my hand and stared at the door. I hadn’t unpacked my things, so they were all downstairs in the boxes. I had no weapon for defense. Couldn’t get a knife from the kitchen. I had to hope the furniture would be enough to stop them from coming in.
Even over the storm, I heard voices downstairs.
There was more than one, but I wasn’t sure how many.
With my phone clutched in my hand, I sat on the floor against the bed and stared at the dresser that blocked the door, listening to every sound in the house, praying they were distracted by all my belongings downstairs. My purse was there too, so they should just take that and run.
My phone started to vibrate in my hand, and I saw Theo’s name on the screen.
Footsteps sounded outside the door. “I’m gonna see if there’s another TV up here.”
Shit. I ignored Theo’s call and crawled away from the bed and away from the door in case the guy managed to open it.
I was about to go into cardiac arrest, my heart was beating so damn fast.
The guy turned the doorknob, but it stayed put. He tried to push on it several times, and the door wouldn’t budge. “Someone’s in here,” he called to his partner downstairs. “Help me with this.”
“Shit.” I moved to the window, pulled back the curtains, and looked into the street.
Headlights moved up the road at a dangerous speed before a vehicle came to a screeching halt in front of the apartment. It was Bolton’s car.
“One…two…three.” The guys threw their bodies into the door, making the dresser shift several inches across the carpet.
I searched the room for a weapon, but there was nothing. Nothing except the phone in my hand.
It started to ring again. It was Theo calling back.
The men threw their shoulders into the door again, making the dresser move several more inches.
I stayed against the opposite wall, trying to keep as far away as I could.
One of the men poked his head into the room, his face covered with tattoos. An ugly son of a bitch. When he spotted me, he grinned. “Ooh…she’s pretty.” He grinned, showing his fucked-up teeth.
I chucked my phone at his face.
“Fuck.” His head hit the wall, and he moved back into the hallway. “She threw her fucking phone at my head.”
“We’ve got company.”
Hurried footsteps were noticeable on the staircase. Then there were thuds, bodies hitting walls and floors. I heard the sounds of a struggle, muffled grunts coming from the men who fought at the top of the landing.
All I could do was stand there and hope Bolton would be the victor.
I heard one final thud before the world turned quiet.
I stared at the door, my breathing all over the place.
“Astrid?” Bolton pushed the door open another foot before he appeared in the crack.
Now that the threat was over, tears of terror streaked down my cheeks.
“Are you okay?”
He pushed the door farther so he could step inside. His left eye was swollen, like he’d taken a hard punch to the face, but he looked fine otherwise. He didn’t answer the question before he beelined to me, getting me in his arms and squeezing me tight. “Are you okay?” His hand supported the back of my head as he cradled me into his chest.
“Yes.” I cried into his chest, more afraid now that I was allowed to feel that fear. “I’m okay.”
His lips moved to my forehead, and he kissed me. “Let me take you home, and I’ll come back and finish this.”
“Finish what?”
“The cleanup.”
“Did—did you kill them?”
He looked down at me with that heavy stare. “You think I’d let any man live after what they just did to you?”
I waited at home for Bolton to return.
A couple hours later, he did, bringing all of my belongings with him. He stacked the boxes in the hallway to be dealt with in the morning. He just assumed I would live with him now.
I didn’t correct him, because I didn’t want to leave.
My short time in the real world had ended in heartbreak and violence. I didn’t want to go back to that horrible place. I wanted to stay right here, in the only place I’d been happy. The past no longer seemed important, not when Bolton was the one who had been there for me, who’d come to my rescue when I had no one else.
“Let’s go to bed.” He took my hand and guided me upstairs to our bedroom.
The place I’d slept alone every night when he was gone.
He’d already washed up, so his hands were clean. He tossed his clothes in the hamper before he pulled back the covers and got into bed.
It took me a moment to undress, to accept that the terrifying night was truly over, even though it was almost dawn. Just as I set my phone on the nightstand, it lit up with a text message from Theo.
Are you alright?
I didn’t open the message. Didn’t respond to it. Instead, I went to his contact information and blocked him.
He’d never been there for me. And he would never be there for me.
When I looked at Bolton, he was watching me, but he didn’t ask who was texting me at four in the morning.
I got into his bed beside him, and the second my body was between the warm sheets, he latched on to me and pulled me close, smothered me with his affection, his lips against my hairline. He gathered me close then released a slow breath, like he finally felt the peace he’d craved for so long.