It Pains Me (Betrayal #5)

7. Astrid

7

ASTRID

It was a quiet ride home.

An insufferable one.

When we stepped into the house, I felt Bolton’s anger rekindle like a candle flame that blazed back to life. He hung up his coat on the rack then walked to the bar, making himself a stiff drink, as if all the wine at dinner hadn’t been enough.

I felt his rage like the heat from a burning fireplace.

I turned to the stairs, ready to go to our bedroom to slip off these painful heels and drop this skintight dress.

“You lied to me.”

I stilled, my heart turning into a stone that fell off the edge of a cliff. My breaths grew shaky and showed my terror.

He still had his back to me, standing in front of the bar. “I fucked up, but I never lied.”

My heart was about to explode from the terror.

He finally turned around, drink in hand, a flush to his face from the anger or the booze. Maybe both. “Are you in this marriage or not?”

“Yes—”

“I can’t hear you!” He threw his glass at the wall, and it shattered.

I yelped as I nearly jumped out of my skin.

Deranged, he stared me down and stepped forward, his boots crunching over the broken glass. “I said I can’t hear you.”

“Yes…” I felt my body tremble because I’d never seen him act like this. Not during our worst times.

“Then why did you lie?” He came closer, purposely grinding the shards into finer pieces as he moved. “Why did you look me in the goddamn face and lie?” He stopped when he was inches away, his breaths shaky with rage.

“I—I didn’t want you to kill him.” He somehow knew about the conversation, so I caved. If I kept up the lie, it would just make it worse. Make him throw more glasses and bottles against the wall until the house came down. “Nothing happened.”

“And why should I believe you?”

“Because I would never?—”

“You lied to me before. How do I know you aren’t lying now?” he snapped. “I know I fucked up big-time when I asked to open our marriage, but I’ve never lied to you or deceived you. You’ve crucified me for what I did, but your transgression is far worse than mine.”

“I just didn’t want you to hurt him. That’s all.”

“You protect him?” he asked incredulously. “I’m your husband.”

“I’ve protected you too.”

His eyes shifted back and forth between mine. “I want to know what happened. Lie to me again, and see what fucking happens.”

I took a step back when his spit struck my cheek.

He moved in again, not letting me get away. “Answer the question.”

I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know how to get out of this. “He wanted to make sure I was happy. Make sure I was okay. Said he wished he could take back the final words he said to me, because he didn’t mean them. That’s it.” I felt my body shake because I was scared, scared of my husband for the first time, saw the vicious side of him that his victims must see before they died. “He didn’t touch me. Nothing happened.” I lied a bit, lied enough to soften the blow, because I was truly afraid of what Bolton would do if he knew Theo had begged me to take him back. That he’d left the door open for us if I ever wanted to come back. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

His eyes continued to pierce my face like daggers. He was still angry, still breathing differently.

I held my ground like my life depended on it, because Theo’s did.

He finally stepped away.

I released a sigh of relief that the interrogation was finally over.

He returned to the bar and poured another glass.

“Theo said he upheld his end of the deal. What does that mean?” It was a stupid time to ask the question, but since Bolton was drunk and unhinged, it might make him reckless with his information.

He turned back around and looked at me.

“What deal?”

He brought it to his lips and took a drink, a long one that lasted seconds, finishing off the entire glass in one go. Then he flipped it in the air and caught it again, drops of liquor hitting the walls and the floor. Like a pitcher on the mound, he threw the glass against the wall, shattering it where he’d thrown the first one. “I’m done talking about that asshole.”

I was awake most of the night.

My heart still raced like I was on a treadmill rather than tucked into bed. The downstairs was a mess, the glass left to be cleaned tomorrow. I stared at the ceiling or the light peeking through the curtains over the window.

Bolton was passed out beside me, knocked out the second he hit the bed because he was dead drunk. He snored too, something he never did.

My phone lit up on the nightstand beside me.

It was three in the morning. And only one person would text me at that hour.

I just need to know you’re okay.

I glanced at Bolton beside me, feeling guilty for doing something I shouldn’t, but Theo’s message drilled straight into my soul. I’m okay.

The three dots didn’t return.

I stared at the screen and waited for them, even hoped for them. But nothing came. I didn’t tell him.

I know.

He asked what we talked about, and I said you just wanted to check on me.

You don’t need to lie for me, sweetheart. I’m not afraid of him.

I don’t want anything to happen to either of you.

His dots disappeared.

I wanted the conversation to continue, but there was nothing else to say. It was probably the last time we would ever speak.

The biggest mistake of my life was not taking that call.

My heart dropped.

I will always take your call, sweetheart.

It was a difficult week.

Bolton went back to work, but he didn’t leave for an assignment. He spent his time at the Brotherhood, where he met with his colleagues. He’d taken me there a couple of times, and it seemed like their meetings were just drinking while topless women served them.

I’d never cared about the girls because I trusted Bolton.

I went to work every morning like usual. The gallery used to envelop me in inspiration, but now it just crushed me with loneliness. Business was slow, and we didn’t get any new artwork to showcase.

I half expected Theo to walk through the door, but I knew that would never happen again.

I deleted his messages, and that made me feel like shit. I was a transparent person who lived my life truthfully. I never had anything to hide. Honesty was always the best policy. But the situation made me feel like I was having an affair even though I wasn’t.

I blamed Bolton for that, because he was the reason all of this happened in the first place.

Bolton was still pissed off. He seemed to be drunk whenever he came home. We hadn’t had sex since I’d come back and he’d tried to make it happen a couple times, but I wasn’t ready. He wore his impatience like a tattoo, and that seemed to make him angrier.

He came home the following day, and it was the first time he wasn’t drunk.

I made dinner since he’d stopped cooking.

He came into the kitchen and faced me at the kitchen island, seeing the casserole dish I’d just pulled out of the oven. He stared at it for a moment before he looked at me again. “I apologize for the way I’ve behaved this week. I’ve just been…unbelievably angry.” He released a sigh as he said those final words, like he was fighting the resurrection of his rage.

The old Bolton had returned to me, calm and collected, patient and warm. That other Bolton was someone I’d never met before. I hoped I never had to see him again.

“Are you in this with me, Astrid?” he asked. “Because I don’t want to waste my time.”

“I am.”

“Then I want effort. I want intimacy. I’m trying to be patient. I’ve offered to go to counseling. I’ve offered to do anything I can to be what we were. If it can’t be fixed, then it can’t be fixed. But tell me that now.”

I pulled off the oven mitts and set them on the counter.

He continued to stare at me.

“After the way you acted the other night…I’ve just been timid.”

“I was drunk.”

“I’ve never seen you angry like that.”

“Because I’ve never been angry with you. That’s a side to me I hoped you’d never see.”

“It was more than anger. It was pettiness and possessiveness?—”

“You’re my wife. I have every right to be possessive of you. And if one of my old lovers continued to pursue me, I’m sure you’d be petty as hell. I admit I was irrational, but my love for you makes me irrational. I can’t promise I won’t get angry like that again, but I can promise you that if Theo stays out of our marriage, it’s unlikely to happen again. So, really, it’s up to you.”

My eyes flicked down to the casserole, thinking about the conversation Theo and I had had over text.

“I’ll ask again.”

I looked at him once more.

“Are you in this or not?”

“Yes…”

“That answer lacked conviction.”

“Yes,” I repeated more forcefully.

“Would you like to do marriage counseling?”

“No.”

“Is there something I can improve on?”

“No.”

“Then we’re going to have dinner together. Go upstairs and make love because it’s been weeks and I’m losing my goddamn mind. And we’re going to be happy together, husband and wife. Is that agreeable to you?”

I still felt a pull toward Theo, felt like my relationship with Bolton was somehow a betrayal when I’d made my choice as clear as red ink. But maybe that pull would always be there, no matter what I did. “Yes, that’s agreeable.”

I arrived at the gallery at ten forty-five, fifteen minutes before we opened like I did every morning, coffee in hand. Not that it really mattered because I’d never had anyone walk in the door right when we opened. Clients usually stopped by after lunch—if they stopped by at all.

After I unlocked the door and stepped inside, the alarm usually beeped, giving me one minute to disarm it before it started to blare and inform the police. But once I stepped inside, there was no beeping, like the alarm hadn’t been turned on.

I stopped beside my desk and looked inside the gallery, seeing nothing but the company of the paintings on the walls. Never in my life had I forgotten to turn on the alarm while working here. I never walked in and realized it had slipped my mind the night before. It was muscle memory, like locking the front door when you left the house.

I stood there and stared, feeling my heart race as I peered into the different sections of the gallery. I flicked on the lights in each room and scanned, expecting to see blank walls where artwork had been taken, but everything was exactly the same.

Maybe I did forget…

It’d been a long week. I had a lot on my mind. Maybe it just…slipped.

“Sweetheart.”

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard his voice behind me, right at the back of my neck. “Jesus…” I slowly turned around to meet his gaze, my heels not enough for our eyes to meet.

“Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Theo, you shouldn’t be here.” The fear turned into panic, panic that Bolton would know about this and there would be another tornado in my living room. “I don’t know how Bolton knew the first time.”

“I’m not sure either because he didn’t have his men watching the gallery, but now he does.”

“Then what the fuck are you doing?”

“I’ve been here since five. They don’t show up until around ten.”

“The alarm…” So, I did remember to turn it on. “How did you…?”

He moved to one of the armchairs. “Sit.”

I stood there, the shock still hitting me in waves. The guilt striking me too. “Theo, I said we can’t do this anymore.”

“This is the last time,” he said. “Then I promise I’ll leave you alone…if that’s what you want.” His elbows rested on his knees. He wore a short-sleeved shirt, showing the tendons down his arms.

I hesitated before I sat in the armchair across from him, a large painting taking up the entire wall beside us. I was in a pencil skirt and a tucked-in blouse with stockings. The clothing suddenly felt tight and made it hard to breathe.

He didn’t say anything for a long time, just looked at me across from him. “I want to know why you called.”

“I—I haven’t called you.”

“I’m talking about that night. The night when you called and I didn’t answer, but Bolton did.”

My body flushed with heat, the adrenaline that dumped into my blood in preparation for an attack. “It doesn’t matter?—”

“It matters to me.”

I looked down at my hands in my lap. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why?”

“The same reason you haven’t shared stuff with me.” I knew there were pieces of himself that he hid beneath the surface, locked behind a steel vault. I’d knocked on that front door a couple times, but he never answered. “It’s just hard to talk about.”

He stared at his hands for a while before he released a sigh. “Fuck, here it goes…” He straightened then sank back into the chair, knees spread, his elbows moving to the armrests. He stared off across the gallery for a moment as he remained lost in thought.

I had no idea what he was about to say.

His eyes found mine again. “I was married.”

A little bomb went off inside my heart, a bomb I didn’t know had been dropped until it exploded. My face must have conveyed my shock because he looked away and stared at the painting again. I didn’t know what to say, and the longer he remained silent, the more it seemed like he wanted me to say something. “When…?”

“Ten years ago.”

He’d been divorced for ten years, and he still couldn’t talk about it? “I—I had no idea.” Did he still love her? Was that why he didn’t want anything serious? Did she hurt him? I couldn’t picture any woman being stupid enough to cheat on a man like Theo. There would be no reason to. He was the dream guy, and everyone else was beneath him. “That was a long time ago.”

“Yeah.” He gave a slight nod. “It was. Still feels like yesterday sometimes.”

A jolt of jealousy ran through me like lightning, but I swallowed it back because it was immature and hypocritical. I still loved Bolton even when I was with Theo, so I had no right to be jealous of someone he loved. “Why did you get divorced?”

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.”

My panicked breathing continued, unsure what to believe. “He—he wouldn’t lie to me.”

“Would I lie to you, sweetheart?”

My eyes flicked away, unsure who to believe. I could look past Bolton’s mistakes, but not this one. I’d never been so scared in my entire life. I’d thought I was about to be raped in that dark little room. There was no way that Bolton would let me be traumatized like that to get what he wanted. “I know Bolton is a lot of things, but he wouldn’t do that.”

All Theo did was stare at me. Didn’t press his argument. There was no judgment in his eyes.

“You weren’t there. You don’t have any proof.”

“Alright,” Theo said in defeat. “For what it’s worth, I hope I’m dead wrong. Your woman is the person you’re supposed to protect with your life. To purposely inflict harm on her, for whatever reason, is despicable.”

Bolton wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t…right?

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” he repeated. “What I wouldn’t give for a redo.”

I stared at my hands on my knee.

A long silence passed.

No one came to the front door in the lobby. My emails went unanswered. My coffee turned cold.

“I want you to forgive me, sweetheart. Forgive me and give me another chance.”

My eyes found his again.

“You’ve seen a glimpse of the real Bolton now—and that’s just a glimpse.”

That dinner had been so tense, I’d thought my lungs were going to burst. “We do stupid things when we’re upset.”

“But we don’t do that.”

My eyes moved back to my knee.

“I’m sorry I didn’t take that call. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my dead wife. But now, I’ve put it all on the line for you. Give me a chance, sweetheart.”

“But you had your chance?—”

“You’ve given Bolton way more chances than he deserves,” he snapped. “All I’m asking for is a second one.”

“Bolton is my husband. It’s different.”

“You were going to divorce him until he pulled that burglary.”

“He didn’t pull that burglary,” I snapped. “And I wouldn’t have been home alone if you hadn’t broken my heart and dumped me. If you had taken my phone call. Theo, I care about you so much and this hurts like fucking hell, but it’s done.” It broke me to say those words and say them so harshly. “I wish things had been different. I wish the outcome were different. But we can’t change the past.”

He stared at his hands again.

“I told Bolton I would try.”

He kept his eyes down. “He doesn’t deserve you.”

“And I don’t deserve to be with someone who’s in love with a ghost.”

He lifted his chin and looked at me again. His stare was hard, like he had something to say but couldn’t bring himself to speak the words. “There’s a lot more to that story, but I don’t have the heart to share it.”

And it was probably best if he didn’t. “I do forgive you, Theo. But I can’t change everything that’s brought us to our current circumstances. An apology has the power to earn forgiveness, but it doesn’t have the power to change the past.”

He continued to stare at me, his coffee-colored eyes solid walls that blocked off access to his heart.

“I wish it were different.” He was such a beautiful man, on the inside as well as the outside. His wife had been the luckiest woman who’d ever lived for earning his love. It made her early death that much more heartbreaking.

After a long pause, he spoke. “Alright.” There was so much defeat in just a single word. His eyes dimmed slightly, the light from his heart disappearing as clouds gathered in his gaze. “Together or apart, I’ll always take your call, Astrid.”

His words cracked my heart, not just because of what he said, but because he called me by my name. “I know.”

He rose to his feet and faced the painting on the wall.

“Theo?” I stared at his back.

“Yes?”

“What deal did you make with Bolton? I asked him, but he wouldn’t tell me.”

He stared at the painting for a moment before he turned around and faced me. His eyes shifted back and forth between mine as he considered the question. “Bolton offered the name of my brother’s killer if I left you. I took the deal—and I’ve regretted it ever since.”

My arms crossed over my chest as the chill set into my bones. I wasn’t sure what was worse. The fact that Bolton had interfered in my relationship…or the fact that Theo had agreed.

“I’ve wanted my brother’s bones so I can bury him. Get some fucking closure. Revenge too. But my brother is dead, and nothing is going to bring him back. There’s no antidote to grief. Closure doesn’t exist. I should have chosen you. And I’m sorry I didn’t.”